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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/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         25th May 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
  32 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
  33 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
  34 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
  35 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
  36 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
  37 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
  38 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
  39 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
  40 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
  41 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
  42 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
  43
  44 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
  45 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
  46 is going away and is generally being replaced by
  47 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
  48 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
  49 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
  50 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
  51 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
  52 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
  53 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
  54 and see if it is recognised.</p>
  55
  56 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
  57 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
  58 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
  59
  60 <p><blockquote><pre>
  61 % isenkram-lookup
  62 bluez
  63 cheese
  64 fprintd
  65 fprintd-demo
  66 gkrellm-thinkbat
  67 hdapsd
  68 libpam-fprintd
  69 pidgin-blinklight
  70 thinkfan
  71 tleds
  72 tp-smapi-dkms
  73 tp-smapi-source
  74 tpb
  75 %p
  76 </pre></blockquote></p>
  77
  78 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
  79 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
  80 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
  81 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
  82 See
  83 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
  84 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
  85
  86       </div>
  87       <div class="tags">
  88
  89
  90         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>.
  91
  92
  93       </div>
  94     </div>
  95     <div class="padding"></div>
  96
  97     <div class="entry">
  98       <div class="title">
  99         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
 100       </div>
 101       <div class="date">
 102         23rd May 2016
 103       </div>
 104       <div class="body">
 105         <p>Yesterday I updated the
 106 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
 107 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
 108 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
 109 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
 110 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
 111 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
 112 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
 113 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
 114 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
 115 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
 116
 117 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
 118 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
 119 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
 120 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
 121 capacity.</p>
 122
 123 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
 124
 125 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
 126 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
 127 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
 128 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
 129
 130 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
 131
 132 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
 133 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
 134 shrinking. :(</p>
 135
 136 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
 137 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
 138 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
 139 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
 140 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
 141 machine.</p>
 142
 143 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
 144 check out the
 145 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
 146 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
 147 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
 148 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
 149 Patches are very welcome.</p>
 150
 151 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 152 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 153 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 154
 155       </div>
 156       <div class="tags">
 157
 158
 159         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>.
 160
 161
 162       </div>
 163     </div>
 164     <div class="padding"></div>
 165
 166     <div class="entry">
 167       <div class="title">
 168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
 169       </div>
 170       <div class="date">
 171         12th May 2016
 172       </div>
 173       <div class="body">
 174         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
 175 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
 176 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
 177 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
 178 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
 179 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 180 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
 181 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
 182 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
 183 great if you could help out with
 184 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
 185 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
 186
 187       </div>
 188       <div class="tags">
 189
 190
 191         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>.
 192
 193
 194       </div>
 195     </div>
 196     <div class="padding"></div>
 197
 198     <div class="entry">
 199       <div class="title">
 200         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
 201       </div>
 202       <div class="date">
 203          8th May 2016
 204       </div>
 205       <div class="body">
 206         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
 207 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
 208
 209 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
 210 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
 211 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
 212 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
 213 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
 214 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
 215 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
 216 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
 217 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
 218 players.</p>
 219
 220 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
 221 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
 222 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
 223 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
 224 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
 225 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
 226 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
 227 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
 228 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
 229 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
 230 support most file formats.</p>
 231
 232 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
 233 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
 234 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
 235 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
 236 listed first in the table.</p>
 237
 238 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
 239 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
 240 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
 241 support?</p>
 242
 243       </div>
 244       <div class="tags">
 245
 246
 247         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>.
 248
 249
 250       </div>
 251     </div>
 252     <div class="padding"></div>
 253
 254     <div class="entry">
 255       <div class="title">
 256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
 257       </div>
 258       <div class="date">
 259          4th May 2016
 260       </div>
 261       <div class="body">
 262         A friend of mine made me aware of
 263 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
 264 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
 265 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
 266
 267 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
 268 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
 269 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
 270 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
 271 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
 272 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
 273 production started.</p>
 274
 275 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
 276 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
 277 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
 278
 279       </div>
 280       <div class="tags">
 281
 282
 283         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>.
 284
 285
 286       </div>
 287     </div>
 288     <div class="padding"></div>
 289
 290     <div class="entry">
 291       <div class="title">
 292         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
 293       </div>
 294       <div class="date">
 295         10th April 2016
 296       </div>
 297       <div class="body">
 298         <p>During this weekends
 299 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
 300 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
 301 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
 302 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
 303 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
 304 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
 305 contributing using
 306 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
 307 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
 308 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
 309 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
 310 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
 311 contributors</a>.</p>
 312
 313 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
 314 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
 315 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
 316 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
 317 available for many more languages.</p>
 318
 319       </div>
 320       <div class="tags">
 321
 322
 323         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>.
 324
 325
 326       </div>
 327     </div>
 328     <div class="padding"></div>
 329
 330     <div class="entry">
 331       <div class="title">
 332         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
 333       </div>
 334       <div class="date">
 335          7th April 2016
 336       </div>
 337       <div class="body">
 338         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
 339 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
 340 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
 341 But I might be wrong.</p>
 342
 343 <p>According to
 344 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
 345 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
 346 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
 347 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
 348 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
 349 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
 350 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
 351 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
 352 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
 353 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
 354
 355 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
 356 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
 357 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
 358 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
 359 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
 360 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
 361 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
 362 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 363 team status page</a>, and
 364 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
 365 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
 366
 367 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
 368 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
 369 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
 370 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
 371 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
 372 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
 373 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
 374 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
 375 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
 376 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
 377 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
 378 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
 379
 380       </div>
 381       <div class="tags">
 382
 383
 384         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>.
 385
 386
 387       </div>
 388     </div>
 389     <div class="padding"></div>
 390
 391     <div class="entry">
 392       <div class="title">
 393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
 394       </div>
 395       <div class="date">
 396         23rd March 2016
 397       </div>
 398       <div class="body">
 399         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
 400 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
 401 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
 402 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
 403 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
 404 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
 405 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
 406 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
 407
 408 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
 409 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
 410 and lifetime prediction by running:
 411
 412 <p><pre>
 413 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
 414 </pre></p>
 415
 416 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
 417
 418 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
 419 entry yet):</p>
 420
 421 <p><pre>
 422 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
 423 </pre></p>
 424
 425 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
 426 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
 427 few years of data.</p>
 428
 429 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
 430 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
 431 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
 432 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
 433 know.  The issue is reported as
 434 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
 435 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
 436 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
 437 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
 438 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
 439
 440 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
 441 check out the
 442 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
 443 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
 444 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
 445 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
 446 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
 447
 448       </div>
 449       <div class="tags">
 450
 451
 452         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>.
 453
 454
 455       </div>
 456     </div>
 457     <div class="padding"></div>
 458
 459     <div class="entry">
 460       <div class="title">
 461         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
 462       </div>
 463       <div class="date">
 464         15th March 2016
 465       </div>
 466       <div class="body">
 467         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
 468 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
 469 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
 470 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
 471 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
 472 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
 473 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
 474 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
 475 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
 476 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
 477 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
 478
 479 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
 480 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
 481 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
 482 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
 483 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
 484 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
 485 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
 486 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
 487 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
 488 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
 489 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
 490
 491 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
 492
 493 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
 494 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
 495 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
 496 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
 497 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
 498 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
 499
 500 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
 501 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
 502 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
 503 and graphing.</p>
 504
 505 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
 506 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
 507 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
 508 on
 509 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
 510 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
 511
 512       </div>
 513       <div class="tags">
 514
 515
 516         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>.
 517
 518
 519       </div>
 520     </div>
 521     <div class="padding"></div>
 522
 523     <div class="entry">
 524       <div class="title">
 525         <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>
 526       </div>
 527       <div class="date">
 528         19th February 2016
 529       </div>
 530       <div class="body">
 531         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
 532 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
 533 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
 534 the code in the package in question, preferably in
 535 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
 536 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
 537
 538 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
 539 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
 540 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
 541 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
 542 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
 543 out what was wrong with
 544 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
 545 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
 546 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
 547 semi-automatically.</p>
 548
 549 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
 550 file based on the code in the source package,
 551 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
 552 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
 553 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
 554 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
 555 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
 556 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
 557 option in
 558 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
 559 blog posts from 2014</a>.
 560
 561 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
 562
 563 <p><pre>
 564 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
 565 </pre></p>
 566
 567 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
 568 this might not be the best option.</p>
 569
 570 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
 571 this approach in
 572 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
 573 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
 574 dpkg-copyright' option:
 575
 576 <p><pre>
 577 cme update dpkg-copyright
 578 </pre></p>
 579
 580 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
 581 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
 582
 583 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
 584 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
 585 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
 586 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
 587 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
 588 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
 589 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
 590 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
 591 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
 592 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
 593
 594 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
 595 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
 596 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
 597 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
 598
 599 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
 600 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
 601 planet.debian.org.</p>
 602
 603 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 604 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 605 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 606
 607 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
 608 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
 609
 610 <p><pre>
 611 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
 612   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
 613 </pre></p>
 614
 615 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
 616 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
 617 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
 618 with my packages in the future.</p>
 619
 620 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
 621 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
 622 command line.</p>
 623
 624       </div>
 625       <div class="tags">
 626
 627
 628         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>.
 629
 630
 631       </div>
 632     </div>
 633     <div class="padding"></div>
 634
 635     <div class="entry">
 636       <div class="title">
 637         <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>
 638       </div>
 639       <div class="date">
 640          4th February 2016
 641       </div>
 642       <div class="body">
 643         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
 644 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
 645 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
 646 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
 647 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
 648 about. :)</p>
 649
 650 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
 651 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
 652 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
 653 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
 654 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
 655 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
 656
 657 <blockquote><pre>
 658 % apt install appstream
 659 [...]
 660 % apt update
 661 [...]
 662 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
 663   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 664 firmware-qlogic
 665 %
 666 </pre></blockquote>
 667
 668 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
 669 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
 670 a way appstream can use.</p>
 671
 672 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
 673 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
 674 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
 675 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
 676 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
 677 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
 678
 679 <blockquote><pre>
 680 % apt install appstream
 681 [...]
 682 % apt update
 683 [...]
 684 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
 685   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 686 bkchem
 687 phototonic
 688 inkscape
 689 shutter
 690 tetzle
 691 geeqie
 692 xia
 693 pinta
 694 gthumb
 695 karbon
 696 comix
 697 mirage
 698 viewnior
 699 postr
 700 ristretto
 701 kolourpaint4
 702 eog
 703 eom
 704 gimagereader
 705 midori
 706 %
 707 </pre></blockquote>
 708
 709 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
 710 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
 711
 712       </div>
 713       <div class="tags">
 714
 715
 716         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>.
 717
 718
 719       </div>
 720     </div>
 721     <div class="padding"></div>
 722
 723     <div class="entry">
 724       <div class="title">
 725         <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>
 726       </div>
 727       <div class="date">
 728         24th January 2016
 729       </div>
 730       <div class="body">
 731         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
 732 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
 733 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
 734 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
 735 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
 736 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
 737 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
 738 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
 739 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
 740 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
 741 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
 742 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
 743 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
 744 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
 745 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
 746 entities.</p>
 747
 748 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
 749
 750 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
 751 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
 752 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
 753 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
 754 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
 755 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
 756 tool to do so is called
 757 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
 758 discovered it when I read
 759 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
 760 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
 761 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
 762 The python program was in Debian, but
 763 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
 764 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
 765 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
 766 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
 767 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
 768 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
 769 are now included
 770 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
 771
 772 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
 773 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
 774 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
 775 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
 776 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
 777 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
 778 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
 779 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
 780 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
 781 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
 782 about yourself with the services.</p>
 783
 784 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
 785 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
 786 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
 787 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
 788 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
 789 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
 790 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
 791 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
 792 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
 793 things.  A similar technique have been
 794 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
 795 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
 796 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
 797 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
 798 public.</p>
 799
 800 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
 801 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
 802 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
 803 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
 804
 805 <p>(I have uploaded
 806 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
 807 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
 808 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
 809
 810       </div>
 811       <div class="tags">
 812
 813
 814         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>.
 815
 816
 817       </div>
 818     </div>
 819     <div class="padding"></div>
 820
 821     <div class="entry">
 822       <div class="title">
 823         <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>
 824       </div>
 825       <div class="date">
 826         15th January 2016
 827       </div>
 828       <div class="body">
 829         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
 830 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
 831 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
 832 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
 833 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
 834 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
 835 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
 836 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
 837 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
 838 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
 839 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
 840 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
 841 was not the first to propose this, as the
 842 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
 843 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
 844 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
 845 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
 846
 847 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
 848 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
 849 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
 850 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
 851 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
 852
 853 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
 854 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
 855 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
 856 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
 857 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
 858 done in /etc/.</p>
 859
 860 <blockquote><pre>
 861 apt install apt-transport-tor
 862 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 863 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 864 </pre></blockquote>
 865
 866 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
 867 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
 868 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
 869 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
 870
 871 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
 872 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
 873 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
 874 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
 875 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
 876 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
 877
 878 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
 879 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
 880 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
 881 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
 882 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
 883
 884 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
 885 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
 886 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
 887 system.</p>
 888
 889       </div>
 890       <div class="tags">
 891
 892
 893         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>.
 894
 895
 896       </div>
 897     </div>
 898     <div class="padding"></div>
 899
 900     <div class="entry">
 901       <div class="title">
 902         <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>
 903       </div>
 904       <div class="date">
 905         23rd December 2015
 906       </div>
 907       <div class="body">
 908         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
 909 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
 910 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
 911 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
 912 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
 913 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
 914
 915 <p>A few days I came across
 916 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
 917 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
 918 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
 919 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
 920 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
 921 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
 922 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
 923 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
 924 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
 925 discovered the developer
 926 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
 927 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
 928 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
 929 archive.</p>
 930
 931 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
 932 it into Debian, where it currently
 933 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
 934 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
 935
 936 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
 937 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
 938 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
 939 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
 940 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
 941 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
 942 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
 943 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
 944 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
 945 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
 946 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
 947 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
 948
 949 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
 950 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
 951 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
 952 package show up in unstable.</p>
 953
 954       </div>
 955       <div class="tags">
 956
 957
 958         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>.
 959
 960
 961       </div>
 962     </div>
 963     <div class="padding"></div>
 964
 965     <div class="entry">
 966       <div class="title">
 967         <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>
 968       </div>
 969       <div class="date">
 970         20th December 2015
 971       </div>
 972       <div class="body">
 973         <p>Around three years ago, I created
 974 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
 975 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
 976 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
 977 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
 978 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
 979 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
 980 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
 981 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
 982 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
 983 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
 984 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
 985 with.</p>
 986
 987 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
 988 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
 989 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
 990 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
 991 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
 992 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
 993 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 994 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
 995 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
 996 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
 997 Debian version of appstream.</p>
 998
 999 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
1000 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
1001 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
1002 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
1003 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
1004 how do add the required
1005 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
1006 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
1007 this content:</p>
1008
1009 <blockquote><pre>
1010 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
1011 &lt;component&gt;
1012   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
1013   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
1014   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
1015   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
1016   &lt;description&gt;
1017     &lt;p&gt;
1018       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
1019       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
1020       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
1021       launcher.
1022     &lt;/p&gt;
1023   &lt;/description&gt;
1024   &lt;provides&gt;
1025     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
1026   &lt;/provides&gt;
1027 &lt;/component&gt;
1028 </pre></blockquote>
1029
1030 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
1031 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
1032 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
1033 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
1034 0202.</p>
1035
1036 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
1037 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
1038 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
1039 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
1040 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
1041 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
1042 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
1043 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
1044
1045 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
1046 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
1047 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
1048 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
1049 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
1050
1051 <blockquote><pre>
1052 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
1053 </pre></blockquote>
1054
1055 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
1056 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
1057 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
1058 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
1059 question.</p>
1060
1061 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
1062 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
1063
1064 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
1065 try running this command on the command line:</p>
1066
1067 <blockquote><pre>
1068 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
1069 </pre></blockquote>
1070
1071 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
1072 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
1073 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
1074
1075       </div>
1076       <div class="tags">
1077
1078
1079         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>.
1080
1081
1082       </div>
1083     </div>
1084     <div class="padding"></div>
1085
1086     <div class="entry">
1087       <div class="title">
1088         <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>
1089       </div>
1090       <div class="date">
1091         30th November 2015
1092       </div>
1093       <div class="body">
1094         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
1095 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
1096 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
1097 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
1098 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
1099
1100 <blockquote>
1101
1102 <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>
1103
1104 <blockquote>
1105 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
1106
1107 The first step is to choose a
1108 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
1109 code.<br/>
1110
1111 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
1112 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
1113
1114 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
1115 work<br/>
1116
1117 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
1118 </blockquote>
1119
1120 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
1121 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
1122 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
1123 0x57</a></small></p>
1124
1125 <p>As the Debian Website
1126 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
1127 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
1128 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
1129 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
1130 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
1131 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
1132 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
1133 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
1134 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
1135 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
1136 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
1137 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
1138 Freedom">FaiF</a>
1139 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
1140 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
1141 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
1142 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
1143 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
1144 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
1145 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
1146 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
1147 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
1148 In March the SFC supported a
1149 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
1150 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
1151 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
1152 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
1153 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
1154 conferences
1155 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
1156 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
1157 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
1158 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
1159 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
1160 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
1161 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
1162 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
1163 Software.</p>
1164
1165 <p>If you support Free Software,
1166 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
1167 what the SFC do, agree with their
1168 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
1169 principles</a>, are happy about their
1170 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
1171 work on a project that is an SFC
1172 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
1173 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
1174 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
1175 Allan Webber</a>,
1176 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
1177 Smith</a>,
1178 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
1179 Bacon</a>, myself and
1180 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
1181 becoming a
1182 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
1183 next week your donation will be
1184 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
1185 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
1186 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
1187 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
1188 social media accounts.</p>
1189
1190 </blockquote>
1191
1192 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
1193 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
1194 supporter too?</p>
1195
1196       </div>
1197       <div class="tags">
1198
1199
1200         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>.
1201
1202
1203       </div>
1204     </div>
1205     <div class="padding"></div>
1206
1207     <div class="entry">
1208       <div class="title">
1209         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
1210       </div>
1211       <div class="date">
1212         17th November 2015
1213       </div>
1214       <div class="body">
1215         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
1216 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
1217 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
1218 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
1219 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
1220 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
1221 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
1222 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
1223 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
1224 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
1225
1226 <pre>
1227 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
1228       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
1229 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
1230 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
1231 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
1232 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
1233 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
1234 </pre>
1235
1236 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
1237 my old key.</p>
1238
1239 <p>If you signed my old key
1240 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
1241 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
1242 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
1243 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
1244
1245       </div>
1246       <div class="tags">
1247
1248
1249         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>.
1250
1251
1252       </div>
1253     </div>
1254     <div class="padding"></div>
1255
1256     <div class="entry">
1257       <div class="title">
1258         <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>
1259       </div>
1260       <div class="date">
1261         24th September 2015
1262       </div>
1263       <div class="body">
1264         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
1265 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
1266 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
1267 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
1268 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
1269 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
1270 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
1271
1272 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
1273
1274 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
1275 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
1276 by someone else.  I found
1277 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
1278 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
1279 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
1280 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
1281 from him.  Via
1282 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
1283 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
1284 discovered
1285 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
1286 available in Debian.</p>
1287
1288 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
1289 battery stats ever since. Now my
1290 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
1291 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
1292 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
1293 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
1294
1295 <pre>
1296 #!/bin/sh
1297 # Inspired by
1298 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
1299 # See also
1300 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
1301 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
1302
1303 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
1304     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
1305
1306 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
1307     (
1308         printf "timestamp,"
1309         for f in $files; do
1310             printf "%s," $f
1311         done
1312         echo
1313     ) > "$logfile"
1314 fi
1315
1316 log_battery() {
1317     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
1318     # when several log processes run in parallel.
1319     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
1320         for f in $files; do \
1321             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
1322         done)
1323     echo "$msg"
1324 }
1325
1326 cd /sys/class/power_supply
1327
1328 for bat in BAT*; do
1329     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
1330 done
1331 </pre>
1332
1333 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
1334 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
1335 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
1336 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
1337 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
1338 The code for the Debian package
1339 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
1340 available on github</a>.</p>
1341
1342 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
1343
1344 <pre>
1345 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
1346 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
1347 [...]
1348 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
1349 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
1350 </pre>
1351
1352 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
1353 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
1354 battery.</p>
1355
1356 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
1357 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
1358 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
1359 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
1360 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
1361 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
1362 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
1363 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
1364 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
1365 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
1366 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
1367 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
1368 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
1369 Linux too.</p>
1370
1371 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
1372 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
1373 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
1374 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
1375 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
1376 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
1377 load).</p>
1378
1379 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
1380 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
1381 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
1382 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
1383 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
1384 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
1385 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
1386 those.</p>
1387
1388 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
1389 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
1390 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
1391 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
1392 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
1393 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
1394 specific.</p>
1395
1396       </div>
1397       <div class="tags">
1398
1399
1400         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>.
1401
1402
1403       </div>
1404     </div>
1405     <div class="padding"></div>
1406
1407     <div class="entry">
1408       <div class="title">
1409         <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>
1410       </div>
1411       <div class="date">
1412          5th July 2015
1413       </div>
1414       <div class="body">
1415         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
1416 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
1417 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
1418 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
1419 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
1420 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
1421 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
1422 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
1423 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
1424 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
1425 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
1426
1427 <p>One tip I got was to use the
1428 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
1429 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
1430 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
1431 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
1432 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
1433 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
1434
1435 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
1436 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
1437 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
1438 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
1439 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
1440 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
1441 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
1442 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
1443 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
1444 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
1445 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
1446 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
1447 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
1448 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
1449 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
1450
1451 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
1452 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
1453 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
1454 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
1455
1456 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
1457 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
1458
1459 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
1460 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
1461 different
1462 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
1463 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
1464
1465       </div>
1466       <div class="tags">
1467
1468
1469         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>.
1470
1471
1472       </div>
1473     </div>
1474     <div class="padding"></div>
1475
1476     <div class="entry">
1477       <div class="title">
1478         <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>
1479       </div>
1480       <div class="date">
1481          3rd July 2015
1482       </div>
1483       <div class="body">
1484         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
1485 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
1486 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
1487 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
1488 flickering.</p>
1489
1490 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
1491 still as
1492 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
1493 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
1494 good help from
1495 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
1496 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
1497 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
1498 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
1499 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
1500 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
1501 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
1502 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
1503 deteriorated since X41.</p>
1504
1505 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
1506 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
1507 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
1508 have suggestions.</p>
1509
1510 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
1511 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
1512 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
1513
1514       </div>
1515       <div class="tags">
1516
1517
1518         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>.
1519
1520
1521       </div>
1522     </div>
1523     <div class="padding"></div>
1524
1525     <div class="entry">
1526       <div class="title">
1527         <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>
1528       </div>
1529       <div class="date">
1530         22nd November 2014
1531       </div>
1532       <div class="body">
1533         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1534 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
1535 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1536 courtesy of
1537 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1538 Schubert</a> and
1539 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1540 McVittie</a>.
1541
1542 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1543 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1544 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
1545 you upgrade:</p>
1546
1547 <p><blockquote><pre>
1548 Package: systemd-sysv
1549 Pin: release o=Debian
1550 Pin-Priority: -1
1551 </pre></blockquote><p>
1552
1553 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1554 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1555 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1556 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1557 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1558
1559 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1560 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1561 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1562 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1563 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1564 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1565
1566 <p><blockquote><pre>
1567 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1568 </pre></blockquote><p>
1569
1570 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1571
1572 <p><blockquote><pre>
1573 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1574 </pre></blockquote><p>
1575
1576 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1577 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1578
1579 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1580 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1581 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1582 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1583 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1584 Jessie is released.</p>
1585
1586 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1587 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1588 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1589 line.</p>
1590
1591       </div>
1592       <div class="tags">
1593
1594
1595         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>.
1596
1597
1598       </div>
1599     </div>
1600     <div class="padding"></div>
1601
1602     <div class="entry">
1603       <div class="title">
1604         <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>
1605       </div>
1606       <div class="date">
1607         10th November 2014
1608       </div>
1609       <div class="body">
1610         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1611 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1612 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1613
1614 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1615 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1616 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1617 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1618 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1619 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1620 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1621 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1622 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1623 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1624 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1625 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1626 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1627 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1628 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1629
1630 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1631 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1632 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1633 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1634 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1635 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1636 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1637 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1638 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1639 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1640 were fairly easy, and
1641 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1642 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1643 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1644 useful approach.</p>
1645
1646 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1647 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1648 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1649 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1650 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
1651 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
1652 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1653 this:</p>
1654
1655 <p><blockquote><pre>
1656 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1657   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1658 </pre></blockquote></p>
1659
1660 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
1661 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
1662
1663 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1664 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
1665 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1666 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1667 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
1668 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1669 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
1670 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
1671 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1672 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1673 system.</p>
1674
1675 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1676 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1677 SMTorP. :)</p>
1678
1679       </div>
1680       <div class="tags">
1681
1682
1683         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>.
1684
1685
1686       </div>
1687     </div>
1688     <div class="padding"></div>
1689
1690     <div class="entry">
1691       <div class="title">
1692         <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>
1693       </div>
1694       <div class="date">
1695         22nd October 2014
1696       </div>
1697       <div class="body">
1698         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1699 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1700 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1701 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1702 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
1703 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1704 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
1705 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1706 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
1707 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
1708 lists I recently took over:</p>
1709
1710 <p><blockquote><pre>
1711 % time listadmin xiph
1712 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1713 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1714
1715 real    0m1.709s
1716 user    0m0.232s
1717 sys     0m0.012s
1718 %
1719 </pre></blockquote></p>
1720
1721 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1722 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
1723 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1724 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1725 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
1726 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1727 program.</p>
1728
1729 <p>If you install
1730 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1731 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
1732 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
1733
1734 <p><blockquote><pre>
1735 username username@example.org
1736 spamlevel 23
1737 default discard
1738 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1739
1740 password secret
1741 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1742 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1743
1744 password hidden
1745 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1746 </pre></blockquote></p>
1747
1748 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
1749 learn the details.</p>
1750
1751 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1752 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1753 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1754 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
1755
1756 <p><blockquote><pre>
1757 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
1758 </pre></blockquote></p>
1759
1760 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1761 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1762 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
1763 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
1764 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1765 email.</p>
1766
1767 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
1768 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1769 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1770 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
1771 software.</p>
1772
1773 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1774 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1775 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1776
1777 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1778 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
1779 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
1780 sure why.</p>
1781
1782       </div>
1783       <div class="tags">
1784
1785
1786         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>.
1787
1788
1789       </div>
1790     </div>
1791     <div class="padding"></div>
1792
1793     <div class="entry">
1794       <div class="title">
1795         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
1796       </div>
1797       <div class="date">
1798         17th October 2014
1799       </div>
1800       <div class="body">
1801         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1802 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1803 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1804 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1805 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1806 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1807 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1808
1809 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1810 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1811 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1812 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1813 of this story.)</p>
1814
1815 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1816 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1817 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1818 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1819 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1820 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1821 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1822 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1823 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1824 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1825
1826 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1827 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1828 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1829 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1830
1831 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1832 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1833
1834 <p><blockquote><pre>
1835 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1836 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1837 </pre></blockquote></p>
1838
1839 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1840 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1841 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1842 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1843 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1844 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1845 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1846 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1847
1848 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1849 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1850
1851 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1852 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1853 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1854 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1855 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1856
1857 <p><blockquote><pre>
1858 Task: isenkram-packages
1859 Section: hardware
1860 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1861  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1862  proposed.
1863 Test-new-install: show show
1864 Relevance: 8
1865 Packages: for-current-hardware
1866
1867 Task: isenkram-firmware
1868 Section: hardware
1869 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1870  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1871  packages are proposed.
1872 Test-new-install: mark show
1873 Relevance: 8
1874 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1875 </pre></blockquote></p>
1876
1877 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1878 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1879 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1880 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1881 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1882
1883 <p><blockquote><pre>
1884 #!/bin/sh
1885 #
1886 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1887 export PATH
1888 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1889 </pre></blockquote></p>
1890
1891 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1892 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1893
1894 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1895 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1896 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1897 install.</p>
1898
1899 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1900 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1901 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</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/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</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/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="date">
1919          4th October 2014
1920       </div>
1921       <div class="body">
1922         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1923 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1924 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1925 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1926
1927 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1928
1929 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1930 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1931 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1932
1933       </div>
1934       <div class="tags">
1935
1936
1937         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>.
1938
1939
1940       </div>
1941     </div>
1942     <div class="padding"></div>
1943
1944     <div class="entry">
1945       <div class="title">
1946         <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>
1947       </div>
1948       <div class="date">
1949          4th October 2014
1950       </div>
1951       <div class="body">
1952         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1953 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1954 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1955 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1956 Dibb.</p>
1957
1958 <p>I just wrapped up
1959 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1960 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1961 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1962 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1963 0.17.</p>
1964
1965 <ul>
1966
1967  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1968  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1969    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1970  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1971  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1972  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1973  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1974  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1975  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1976    the palette size is the same.</li>
1977  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1978  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1979  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1980  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1981    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1982
1983 </ul>
1984
1985 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1986 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1987 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1988
1989       </div>
1990       <div class="tags">
1991
1992
1993         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>.
1994
1995
1996       </div>
1997     </div>
1998     <div class="padding"></div>
1999
2000     <div class="entry">
2001       <div class="title">
2002         <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>
2003       </div>
2004       <div class="date">
2005         26th September 2014
2006       </div>
2007       <div class="body">
2008         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2009 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
2010 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
2011 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
2012 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
2013 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
2014 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
2015 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
2016 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
2017 future.  The
2018 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
2019 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
2020 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
2021 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
2022 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
2023
2024 <p>First, download the test ISO via
2025 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
2026 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
2027 or rsync (use
2028 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
2029 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
2030 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
2031 install with some tweaking.</p>
2032
2033 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
2034 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
2035
2036 <p><blockquote><pre>
2037 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
2038 </pre></blockquote></p>
2039
2040 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
2041 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
2042 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
2043 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
2044
2045 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
2046 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
2047 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
2048 your need.</p>
2049
2050 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
2051 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
2052 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
2053 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
2054 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
2055 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
2056 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
2057 days.</p>
2058
2059 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
2060 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
2061 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
2062 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
2063 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
2064 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
2065 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
2066 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
2067 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
2068
2069 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
2070 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
2071 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
2072
2073       </div>
2074       <div class="tags">
2075
2076
2077         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>.
2078
2079
2080       </div>
2081     </div>
2082     <div class="padding"></div>
2083
2084     <div class="entry">
2085       <div class="title">
2086         <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>
2087       </div>
2088       <div class="date">
2089         25th September 2014
2090       </div>
2091       <div class="body">
2092         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
2093 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
2094 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
2095 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
2096 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
2097 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
2098 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
2099 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
2100 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
2101 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
2102 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
2103 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
2104 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
2105
2106 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
2107 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
2108 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
2109 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
2110 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
2111 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
2112 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
2113 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
2114 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
2115 list</a>. :)</p>
2116
2117       </div>
2118       <div class="tags">
2119
2120
2121         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>.
2122
2123
2124       </div>
2125     </div>
2126     <div class="padding"></div>
2127
2128     <div class="entry">
2129       <div class="title">
2130         <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>
2131       </div>
2132       <div class="date">
2133         16th September 2014
2134       </div>
2135       <div class="body">
2136         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
2137 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
2138 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
2139 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
2140 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
2141 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
2142 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
2143 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
2144 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
2145 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
2146 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
2147 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
2148 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
2149 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
2150
2151 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
2152 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
2153 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
2154 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
2155 depend on the small and clever package
2156 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
2157 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
2158 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
2159 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
2160 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
2161 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
2162 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
2163 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
2164 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
2165 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
2166 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
2167
2168 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
2169 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
2170 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
2171 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
2172 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
2173 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
2174 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
2175 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
2176 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
2177 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
2178 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
2179 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
2180 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
2181 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
2182 dialog.</p>
2183
2184 <p><table>
2185
2186 <tr>
2187 <th>Machine/setup</th>
2188 <th>Original tasksel</th>
2189 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
2190 <th>Reduction</th>
2191 </tr>
2192
2193 <tr>
2194 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
2195 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
2196 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
2197 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
2198 </tr>
2199
2200 <tr>
2201 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
2202 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
2203 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
2204 <td>23 min 40%</td>
2205 </tr>
2206
2207 <tr>
2208 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
2209 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
2210 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
2211 <td>11 min 50%</td>
2212 </tr>
2213
2214 <tr>
2215 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
2216 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
2217 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
2218 <td>2 min 33%</td>
2219 </tr>
2220
2221 <tr>
2222 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
2223 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
2224 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
2225 <td>4 min 21%</td>
2226 </tr>
2227
2228 </table></p>
2229
2230 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
2231 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
2232 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
2233 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
2234 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
2235 installed.</p>
2236
2237 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
2238 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
2239 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
2240 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
2241 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
2242 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
2243 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
2244 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
2245 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
2246 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
2247 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
2248 for the entire installation.</p>
2249
2250 <p>I've implemented this in the
2251 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
2252 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
2253 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
2254 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
2255 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
2256
2257 <p><blockquote><pre>
2258 #!/bin/sh
2259 set -e
2260 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2261 info() {
2262     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
2263 }
2264 error() {
2265     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
2266 }
2267 override_install() {
2268     apt-install eatmydata || true
2269     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
2270         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2271             file=/usr/bin/$bin
2272             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
2273             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
2274                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
2275                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
2276                     > /target$file.edu
2277                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
2278                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2279                     --rename --quiet --add $file
2280                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
2281             else
2282                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
2283             fi
2284         done
2285     else
2286         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
2287     fi
2288 }
2289
2290 override_install
2291 </pre></blockquote></p>
2292
2293 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
2294 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
2295
2296 <p><blockquote><pre>
2297 #! /bin/sh -e
2298 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2299 error() {
2300     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
2301 }
2302 remove_install_override() {
2303     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2304         file=/usr/bin/$bin
2305         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
2306             rm /target$file
2307             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2308                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
2309             rm /target$file.edu
2310         else
2311             error "Missing divert for $file."
2312         fi
2313     done
2314     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
2315 }
2316
2317 remove_install_override
2318 </pre></blockquote></p>
2319
2320 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
2321 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
2322 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
2323
2324 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
2325 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
2326 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
2327 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
2328 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
2329 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
2330 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
2331 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
2332 everyone.</p>
2333
2334 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
2335 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
2336 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
2337 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
2338
2339 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
2340 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
2341 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
2342 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
2343 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
2344
2345 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
2346 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
2347 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
2348 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
2349 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
2350
2351       </div>
2352       <div class="tags">
2353
2354
2355         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>.
2356
2357
2358       </div>
2359     </div>
2360     <div class="padding"></div>
2361
2362     <div class="entry">
2363       <div class="title">
2364         <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>
2365       </div>
2366       <div class="date">
2367         10th September 2014
2368       </div>
2369       <div class="body">
2370         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
2371 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
2372 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
2373 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
2374 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
2375 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
2376 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
2377 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
2378 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
2379 those problems are gone now.</p>
2380
2381 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
2382 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
2383 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
2384 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
2385 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
2386
2387 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
2388 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
2389 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
2390
2391 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
2392 line:</p>
2393
2394 <p><blockquote><pre>
2395 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
2396 </pre></blockquote></p>
2397
2398 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
2399 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
2400 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
2401 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
2402
2403 <p><blockquote><pre>
2404 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
2405 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
2406 %
2407 </pre></blockquote></p>
2408
2409 <p>Now if only
2410 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
2411 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
2412 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
2413 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
2414 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
2415 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
2416 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
2417 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
2418 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
2419
2420       </div>
2421       <div class="tags">
2422
2423
2424         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>.
2425
2426
2427       </div>
2428     </div>
2429     <div class="padding"></div>
2430
2431     <div class="entry">
2432       <div class="title">
2433         <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>
2434       </div>
2435       <div class="date">
2436         17th June 2014
2437       </div>
2438       <div class="body">
2439         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2440 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
2441 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
2442 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
2443 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
2444
2445 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
2446 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
2447 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
2448 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
2449 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
2450 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
2451 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
2452 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
2453 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
2454 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
2455 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
2456 goals.</p>
2457
2458 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
2459 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
2460 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
2461 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
2462 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
2463 chapters together into one large web page (aka
2464 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
2465 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
2466 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
2467 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
2468 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
2469 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
2470 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
2471 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
2472 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
2473 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
2474 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
2475 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
2476 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
2477 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
2478 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
2479 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
2480 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
2481 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
2482
2483 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
2484 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
2485 track the English original.  For this we use the
2486 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
2487 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
2488 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
2489 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
2490 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
2491 files), which the translations update with the native language
2492 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
2493 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
2494 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
2495 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
2496 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
2497 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
2498 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
2499 of the documentation.</p>
2500
2501 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
2502 recommend using
2503 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
2504 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
2505 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
2506 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
2507 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
2508 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
2509 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
2510 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
2511
2512 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
2513 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
2514 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
2515 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
2516 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2517 translated images by storing translated versions in
2518 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
2519 package maintainers know more.</p>
2520
2521 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2522 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2523 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
2524 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2525 PDF version</a> or the
2526 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2527 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2528 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
2529
2530 <p>To learn more, check out
2531 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2532 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
2533 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2534 manual on the wiki</a> and
2535 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2536 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
2537
2538       </div>
2539       <div class="tags">
2540
2541
2542         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>.
2543
2544
2545       </div>
2546     </div>
2547     <div class="padding"></div>
2548
2549     <div class="entry">
2550       <div class="title">
2551         <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>
2552       </div>
2553       <div class="date">
2554         23rd April 2014
2555       </div>
2556       <div class="body">
2557         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2558 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2559 So I implemented one, using
2560 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2561 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2562 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2563 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2564 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2565 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2566
2567 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2568 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2569 packages to install.  The first part is in
2570 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2571 this:</p>
2572
2573 <p><blockquote><pre>
2574 Task: isenkram
2575 Section: hardware
2576 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2577  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2578  proposed.
2579 Test-new-install: mark show
2580 Relevance: 8
2581 Packages: for-current-hardware
2582 </pre></blockquote></p>
2583
2584 <p>The second part is in
2585 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2586 this:</p>
2587
2588 <p><blockquote><pre>
2589 #!/bin/sh
2590 #
2591 (
2592     isenkram-lookup
2593     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2594 ) | sort -u
2595 </pre></blockquote></p>
2596
2597 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2598 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2599 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2600 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2601 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2602 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2603
2604 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2605 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2606 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2607 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2608 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2609 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2610 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2611 the python-apt code (bug
2612 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2613 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2614 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2615 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2616 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2617 unstable today.</p>
2618
2619 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2620 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2621 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2622 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2623 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2624 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2625 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2626 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2627 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2628
2629 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2630 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2631 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2632 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2633 package.  See also
2634 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2635 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2636 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2637 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2638
2639       </div>
2640       <div class="tags">
2641
2642
2643         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>.
2644
2645
2646       </div>
2647     </div>
2648     <div class="padding"></div>
2649
2650     <div class="entry">
2651       <div class="title">
2652         <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>
2653       </div>
2654       <div class="date">
2655         15th April 2014
2656       </div>
2657       <div class="body">
2658         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2659 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2660 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2661 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2662 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2663 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2664
2665 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2666 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2667 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2668 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2669 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2670 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2671 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2672
2673 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2674 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2675 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2676 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2677 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2678 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2679 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2680 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2681 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2682 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2683 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2684 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2685
2686 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2687 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2688 become root:</p>
2689
2690 <p><pre>
2691 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2692   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2693   u-boot-tools
2694 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2695   freedom-maker
2696 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2697 </pre></p>
2698
2699 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2700 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2701 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2702 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2703 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2704 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2705 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2706 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2707
2708 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2709 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2710 the preseed values:</p>
2711
2712 <p><pre>
2713 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2714 </pre></p>
2715
2716 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2717 it still work.</p>
2718
2719 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2720 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2721 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2722 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2723 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2724 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2725 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2726
2727 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2728 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2729 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2730 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2731 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2732 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2733
2734       </div>
2735       <div class="tags">
2736
2737
2738         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>.
2739
2740
2741       </div>
2742     </div>
2743     <div class="padding"></div>
2744
2745     <div class="entry">
2746       <div class="title">
2747         <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>
2748       </div>
2749       <div class="date">
2750          9th April 2014
2751       </div>
2752       <div class="body">
2753         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2754 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2755 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2756 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2757 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2758 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2759 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2760 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2761 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2762 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2763 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2764 have looked at a system called
2765 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2766 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2767
2768 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2769 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2770 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2771 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2772 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2773 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2774 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2775 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2776 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2777 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2778 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2779 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2780 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2781
2782 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2783 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2784 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2785 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2786 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2787 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2788 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2789 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2790 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2791 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2792 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2793 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2794 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2795 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2796 account.</p>
2797
2798 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2799 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2800 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2801 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2802 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2803 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2804 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2805
2806 <p><blockquote><pre>
2807 [s3c]
2808 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2809 backend-login: API-login
2810 backend-password: API-password
2811 fs-passphrase: local-password
2812 </pre></blockquote></p>
2813
2814 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2815 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2816 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2817 details and password to create it:</p>
2818
2819 <p><blockquote><pre>
2820 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2821 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2822   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2823 Enter backend login:
2824 Enter backend password:
2825 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2826 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2827 Enter encryption password:
2828 Confirm encryption password:
2829 Generating random encryption key...
2830 Creating metadata tables...
2831 Dumping metadata...
2832 ..objects..
2833 ..blocks..
2834 ..inodes..
2835 ..inode_blocks..
2836 ..symlink_targets..
2837 ..names..
2838 ..contents..
2839 ..ext_attributes..
2840 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2841 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2842 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2843
2844 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2845
2846 <p><blockquote><pre>
2847 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2848   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2849 Using 4 upload threads.
2850 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2851 Reading metadata...
2852 ..objects..
2853 ..blocks..
2854 ..inodes..
2855 ..inode_blocks..
2856 ..symlink_targets..
2857 ..names..
2858 ..contents..
2859 ..ext_attributes..
2860 Mounting filesystem...
2861 # df -h /s3ql
2862 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2863 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2864 #
2865 </pre></blockquote></p>
2866
2867 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2868 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2869 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2870 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2871 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2872 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2873
2874 <p><blockquote><pre>
2875 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2876 #
2877 </pre></blockquote></p>
2878
2879 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2880 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2881 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2882 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2883 file system:</p>
2884
2885 <p><blockquote><pre>
2886 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2887 Using cached metadata.
2888 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2889 Checking DB integrity...
2890 Creating temporary extra indices...
2891 Checking lost+found...
2892 Checking cached objects...
2893 Checking names (refcounts)...
2894 Checking contents (names)...
2895 Checking contents (inodes)...
2896 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2897 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2898 Checking objects (backend)...
2899 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2900 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2901 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2902 Checking objects (sizes)...
2903 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2904 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2905 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2906 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2907 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2908 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2909 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2910 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2911 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2912 Checking directory reachability...
2913 Checking unix conventions...
2914 Checking referential integrity...
2915 Dropping temporary indices...
2916 Backing up old metadata...
2917 Dumping metadata...
2918 ..objects..
2919 ..blocks..
2920 ..inodes..
2921 ..inode_blocks..
2922 ..symlink_targets..
2923 ..names..
2924 ..contents..
2925 ..ext_attributes..
2926 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2927 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2928 #
2929 </pre></blockquote></p>
2930
2931 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2932 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2933 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2934 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2935 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2936 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2937 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2938 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2939 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2940 working set.</p>
2941
2942 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2943 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2944 busy:</p>
2945
2946 <p><blockquote><pre>
2947 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2948   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2949 Using 8 upload threads.
2950 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2951 #
2952 </pre></blockquote></p>
2953
2954 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2955 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2956 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2957 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2958 s3qlctrl:
2959
2960 <p><blockquote><pre>
2961 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2962 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2963 #
2964 </pre></blockquote></p>
2965
2966 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2967 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2968 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2969 a report:</p>
2970
2971 <p><blockquote><pre>
2972 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2973 Directory entries:    9141
2974 Inodes:               9143
2975 Data blocks:          8851
2976 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2977 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2978 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2979 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2980 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2981 #
2982 </pre></blockquote></p>
2983
2984 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2985 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2986 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2987 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2988 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2989 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2990 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2991 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2992 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2993 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2994 best.</p>
2995
2996 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2997 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2998 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2999 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
3000 poster is titled
3001 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
3002 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
3003 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
3004 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
3005 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
3006
3007 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
3008 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
3009 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
3010 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
3011 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
3012 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
3013 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
3014 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
3015
3016 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
3017 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
3018 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
3019 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
3020 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
3021 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
3022 only read from it.</p>
3023
3024 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3025 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3026 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3027
3028       </div>
3029       <div class="tags">
3030
3031
3032         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>.
3033
3034
3035       </div>
3036     </div>
3037     <div class="padding"></div>
3038
3039     <div class="entry">
3040       <div class="title">
3041         <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>
3042       </div>
3043       <div class="date">
3044         14th March 2014
3045       </div>
3046       <div class="body">
3047         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3048 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
3049 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
3050 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
3051 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
3052 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
3053 release (0.2).</p>
3054
3055 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
3056 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
3057 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
3058 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
3059 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
3060 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
3061 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
3062 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
3063 and build using
3064 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
3065 with a user with sudo access to become root:
3066
3067 <pre>
3068 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3069   freedom-maker
3070 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3071   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3072   u-boot-tools
3073 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3074 </pre>
3075
3076 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3077 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
3078 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
3079 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
3080 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
3081 kpartx call.</p>
3082
3083 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3084 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3085 the preseed values:</p>
3086
3087 <pre>
3088 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3089 </pre>
3090
3091 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
3092 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
3093 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
3094 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
3095 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
3096 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
3097
3098 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3099 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3100 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3101 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3102 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3103 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3104
3105       </div>
3106       <div class="tags">
3107
3108
3109         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>.
3110
3111
3112       </div>
3113     </div>
3114     <div class="padding"></div>
3115
3116     <div class="entry">
3117       <div class="title">
3118         <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>
3119       </div>
3120       <div class="date">
3121         22nd February 2014
3122       </div>
3123       <div class="body">
3124         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
3125 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
3126 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
3127 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
3128 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
3129 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
3130 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
3131 proper home since then.</p>
3132
3133 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
3134 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
3135 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
3136 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
3137 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
3138
3139 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
3140 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
3141 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
3142 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
3143 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
3144 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
3145 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
3146 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
3147 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
3148
3149       </div>
3150       <div class="tags">
3151
3152
3153         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>.
3154
3155
3156       </div>
3157     </div>
3158     <div class="padding"></div>
3159
3160     <div class="entry">
3161       <div class="title">
3162         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
3163       </div>
3164       <div class="date">
3165          3rd February 2014
3166       </div>
3167       <div class="body">
3168         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
3169 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
3170 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
3171 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
3172 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
3173 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
3174 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
3175 <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>,
3176 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
3177
3178 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
3179 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
3180 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
3181 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
3182 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
3183 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
3184
3185 <p><blockquote><pre>
3186 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
3187 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
3188 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
3189 dhclient /dev/eth0
3190 </pre></blockquote></p>
3191
3192 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
3193 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
3194 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
3195
3196 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
3197 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
3198 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
3199 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
3200 side.</p>
3201
3202 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
3203 stuff:</p>
3204
3205 <p><blockquote><pre>
3206 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3207 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
3208 EOF
3209 apt-get update
3210 apt-get dist-upgrade
3211 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
3212     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
3213 update-alternatives --config runsystem
3214 </pre></blockquote></p>
3215
3216 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
3217 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
3218 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
3219 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
3220 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
3221 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
3222 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
3223 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
3224 ssh instead.
3225
3226 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
3227 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
3228 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
3229 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
3230 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
3231 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
3232
3233 <p><blockquote><pre>
3234 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3235 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
3236 EOF
3237 </pre></blockquote></p>
3238
3239 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
3240 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
3241 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
3242 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
3243
3244 <p><blockquote><pre>
3245 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
3246 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
3247 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
3248 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
3249 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
3250 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
3251 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
3252 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
3253 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
3254 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
3255 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
3256 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
3257 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
3258 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
3259 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
3260 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
3261 #
3262 </pre></blockquote></p>
3263
3264 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
3265 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
3266 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
3267 command line stuff.<p>
3268
3269       </div>
3270       <div class="tags">
3271
3272
3273         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>.
3274
3275
3276       </div>
3277     </div>
3278     <div class="padding"></div>
3279
3280     <div class="entry">
3281       <div class="title">
3282         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
3283       </div>
3284       <div class="date">
3285         14th January 2014
3286       </div>
3287       <div class="body">
3288         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
3289 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
3290 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
3291 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
3292 the source.  The company behind it provide
3293 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
3294 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
3295 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
3296 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
3297 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
3298 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
3299 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
3300 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
3301 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
3302 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
3303 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
3304 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
3305 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
3306 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
3307 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
3308 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
3309 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
3310 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
3311 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
3312
3313 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
3314
3315 <ul>
3316
3317   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
3318   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
3319   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
3320
3321 </ul>
3322
3323 <p>You can
3324 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3325 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3326 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3327 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3328 include a test suite check.</p>
3329
3330       </div>
3331       <div class="tags">
3332
3333
3334         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>.
3335
3336
3337       </div>
3338     </div>
3339     <div class="padding"></div>
3340
3341     <div class="entry">
3342       <div class="title">
3343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
3344       </div>
3345       <div class="date">
3346         24th November 2013
3347       </div>
3348       <div class="body">
3349         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
3350 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
3351 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
3352 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
3353 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
3354 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
3355 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
3356 is working on.  I checked the
3357 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
3358 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
3359 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
3360 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
3361 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
3362 These are the release notes:</p>
3363
3364 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
3365
3366 <ul>
3367
3368   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
3369    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
3370    up.</li>
3371
3372   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
3373
3374   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
3375    Matthias Klose.</li>
3376
3377   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
3378    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
3379
3380   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
3381    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
3382    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
3383
3384 </ul>
3385
3386 <p>You can
3387 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3388 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3389 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3390 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3391 include a testsuite check.</p>
3392
3393       </div>
3394       <div class="tags">
3395
3396
3397         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>.
3398
3399
3400       </div>
3401     </div>
3402     <div class="padding"></div>
3403
3404     <div class="entry">
3405       <div class="title">
3406         <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>
3407       </div>
3408       <div class="date">
3409          2nd November 2013
3410       </div>
3411       <div class="body">
3412         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
3413 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
3414 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
3415 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
3416 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
3417
3418 <p><pre>
3419 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
3420 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
3421 # Provides:          rsyslog
3422 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
3423 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
3424 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
3425 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
3426 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
3427 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
3428 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
3429 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
3430 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
3431 ### END INIT INFO
3432 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
3433 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
3434 </pre></p>
3435
3436 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
3437 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
3438 info/comments.</p>
3439
3440 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
3441 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
3442
3443 <p><pre>
3444 #!/bin/sh
3445
3446 # Define LSB log_* functions.
3447 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
3448 # and status_of_proc is working.
3449 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
3450
3451 #
3452 # Function that starts the daemon/service
3453
3454 #
3455 do_start()
3456 {
3457         # Return
3458         #   0 if daemon has been started
3459         #   1 if daemon was already running
3460         #   2 if daemon could not be started
3461         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
3462                 || return 1
3463         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
3464                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
3465                 || return 2
3466         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
3467         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
3468         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
3469 }
3470
3471 #
3472 # Function that stops the daemon/service
3473 #
3474 do_stop()
3475 {
3476         # Return
3477         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
3478         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
3479         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
3480         #   other if a failure occurred
3481         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3482         RETVAL="$?"
3483         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
3484         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
3485         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
3486         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
3487         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
3488         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
3489         # sleep for some time.
3490         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
3491         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
3492         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
3493         rm -f $PIDFILE
3494         return "$RETVAL"
3495 }
3496
3497 #
3498 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
3499 #
3500 do_reload() {
3501         #
3502         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3503         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3504         # then implement that here.
3505         #
3506         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3507         return 0
3508 }
3509
3510 SCRIPTNAME=$1
3511 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
3512 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3513 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3514     script="$1"
3515     shift
3516     . $script
3517 else
3518     exit 0
3519 fi
3520
3521 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3522 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3523
3524 # Exit if the package is not installed
3525 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
3526
3527 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3528 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3529
3530 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3531 . /lib/init/vars.sh
3532
3533 case "$1" in
3534   start)
3535         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3536         do_start
3537         case "$?" in
3538                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3539                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3540         esac
3541         ;;
3542   stop)
3543         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3544         do_stop
3545         case "$?" in
3546                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3547                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3548         esac
3549         ;;
3550   status)
3551         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
3552         ;;
3553   #reload|force-reload)
3554         #
3555         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3556         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3557         #
3558         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3559         #do_reload
3560         #log_end_msg $?
3561         #;;
3562   restart|force-reload)
3563         #
3564         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3565         # 'force-reload' alias
3566         #
3567         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3568         do_stop
3569         case "$?" in
3570           0|1)
3571                 do_start
3572                 case "$?" in
3573                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
3574                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
3575                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
3576                 esac
3577                 ;;
3578           *)
3579                 # Failed to stop
3580                 log_end_msg 1
3581                 ;;
3582         esac
3583         ;;
3584   *)
3585         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
3586         exit 3
3587         ;;
3588 esac
3589
3590 :
3591 </pre></p>
3592
3593 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3594 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3595 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
3596 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
3597
3598 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3599 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3600 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3601 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
3602 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
3603
3604       </div>
3605       <div class="tags">
3606
3607
3608         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>.
3609
3610
3611       </div>
3612     </div>
3613     <div class="padding"></div>
3614
3615     <div class="entry">
3616       <div class="title">
3617         <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>
3618       </div>
3619       <div class="date">
3620          1st November 2013
3621       </div>
3622       <div class="body">
3623         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
3624 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3625 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3626 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3627 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3628 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
3629 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3630 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3631 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
3632 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3633 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3634 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
3635
3636 <p>The source is now available from
3637 <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>
3638
3639       </div>
3640       <div class="tags">
3641
3642
3643         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>.
3644
3645
3646       </div>
3647     </div>
3648     <div class="padding"></div>
3649
3650     <div class="entry">
3651       <div class="title">
3652         <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>
3653       </div>
3654       <div class="date">
3655         27th October 2013
3656       </div>
3657       <div class="body">
3658         <p>The
3659 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
3660 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
3661 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3662 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3663 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3664 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
3665 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3666 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3667 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3668 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3669 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3670 Raspberry Pi.</p>
3671
3672 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3673 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3674 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3675 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3676 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3677 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3678 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
3679 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3680 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3681 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
3682 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
3683 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
3684 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3685 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3686 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
3687 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3688 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
3689 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3690 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3691 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
3692 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3693 available from
3694 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3695 upstream project page</a>.</p>
3696
3697 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3698 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3699 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3700 list:</p>
3701
3702 <p><pre>
3703 #!/bin/sh
3704 set -e # Exit on first error
3705 rootdir="$1"
3706 cd "$rootdir"
3707 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
3708 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3709 EOF
3710 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
3711 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3712 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3713     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3714 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3715 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3716 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3717 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3718 </pre></p>
3719
3720 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3721 to build the image:</p>
3722
3723 <pre>
3724 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3725     --variant minbase \
3726     --arch armel \
3727     --distribution jessie \
3728     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3729     --image test.img \
3730     --size 600M \
3731     --bootsize 64M \
3732     --boottype vfat \
3733     --log-level debug \
3734     --verbose \
3735     --no-kernel \
3736     --no-extlinux \
3737     --root-password raspberry \
3738     --hostname raspberrypi \
3739     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3740     --customize `pwd`/customize \
3741     --package netbase \
3742     --package git-core \
3743     --package binutils \
3744     --package ca-certificates \
3745     --package wget \
3746     --package kmod
3747 </pre></p>
3748
3749 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3750 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3751 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3752 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
3753 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3754 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3755 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
3756
3757 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3758 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
3759 build dependency list.</p>
3760
3761 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3762 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3763 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
3764 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
3765
3766       </div>
3767       <div class="tags">
3768
3769
3770         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>.
3771
3772
3773       </div>
3774     </div>
3775     <div class="padding"></div>
3776
3777     <div class="entry">
3778       <div class="title">
3779         <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>
3780       </div>
3781       <div class="date">
3782         15th October 2013
3783       </div>
3784       <div class="body">
3785         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3786 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3787 these. :)</p>
3788
3789 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
3790 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
3791 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3792 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
3793 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
3794 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
3795 hope you will to. :)</p>
3796
3797 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3798 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3799 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
3800 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
3801 donated.  Are you next?</p>
3802
3803 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3804 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3805 statement under the heading
3806 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3807 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3808 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3809 too.</p>
3810
3811       </div>
3812       <div class="tags">
3813
3814
3815         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>.
3816
3817
3818       </div>
3819     </div>
3820     <div class="padding"></div>
3821
3822     <div class="entry">
3823       <div class="title">
3824         <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>
3825       </div>
3826       <div class="date">
3827         27th September 2013
3828       </div>
3829       <div class="body">
3830         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3831 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3832 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3833 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3834
3835 <ul>
3836
3837 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3838 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3839
3840 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3841 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3842
3843 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3844 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3845 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3846 (Youtube)</li>
3847
3848 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3849 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3850
3851 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3852 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3853
3854 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3855 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3856 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3857
3858 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3859 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
3860 (Youtube)</li>
3861
3862 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3863 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
3864
3865 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3866 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
3867
3868 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3869 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3870 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
3871
3872 </ul>
3873
3874 <p>A larger list is available from
3875 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3876 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
3877
3878 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3879 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3880 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3881 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3882 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3883 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3884 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
3885 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3886 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
3887 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3888 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3889
3890       </div>
3891       <div class="tags">
3892
3893
3894         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>.
3895
3896
3897       </div>
3898     </div>
3899     <div class="padding"></div>
3900
3901     <div class="entry">
3902       <div class="title">
3903         <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>
3904       </div>
3905       <div class="date">
3906         10th September 2013
3907       </div>
3908       <div class="body">
3909         <p>I was introduced to the
3910 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
3911 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3912 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3913 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
3914 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3915 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
3916 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3917 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
3918
3919 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3920 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3921 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3922 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3923 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
3924
3925 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3926 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3927 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3928 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3929 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
3930 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
3931 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
3932 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3933 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
3934 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
3935 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3936 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3937 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3938 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3939 missing in Debian).</p>
3940
3941 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3942 scripts
3943 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
3944 and a administrative web interface
3945 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
3946 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3947 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
3948 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3949 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
3950 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3951 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
3952 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3953 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
3954 this is really working yet, see
3955 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3956 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
3957 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3958 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3959 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3960 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3961 with lots of half baked features.</p>
3962
3963 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3964 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3965 at.</p>
3966
3967 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
3968
3969 <ol>
3970
3971 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
3972 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
3973 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3974 to the Debian installer:<p>
3975 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
3976
3977 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3978 install on.</li>
3979
3980 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3981 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3982
3983 </ol>
3984
3985 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3986
3987 <ol>
3988
3989 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3990 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3991 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3992 <pre>
3993 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3994 </pre></li>
3995 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3996 <pre>
3997 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3998    apt-key add -
3999 apt-get update
4000 apt-get install freedombox-setup
4001 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
4002 </pre></li>
4003 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
4004
4005 </ol>
4006
4007 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
4008 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
4009 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
4010 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
4011 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
4012
4013 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
4014 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
4015 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
4016 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
4017
4018 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
4019 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
4020 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
4021 irc.debian.org and the
4022 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
4023 mailing list</a>.</p>
4024
4025 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
4026 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
4027 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
4028 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
4029 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
4030 default password is 'secret'.</p>
4031
4032       </div>
4033       <div class="tags">
4034
4035
4036         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>.
4037
4038
4039       </div>
4040     </div>
4041     <div class="padding"></div>
4042
4043     <div class="entry">
4044       <div class="title">
4045         <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>
4046       </div>
4047       <div class="date">
4048         18th August 2013
4049       </div>
4050       <div class="body">
4051         <p>Earlier, I reported about
4052 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
4053 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
4054 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
4055 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
4056 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
4057 currently on the disk.</p>
4058
4059 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
4060 <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>
4061 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
4062 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
4063 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
4064 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
4065 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
4066 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
4067 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
4068 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
4069 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
4070 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
4071 the broken disks.</p>
4072
4073       </div>
4074       <div class="tags">
4075
4076
4077         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>.
4078
4079
4080       </div>
4081     </div>
4082     <div class="padding"></div>
4083
4084     <div class="entry">
4085       <div class="title">
4086         <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>
4087       </div>
4088       <div class="date">
4089         17th July 2013
4090       </div>
4091       <div class="body">
4092         <p>Today I switched to
4093 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
4094 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
4095 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
4096 <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
4097 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
4098 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
4099 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
4100 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
4101 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
4102 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
4103 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
4104 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
4105 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
4106 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
4107 station from now on.</p>
4108
4109 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
4110 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
4111 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
4112 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
4113 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
4114 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
4115 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
4116 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
4117 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
4118 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
4119 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
4120 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
4121
4122 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
4123 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
4124 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
4125 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
4126 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
4127 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
4128 parameters are tuned:</p>
4129
4130 <ul>
4131
4132 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
4133     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
4134
4135 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
4136     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
4137     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
4138
4139 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
4140     systems.</li>
4141
4142 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
4143     /etc/fstab.</li>
4144
4145 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
4146
4147 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
4148     cron.daily).</li>
4149
4150 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
4151     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
4152
4153 </ul>
4154
4155 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
4156 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
4157 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
4158 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
4159 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
4160 from getting the data on the disk (see
4161 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
4162 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
4163 right thing to do.</p>
4164
4165 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
4166 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
4167 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
4168
4169 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
4170 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
4171 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
4172 instead of during my work.</p>
4173
4174 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
4175 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
4176
4177 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
4178 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
4179 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
4180
4181 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
4182 there.</p>
4183
4184 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
4185 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
4186 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
4187 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
4188 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
4189 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
4190 back.</p>
4191
4192       </div>
4193       <div class="tags">
4194
4195
4196         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>.
4197
4198
4199       </div>
4200     </div>
4201     <div class="padding"></div>
4202
4203     <div class="entry">
4204       <div class="title">
4205         <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>
4206       </div>
4207       <div class="date">
4208         10th July 2013
4209       </div>
4210       <div class="body">
4211         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
4212 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
4213 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
4214 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
4215 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
4216 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
4217 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
4218 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
4219
4220 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
4221 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
4222 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
4223 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
4224 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
4225 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
4226 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
4227 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
4228 lock up when I download a new
4229 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
4230 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
4231 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
4232
4233 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4234 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
4235 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4236 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
4237 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4238 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4239
4240 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4241 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
4242 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4243 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
4244 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4245 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4246
4247 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
4248 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
4249 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
4250 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
4251 exist).</p>
4252
4253       </div>
4254       <div class="tags">
4255
4256
4257         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>.
4258
4259
4260       </div>
4261     </div>
4262     <div class="padding"></div>
4263
4264     <div class="entry">
4265       <div class="title">
4266         <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>
4267       </div>
4268       <div class="date">
4269          9th July 2013
4270       </div>
4271       <div class="body">
4272         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
4273 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
4274 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
4275 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
4276 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4277 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
4278 Bitraf</a>.</p>
4279
4280 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
4281 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
4282 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
4283 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
4284 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
4285
4286       </div>
4287       <div class="tags">
4288
4289
4290         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>.
4291
4292
4293       </div>
4294     </div>
4295     <div class="padding"></div>
4296
4297     <div class="entry">
4298       <div class="title">
4299         <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>
4300       </div>
4301       <div class="date">
4302          5th July 2013
4303       </div>
4304       <div class="body">
4305         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
4306 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
4307 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
4308 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
4309 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
4310 ended up picking a
4311 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
4312 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
4313 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
4314 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
4315 on that below.</p>
4316
4317 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4318 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4319 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4320 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4321 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4322 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
4323 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
4324 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
4325 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
4326
4327 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
4328 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
4329 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
4330 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
4331 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
4332 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
4333 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
4334
4335 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
4336 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
4337
4338 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
4339 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
4340 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
4341 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
4342 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
4343 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
4344 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
4345 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
4346 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
4347 kernel developers as
4348 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
4349 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
4350 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
4351 Lenovo forums, both for
4352 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
4353 2012-11-10</a> and for
4354 <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
4355 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
4356 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
4357 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
4358 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
4359 There is even a
4360 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
4361 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
4362 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
4363
4364 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
4365 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
4366 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
4367 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
4368 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
4369 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
4370 fixed. :)</p>
4371
4372       </div>
4373       <div class="tags">
4374
4375
4376         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>.
4377
4378
4379       </div>
4380     </div>
4381     <div class="padding"></div>
4382
4383     <div class="entry">
4384       <div class="title">
4385         <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>
4386       </div>
4387       <div class="date">
4388          4th July 2013
4389       </div>
4390       <div class="body">
4391         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
4392 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
4393 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
4394 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
4395 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
4396 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
4397 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
4398 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
4399 with an expencive door stop.</p>
4400
4401 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4402 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4403 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4404 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4405 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4406 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
4407 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
4408
4409 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
4410 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
4411 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
4412 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
4413 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
4414 new laptop now. :)</p>
4415
4416 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
4417
4418       </div>
4419       <div class="tags">
4420
4421
4422         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>.
4423
4424
4425       </div>
4426     </div>
4427     <div class="padding"></div>
4428
4429     <div class="entry">
4430       <div class="title">
4431         <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>
4432       </div>
4433       <div class="date">
4434         25th June 2013
4435       </div>
4436       <div class="body">
4437         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
4438 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
4439 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
4440 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
4441 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
4442 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
4443 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
4444 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
4445 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
4446 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
4447 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
4448
4449 <p><pre>
4450 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4451 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
4452 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
4453 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
4454 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
4455 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
4456 firmware-ipw2x00
4457 firmware-ipw2x00
4458 Preconfiguring packages ...
4459 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
4460 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
4461 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
4462 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
4463 #
4464 </pre></p>
4465
4466 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
4467 printed instead:</p>
4468
4469 <p><pre>
4470 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4471 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
4472 #
4473 </pre></p>
4474
4475 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
4476 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
4477
4478 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
4479 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
4480 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
4481 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
4482 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
4483 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
4484 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
4485 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
4486 machine.</p>
4487
4488 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
4489 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
4490 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
4491 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
4492 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
4493 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
4494
4495       </div>
4496       <div class="tags">
4497
4498
4499         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>.
4500
4501
4502       </div>
4503     </div>
4504     <div class="padding"></div>
4505
4506     <div class="entry">
4507       <div class="title">
4508         <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>
4509       </div>
4510       <div class="date">
4511         11th June 2013
4512       </div>
4513       <div class="body">
4514         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
4515 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
4516 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
4517 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
4518 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
4519 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
4520 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
4521 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
4522 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
4523 i915 driver used by the
4524 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4525 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
4526
4527 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
4528 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
4529 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
4530 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
4531 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
4532
4533 <pre>
4534 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
4535 update-initramfs -u -k all
4536 </pre>
4537
4538 <p>Since March 2012 there is
4539 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
4540 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
4541 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
4542 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
4543 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
4544 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
4545 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
4546 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
4547 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
4548 number.</p>
4549
4550 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4551 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4552
4553 <p><pre>
4554 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4555     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4556     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4557  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4558  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4559     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4560  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4561     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4562  Latency: 0
4563  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4564  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4565  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4566  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4567  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4568  Capabilities: <access denied>
4569  Kernel driver in use: i915
4570 </pre></p>
4571
4572 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4573
4574 <p><pre>
4575 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4576        ...
4577         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4578         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4579        ...
4580 }
4581 </pre></p>
4582
4583 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4584 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4585 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4586 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
4587 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4588 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4589 yet shown up in
4590 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
4591 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4592 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4593 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4594 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4595 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4596
4597 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4598 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
4599 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
4600 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4601 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
4602 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4603 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4604 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4605 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4606 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4607 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4608 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4609
4610 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4611 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4612 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4613 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4614 backlight.</p>
4615
4616       </div>
4617       <div class="tags">
4618
4619
4620         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>.
4621
4622
4623       </div>
4624     </div>
4625     <div class="padding"></div>
4626
4627     <div class="entry">
4628       <div class="title">
4629         <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>
4630       </div>
4631       <div class="date">
4632         27th May 2013
4633       </div>
4634       <div class="body">
4635         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4636 <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
4637 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4638 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4639 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4640 and Windows 8.</p>
4641
4642 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4643 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4644 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4645 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4646 enough to tell.</p>
4647
4648 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4649 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4650 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4651 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4652 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4653 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4654 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4655 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4656 to follow.</p>
4657
4658 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4659 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4660 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4661 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4662 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4663 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4664 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4665 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4666
4667 <p>I've updated the
4668 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4669 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4670 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4671 machine.</p>
4672
4673 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4674 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4675
4676       </div>
4677       <div class="tags">
4678
4679
4680         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>.
4681
4682
4683       </div>
4684     </div>
4685     <div class="padding"></div>
4686
4687     <div class="entry">
4688       <div class="title">
4689         <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>
4690       </div>
4691       <div class="date">
4692         25th May 2013
4693       </div>
4694       <div class="body">
4695         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4696 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4697 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4698 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4699 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4700 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4701
4702 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4703 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4704 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4705 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4706 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4707 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4708 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4709 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4710 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4711 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4712
4713 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4714 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4715 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4716 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4717 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4718 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4719
4720 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4721 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4722 on new Laptops?</p>
4723
4724       </div>
4725       <div class="tags">
4726
4727
4728         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>.
4729
4730
4731       </div>
4732     </div>
4733     <div class="padding"></div>
4734
4735     <div class="entry">
4736       <div class="title">
4737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
4738       </div>
4739       <div class="date">
4740         17th May 2013
4741       </div>
4742       <div class="body">
4743         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4744 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4745 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4746 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4747 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4748 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4749 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4750 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4751 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4752 donate some money</a>.
4753
4754 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4755 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4756 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4757 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4758 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4759
4760 <p>The script,
4761 <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/>
4762 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4763 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4764 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4765
4766 <ol>
4767
4768 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4769 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4770 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4771     our configuration.</li>
4772 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4773     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4774     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4775     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4776 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4777     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4778 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4779
4780 </ol>
4781
4782 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4783 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4784 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4785 the needed packages.</p>
4786
4787 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4788 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4789 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4790 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4791 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4792 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4793
4794 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4795 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4796 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4797
4798 <p><pre>
4799 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4800 DESKTOP="lxde"
4801 </pre></p>
4802
4803 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4804 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4805 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4806 boot.</p>
4807
4808       </div>
4809       <div class="tags">
4810
4811
4812         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>.
4813
4814
4815       </div>
4816     </div>
4817     <div class="padding"></div>
4818
4819     <div class="entry">
4820       <div class="title">
4821         <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>
4822       </div>
4823       <div class="date">
4824         11th May 2013
4825       </div>
4826       <div class="body">
4827         <P>In January,
4828 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4829 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4830 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4831 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4832 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4833 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4834 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4835 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4836 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4837 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4838 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4839 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4840
4841 <p><table>
4842 <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>
4843 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4844 <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>
4845 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4846 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4847 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4848 <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>
4849 <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>
4850 <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>
4851 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4852 </table></p>
4853
4854 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4855 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4856 available in experimental.</p>
4857
4858 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4859 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4860 for LEGO designers.</p>
4861
4862       </div>
4863       <div class="tags">
4864
4865
4866         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>.
4867
4868
4869       </div>
4870     </div>
4871     <div class="padding"></div>
4872
4873     <div class="entry">
4874       <div class="title">
4875         <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>
4876       </div>
4877       <div class="date">
4878          5th May 2013
4879       </div>
4880       <div class="body">
4881         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4882 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4883 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4884 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4885 soon.</p>
4886
4887 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4888 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4889 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4890 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4891 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4892 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4893 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4894 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4895 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4896 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4897 Edu.</a>
4898
4899 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4900 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4901 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4902 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4903 follow.<p>
4904
4905       </div>
4906       <div class="tags">
4907
4908
4909         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>.
4910
4911
4912       </div>
4913     </div>
4914     <div class="padding"></div>
4915
4916     <div class="entry">
4917       <div class="title">
4918         <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>
4919       </div>
4920       <div class="date">
4921          3rd April 2013
4922       </div>
4923       <div class="body">
4924         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4925 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4926 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4927 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4928
4929 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4930 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4931 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4932 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4933 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4934 BTS. :)</p>
4935
4936       </div>
4937       <div class="tags">
4938
4939
4940         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>.
4941
4942
4943       </div>
4944     </div>
4945     <div class="padding"></div>
4946
4947     <div class="entry">
4948       <div class="title">
4949         <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>
4950       </div>
4951       <div class="date">
4952          2nd February 2013
4953       </div>
4954       <div class="body">
4955         <p>My
4956 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4957 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4958 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4959 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4960 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4961 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4962 version too.</p>
4963
4964 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4965 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4966 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4967 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4968 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4969 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4970 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4971 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4972
4973 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4974 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4975 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4976 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4977 it. :)</p>
4978
4979 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4980 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4981 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4982
4983       </div>
4984       <div class="tags">
4985
4986
4987         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>.
4988
4989
4990       </div>
4991     </div>
4992     <div class="padding"></div>
4993
4994     <div class="entry">
4995       <div class="title">
4996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4997       </div>
4998       <div class="date">
4999         22nd January 2013
5000       </div>
5001       <div class="body">
5002         <p>Yesterday, I
5003 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
5004 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
5005 pluggable hardware devices, which I
5006 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
5007 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
5008 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
5009 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
5010 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
5011 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
5012 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
5013 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
5014 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
5015 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
5016
5017 <pre>
5018 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
5019 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
5020 </pre>
5021
5022 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
5023 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
5024 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
5025 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
5026
5027 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
5028 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
5029 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
5030 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
5031 word.</p>
5032
5033 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
5034 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
5035 process.</p>
5036
5037 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
5038 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
5039
5040       </div>
5041       <div class="tags">
5042
5043
5044         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>.
5045
5046
5047       </div>
5048     </div>
5049     <div class="padding"></div>
5050
5051     <div class="entry">
5052       <div class="title">
5053         <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>
5054       </div>
5055       <div class="date">
5056         21st January 2013
5057       </div>
5058       <div class="body">
5059         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
5060 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
5061 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
5062 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
5063 it, fetch the
5064 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
5065 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
5066 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
5067 autostart script.</p>
5068
5069 <p>The design is simple:</p>
5070
5071 <ul>
5072
5073 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
5074 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
5075
5076 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
5077 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
5078 initially did.</li>
5079
5080 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
5081 the APT database, a database
5082 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
5083 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
5084
5085 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
5086 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
5087 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
5088 package or packages.</li>
5089
5090 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
5091 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
5092
5093 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
5094 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
5095
5096 </ul>
5097
5098 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
5099 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
5100 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
5101 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
5102
5103 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
5104 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
5105 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
5106 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
5107 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
5108
5109 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
5110 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
5111 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
5112 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
5113 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
5114 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
5115 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
5116 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
5117
5118 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
5119 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
5120 '<tt>svn checkout
5121 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
5122 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
5123 devscripts package.</p>
5124
5125 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
5126 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
5127 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
5128 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
5129 instructions</a> for details.</p>
5130
5131       </div>
5132       <div class="tags">
5133
5134
5135         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>.
5136
5137
5138       </div>
5139     </div>
5140     <div class="padding"></div>
5141
5142     <div class="entry">
5143       <div class="title">
5144         <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>
5145       </div>
5146       <div class="date">
5147         19th January 2013
5148       </div>
5149       <div class="body">
5150         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
5151 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
5152 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
5153 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
5154 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
5155 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
5156 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
5157 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
5158 not a durable solution.
5159
5160 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
5161 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
5162
5163 <ul>
5164
5165 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
5166   than A4).</li>
5167 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
5168 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
5169 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
5170 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
5171 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
5172 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
5173 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
5174 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
5175 size).</li>
5176 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
5177   X.org packages.</li>
5178 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
5179   the time).
5180
5181 </ul>
5182
5183 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
5184 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
5185 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
5186 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
5187 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
5188 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
5189 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
5190 still be useful.</p>
5191
5192 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
5193 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
5194 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
5195 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
5196 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
5197 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
5198
5199       </div>
5200       <div class="tags">
5201
5202
5203         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>.
5204
5205
5206       </div>
5207     </div>
5208     <div class="padding"></div>
5209
5210     <div class="entry">
5211       <div class="title">
5212         <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>
5213       </div>
5214       <div class="date">
5215         18th January 2013
5216       </div>
5217       <div class="body">
5218         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
5219 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
5220 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
5221 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
5222 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
5223 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
5224 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
5225
5226 <pre>
5227 #!/usr/bin/python
5228 import sys
5229 import apt
5230 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5231     cache = apt.Cache()
5232     cache.open(None)
5233     thepkgs = []
5234     for pkg in cache:
5235         version = pkg.candidate
5236         if version is None:
5237             version = pkg.installed
5238         if version is None:
5239             continue
5240         record = version.record
5241         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
5242             continue
5243         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
5244         for t in mime_types:
5245             t = t.rstrip().strip()
5246             if t == mimetype:
5247                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
5248     return thepkgs
5249 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
5250 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
5251     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
5252 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
5253 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5254     print "  %s" %pkg
5255 </pre>
5256
5257 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
5258
5259 <pre>
5260 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
5261 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
5262   gecko-mediaplayer
5263 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
5264 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
5265   browser-plugin-gnash
5266 %
5267 </pre>
5268
5269 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
5270 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
5271 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
5272 anyone working on adding it?</p>
5273
5274 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
5275 request for icweasel support for this feature is
5276 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
5277 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
5278 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
5279 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
5280
5281       </div>
5282       <div class="tags">
5283
5284
5285         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>.
5286
5287
5288       </div>
5289     </div>
5290     <div class="padding"></div>
5291
5292     <div class="entry">
5293       <div class="title">
5294         <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>
5295       </div>
5296       <div class="date">
5297         16th January 2013
5298       </div>
5299       <div class="body">
5300         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
5301 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
5302 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
5303 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
5304 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
5305 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
5306 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
5307 downloaded by the browser.</p>
5308
5309 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
5310 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
5311 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
5312 can be found on the
5313 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
5314 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
5315 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
5316 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
5317 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
5318
5319 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
5320
5321 <pre>
5322   count MIME type
5323   ----- -----------------------
5324      32 text/plain
5325      30 audio/mpeg
5326      29 image/png
5327      28 image/jpeg
5328      27 application/ogg
5329      26 audio/x-mp3
5330      25 image/tiff
5331      25 image/gif
5332      22 image/bmp
5333      22 audio/x-wav
5334      20 audio/x-flac
5335      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5336      18 video/x-ms-asf
5337      18 audio/x-musepack
5338      18 audio/x-mpeg
5339      18 application/x-ogg
5340      17 video/mpeg
5341      17 audio/x-scpls
5342      17 audio/ogg
5343      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5344 </pre>
5345
5346 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
5347
5348 <pre>
5349   count MIME type
5350   ----- -----------------------
5351      33 text/plain
5352      32 image/png
5353      32 image/jpeg
5354      29 audio/mpeg
5355      27 image/gif
5356      26 image/tiff
5357      26 application/ogg
5358      25 audio/x-mp3
5359      22 image/bmp
5360      21 audio/x-wav
5361      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5362      19 audio/x-mpeg
5363      18 video/mpeg
5364      18 audio/x-scpls
5365      18 audio/x-flac
5366      18 application/x-ogg
5367      17 video/x-ms-asf
5368      17 text/html
5369      17 audio/x-musepack
5370      16 image/x-xbitmap
5371 </pre>
5372
5373 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
5374
5375 <pre>
5376   count MIME type
5377   ----- -----------------------
5378      31 text/plain
5379      31 image/png
5380      31 image/jpeg
5381      29 audio/mpeg
5382      28 application/ogg
5383      27 image/gif
5384      26 image/tiff
5385      26 audio/x-mp3
5386      23 audio/x-wav
5387      22 image/bmp
5388      21 audio/x-flac
5389      20 audio/x-mpegurl
5390      19 audio/x-mpeg
5391      18 video/x-ms-asf
5392      18 video/mpeg
5393      18 audio/x-scpls
5394      18 application/x-ogg
5395      17 audio/x-musepack
5396      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5397      16 video/x-msvideo
5398 </pre>
5399
5400 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
5401 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
5402 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
5403 issues.</p>
5404
5405 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
5406 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
5407
5408       </div>
5409       <div class="tags">
5410
5411
5412         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>.
5413
5414
5415       </div>
5416     </div>
5417     <div class="padding"></div>
5418
5419     <div class="entry">
5420       <div class="title">
5421         <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>
5422       </div>
5423       <div class="date">
5424         15th January 2013
5425       </div>
5426       <div class="body">
5427         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
5428 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
5429 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
5430 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
5431 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
5432 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
5433 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
5434 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
5435 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5436 packages.</p>
5437
5438 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5439 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5440 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5441 modalias.</p>
5442
5443 <p><blockquote>
5444 Package: package-name
5445 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
5446 </blockquote></p>
5447
5448 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
5449 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
5450
5451 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
5452 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
5453
5454 <p><blockquote>
5455 Package: cheese
5456 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
5457 </blockquote></p>
5458
5459 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
5460 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
5461
5462 <p><blockquote>
5463 Package: pcmciautils
5464 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
5465 </blockquote></p>
5466
5467 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
5468 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
5469
5470 <p><blockquote>
5471 Package: colorhug-client
5472 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
5473 </blockquote></p>
5474
5475 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
5476 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
5477 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
5478
5479 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
5480 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
5481 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
5482 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
5483 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
5484 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
5485 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
5486 Raring.</p>
5487
5488 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
5489 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
5490 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
5491 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
5492 try the
5493 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
5494 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
5495 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
5496 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
5497
5498 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
5499 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
5500
5501 <p><blockquote>
5502 % ./hw-support-lookup
5503 <br>yubikey-personalization
5504 <br>%
5505 </blockquote></p>
5506
5507 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5508 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
5509
5510 <p><blockquote>
5511 % ./hw-support-lookup
5512 <br>pcmciautils
5513 <br>%
5514 </blockquote></p>
5515
5516 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5517 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5518 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
5519
5520 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5521 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
5522 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5523 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
5524 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5525 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5526 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
5527 see if it work.</p>
5528
5529 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5530 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5531 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5532 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5533
5534       </div>
5535       <div class="tags">
5536
5537
5538         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>.
5539
5540
5541       </div>
5542     </div>
5543     <div class="padding"></div>
5544
5545     <div class="entry">
5546       <div class="title">
5547         <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>
5548       </div>
5549       <div class="date">
5550         14th January 2013
5551       </div>
5552       <div class="body">
5553         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5554 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5555 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5556 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
5557 in
5558 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5559 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
5560
5561 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
5562
5563 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5564 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
5565 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
5566 &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;,
5567 &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
5568 &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;.
5569
5570 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5571 this shell script:</p>
5572
5573 <pre>
5574 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
5575 </pre>
5576
5577 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5578 using modinfo:</p>
5579
5580 <pre>
5581 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5582 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5583 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5584 %
5585 </pre>
5586
5587 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
5588
5589 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
5590 Bridge memory controller:</p>
5591
5592 <p><blockquote>
5593 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5594 </blockquote></p>
5595
5596 <p>This represent these values:</p>
5597
5598 <pre>
5599  v   00008086  (vendor)
5600  d   00002770  (device)
5601  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
5602  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
5603  bc  06        (bus class)
5604  sc  00        (bus subclass)
5605  i   00        (interface)
5606 </pre>
5607
5608 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5609 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5610 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
5611 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
5612
5613 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5614 means.</p>
5615
5616 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
5617
5618 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
5619 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
5620
5621 <p><blockquote>
5622 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5623 </blockquote></p>
5624
5625 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
5626
5627 <pre>
5628  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
5629  p    0001  (device product)
5630  d    0206  (bcddevice)
5631  dc     09  (device class)
5632  dsc    00  (device subclass)
5633  dp     00  (device protocol)
5634  ic     09  (interface class)
5635  isc    00  (interface subclass)
5636  ip     00  (interface protocol)
5637 </pre>
5638
5639 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
5640 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
5641 these alias entries show up:</p>
5642
5643 <p><blockquote>
5644 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5645 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5646 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5647 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5648 </blockquote></p>
5649
5650 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
5651 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
5652 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
5653
5654 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
5655
5656 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
5657 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
5658
5659 <p><blockquote>
5660 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5661 </blockquote></p>
5662
5663 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
5664
5665 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
5666
5667 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5668 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5669 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
5670
5671 <p><blockquote>
5672 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5673 </blockquote></p>
5674
5675 <p>The values present are</p>
5676
5677 <pre>
5678  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
5679  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
5680  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
5681  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
5682  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
5683  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
5684  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
5685  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
5686  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
5687  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
5688  ct   10             (chassis type)
5689  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
5690 </pre>
5691
5692 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
5693 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
5694
5695 <pre>
5696   3 Desktop
5697   4 Low Profile Desktop
5698   5 Pizza Box
5699   6 Mini Tower
5700   7 Tower
5701   8 Portable
5702   9 Laptop
5703  10 Notebook
5704  11 Hand Held
5705  12 Docking Station
5706  13 All In One
5707  14 Sub Notebook
5708  15 Space-saving
5709  16 Lunch Box
5710  17 Main Server Chassis
5711  18 Expansion Chassis
5712  19 Sub Chassis
5713  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5714  21 Peripheral Chassis
5715  22 RAID Chassis
5716  23 Rack Mount Chassis
5717  24 Sealed-case PC
5718  25 Multi-system
5719  26 CompactPCI
5720  27 AdvancedTCA
5721  28 Blade
5722  29 Blade Enclosing
5723 </pre>
5724
5725 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5726 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5727 claim it is a desktop.</p>
5728
5729 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
5730
5731 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
5732 test machine:</p>
5733
5734 <p><blockquote>
5735 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5736 </blockquote></p>
5737
5738 <p>The values present are</p>
5739
5740 <pre>
5741   ty  01  (type)
5742   pr  00  (prototype)
5743   id  00  (id)
5744   ex  00  (extra)
5745 </pre>
5746
5747 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
5748 the valid values are.</p>
5749
5750 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
5751
5752 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5753 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5754 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5755 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5756 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
5757 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5758 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
5759
5760 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
5761
5762 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5763 one can use the following shell script:</p>
5764
5765 <pre>
5766   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
5767     echo "$id" ; \
5768     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
5769   done
5770 </pre>
5771
5772 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5773 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
5774
5775 <pre>
5776   acpi:ACPI0003:
5777     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5778   acpi:device:
5779   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5780   acpi:IBM0068:
5781     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5782     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5783     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5784     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5785   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5786     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5787     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5788     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5789   [...]
5790 </pre>
5791
5792 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5793 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5794 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5795 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5796
5797 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5798 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5799 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
5800
5801       </div>
5802       <div class="tags">
5803
5804
5805         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>.
5806
5807
5808       </div>
5809     </div>
5810     <div class="padding"></div>
5811
5812     <div class="entry">
5813       <div class="title">
5814         <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>
5815       </div>
5816       <div class="date">
5817         10th January 2013
5818       </div>
5819       <div class="body">
5820         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5821 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5822 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5823 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
5824 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
5825 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5826 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5827 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
5828 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5829 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
5830 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5831 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
5832 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5833 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
5834 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5835 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5836 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
5837 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
5838
5839       </div>
5840       <div class="tags">
5841
5842
5843         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>.
5844
5845
5846       </div>
5847     </div>
5848     <div class="padding"></div>
5849
5850     <div class="entry">
5851       <div class="title">
5852         <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>
5853       </div>
5854       <div class="date">
5855          9th January 2013
5856       </div>
5857       <div class="body">
5858         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5859 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5860 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5861 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5862 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5863 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5864 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5865 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5866 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5867 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5868 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5869
5870 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5871 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5872 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5873 simple:
5874
5875 <ul>
5876
5877 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5878   starting when a user log in.</li>
5879
5880 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5881   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5882
5883 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5884   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5885   packages.</li>
5886
5887 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5888   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5889
5890 </ul>
5891
5892 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5893 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5894 discover database to find packages and
5895 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5896 packages.</p>
5897
5898 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5899 draft package is now checked into
5900 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5901 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5902 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5903 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5904 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5905 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5906 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5907 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5908 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5909 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5910 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5911 because of the freeze).</p>
5912
5913 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5914 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5915 inserted):</p>
5916
5917 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5918
5919 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5920 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5921 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5922
5923 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5924 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5925 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5926 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5927 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5928 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5929 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5930
5931 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5932 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5933 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5934 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5935 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5936 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5937 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5938 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5939 not be installed?</p>
5940
5941 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5942 please send me an email. :)</p>
5943
5944       </div>
5945       <div class="tags">
5946
5947
5948         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>.
5949
5950
5951       </div>
5952     </div>
5953     <div class="padding"></div>
5954
5955     <div class="entry">
5956       <div class="title">
5957         <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>
5958       </div>
5959       <div class="date">
5960          2nd January 2013
5961       </div>
5962       <div class="body">
5963         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5964 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5965 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5966 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5967 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5968 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5969 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5970 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5971 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5972 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5973
5974 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5975 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5976 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5977
5978       </div>
5979       <div class="tags">
5980
5981
5982         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>.
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/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>
5992       </div>
5993       <div class="date">
5994         25th December 2012
5995       </div>
5996       <div class="body">
5997         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5998 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5999
6000 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
6001 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
6002 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
6003 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
6004 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
6005 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
6006 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
6007 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
6008 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
6009 name.</p>
6010
6011 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
6012 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
6013 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
6014
6015 <blockquote><pre>
6016 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
6017 cd bitcoin
6018 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
6019 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
6020 </pre></blockquote>
6021
6022 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
6023 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
6024 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
6025 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
6026 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
6027 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
6028 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
6029 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
6030 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
6031
6032 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6033 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6034 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6035
6036       </div>
6037       <div class="tags">
6038
6039
6040         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>.
6041
6042
6043       </div>
6044     </div>
6045     <div class="padding"></div>
6046
6047     <div class="entry">
6048       <div class="title">
6049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
6050       </div>
6051       <div class="date">
6052         21st December 2012
6053       </div>
6054       <div class="body">
6055         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
6056 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
6057 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
6058 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
6059 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
6060 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
6061 is now maintained by a
6062 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
6063 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
6064 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
6065 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
6066 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
6067 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
6068 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
6069 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
6070 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
6071 Corallo in a
6072 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
6073 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
6074 Debian package.</p>
6075
6076 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
6077 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
6078 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
6079 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
6080 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
6081 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
6082 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
6083 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
6084 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
6085 new version to unstable.
6086
6087 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
6088 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
6089 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
6090 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
6091 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
6092 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
6093 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
6094 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
6095 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
6096 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
6097 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
6098 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
6099 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
6100 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
6101 have not tested them.</p>
6102
6103 <p>My
6104 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
6105 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
6106 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
6107 years ago, as can be
6108 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
6109 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
6110 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
6111 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
6112 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
6113 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
6114 the same address as last time,
6115 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6116
6117       </div>
6118       <div class="tags">
6119
6120
6121         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>.
6122
6123
6124       </div>
6125     </div>
6126     <div class="padding"></div>
6127
6128     <div class="entry">
6129       <div class="title">
6130         <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>
6131       </div>
6132       <div class="date">
6133          7th September 2012
6134       </div>
6135       <div class="body">
6136         <p>As I
6137 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
6138 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
6139 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
6140 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
6141 repository for the project</a>.</p>
6142
6143 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
6144 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
6145 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
6146 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
6147
6148 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
6149 PostScript formats at
6150 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
6151 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
6152
6153       </div>
6154       <div class="tags">
6155
6156
6157         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>.
6158
6159
6160       </div>
6161     </div>
6162     <div class="padding"></div>
6163
6164     <div class="entry">
6165       <div class="title">
6166         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
6167       </div>
6168       <div class="date">
6169         16th August 2012
6170       </div>
6171       <div class="body">
6172         <p>I dag fyller
6173 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
6174 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
6175 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
6176
6177       </div>
6178       <div class="tags">
6179
6180
6181         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>.
6182
6183
6184       </div>
6185     </div>
6186     <div class="padding"></div>
6187
6188     <div class="entry">
6189       <div class="title">
6190         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
6191       </div>
6192       <div class="date">
6193         24th June 2012
6194       </div>
6195       <div class="body">
6196         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
6197 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
6198 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
6199 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
6200 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
6201 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
6202 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
6203 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
6204 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
6205 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
6206 missing in my book.</p>
6207
6208 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
6209 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
6210 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
6211 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
6212 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
6213 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
6214 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
6215
6216       </div>
6217       <div class="tags">
6218
6219
6220         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>.
6221
6222
6223       </div>
6224     </div>
6225     <div class="padding"></div>
6226
6227     <div class="entry">
6228       <div class="title">
6229         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
6230       </div>
6231       <div class="date">
6232         21st November 2011
6233       </div>
6234       <div class="body">
6235         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
6236 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
6237 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
6238 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
6239 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
6240 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
6241 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
6242 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
6243 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
6244 the tools to do so.</p>
6245
6246 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
6247 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
6248 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
6249 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
6250
6251 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
6252 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
6253 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
6254 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
6255 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
6256 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
6257 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
6258 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
6259
6260 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
6261 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
6262 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
6263
6264 <p><pre>
6265 #!/usr/bin/perl
6266 use strict;
6267 use warnings;
6268 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
6269 BEGIN {
6270     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
6271     my %rhelmodules = (
6272         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
6273         );
6274     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
6275         eval "use $module;";
6276         if ($@) {
6277             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
6278             system("yum install -y $pkg");
6279             eval "use $module;";
6280         }
6281     }
6282 }
6283 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
6284
6285 upgrade_dell();
6286
6287 exit 0;
6288
6289 sub run_firmware_script {
6290     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
6291     unless ($script) {
6292         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
6293         exit 1
6294     }
6295     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
6296
6297     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
6298         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
6299     } else {
6300         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
6301     }
6302 }
6303
6304 sub run_firmware_scripts {
6305     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
6306     # Run firmware packages
6307     for my $dir (@dirs) {
6308         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
6309         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
6310         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
6311             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
6312             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
6313         }
6314         closedir $dh;
6315     }
6316 }
6317
6318 sub download {
6319     my $url = shift;
6320     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
6321     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
6322 }
6323
6324 sub upgrade_dell {
6325     my @dirs;
6326     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6327     chomp $product;
6328
6329     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
6330
6331         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
6332         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
6333
6334         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
6335             CLEANUP => 1
6336             );
6337         chdir($tmpdir);
6338         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
6339         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
6340         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
6341         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
6342         my $fwopts = "-q";
6343         if (@paths) {
6344             for my $url (@paths) {
6345                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
6346             }
6347             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
6348         } else {
6349             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6350             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6351         }
6352         chdir('/');
6353     } else {
6354         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6355         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6356     }
6357 }
6358
6359 sub fetch_dell_fw {
6360     my $path = shift;
6361     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
6362     download($url);
6363 }
6364
6365 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
6366 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
6367 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
6368 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
6369     my $filename = shift;
6370
6371     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6372     chomp $product;
6373     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
6374
6375     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
6376
6377     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
6378     my @paths;
6379     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
6380         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
6381         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
6382         my $oscode;
6383         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
6384             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
6385         } else {
6386             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
6387         }
6388         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
6389         {
6390             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
6391         }
6392     }
6393     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
6394         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
6395
6396         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
6397         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
6398
6399         my $cpath = $component->{path};
6400         for my $path (@paths) {
6401             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
6402                 push(@paths, $cpath);
6403             }
6404         }
6405     }
6406     return @paths;
6407 }
6408 </pre>
6409
6410 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
6411 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
6412 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
6413 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
6414 outdated.</p>
6415
6416       </div>
6417       <div class="tags">
6418
6419
6420         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>.
6421
6422
6423       </div>
6424     </div>
6425     <div class="padding"></div>
6426
6427     <div class="entry">
6428       <div class="title">
6429         <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>
6430       </div>
6431       <div class="date">
6432          4th August 2011
6433       </div>
6434       <div class="body">
6435         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
6436 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
6437 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
6438 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
6439 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
6440 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
6441 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
6442 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6443 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
6444
6445 <p><blockquote>
6446 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6447 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6448 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6449 </blockquote></p>
6450
6451 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6452 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
6453 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6454 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6455 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6456 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6457 hard to explain.</p>
6458
6459 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6460 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
6461 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
6462 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6463 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6464 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6465 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6466 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6467 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6468 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
6469 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6470 mode).</p>
6471
6472 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
6473 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6474 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
6475 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
6476 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
6477 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
6478 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6479 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6480 after visiting single user mode.</p>
6481
6482 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6483 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
6484 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6485 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6486 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6487 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6488 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
6489 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
6490
6491 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6492 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
6493 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
6494
6495       </div>
6496       <div class="tags">
6497
6498
6499         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>.
6500
6501
6502       </div>
6503     </div>
6504     <div class="padding"></div>
6505
6506     <div class="entry">
6507       <div class="title">
6508         <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>
6509       </div>
6510       <div class="date">
6511         30th July 2011
6512       </div>
6513       <div class="body">
6514         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6515 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6516 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6517 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6518 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6519 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6520 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6521 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6522 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6523 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6524 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6525 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6526 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6527
6528 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6529 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6530 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6531 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6532 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6533 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6534 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6535 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6536 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6537
6538 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6539 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6540 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6541 is presented.</p>
6542
6543 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6544 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6545 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6546 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6547 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6548 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6549 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6550 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6551 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6552 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6553 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6554 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6555 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6556 find time to push this forward.</p>
6557
6558       </div>
6559       <div class="tags">
6560
6561
6562         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>.
6563
6564
6565       </div>
6566     </div>
6567     <div class="padding"></div>
6568
6569     <div class="entry">
6570       <div class="title">
6571         <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>
6572       </div>
6573       <div class="date">
6574         29th July 2011
6575       </div>
6576       <div class="body">
6577         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6578 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6579 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6580 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6581 issues.</p>
6582
6583 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6584 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6585 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6586
6587 <ol>
6588
6589 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6590 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6591 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6592 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6593 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6594 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6595 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6596 Debian.</li>
6597
6598 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6599 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6600 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6601 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6602 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6603 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6604 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6605 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6606 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6607 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6608 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6609 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6610 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6611
6612 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6613 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6614 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6615 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6616 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6617 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6618 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6619 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6620 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6621 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6622
6623 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6624 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6625 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6626 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6627 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6628 latter behaviour.</li>
6629
6630 </ol>
6631
6632 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6633 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6634 it do not matter much.</p>
6635
6636 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6637 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6638 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6639
6640       </div>
6641       <div class="tags">
6642
6643
6644         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>.
6645
6646
6647       </div>
6648     </div>
6649     <div class="padding"></div>
6650
6651     <div class="entry">
6652       <div class="title">
6653         <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>
6654       </div>
6655       <div class="date">
6656         26th July 2011
6657       </div>
6658       <div class="body">
6659         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
6660 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6661 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6662 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6663 security support for a few years.</p>
6664
6665 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6666 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6667 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6668 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6669 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6670 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6671 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6672 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6673 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6674 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6675 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6676 easier in the future.</p>
6677
6678 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6679 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6680 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6681 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6682 do not have time for.</p>
6683
6684       </div>
6685       <div class="tags">
6686
6687
6688         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>.
6689
6690
6691       </div>
6692     </div>
6693     <div class="padding"></div>
6694
6695     <div class="entry">
6696       <div class="title">
6697         <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>
6698       </div>
6699       <div class="date">
6700          3rd April 2011
6701       </div>
6702       <div class="body">
6703         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6704 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6705 update in English.</p>
6706
6707 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6708 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6709 of the British service
6710 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6711 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6712 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6713 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6714 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6715 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6716 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6717 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6718 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6719 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6720 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6721 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6722 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6723
6724 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6725 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6726 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6727 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6728 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6729 public infrastructure.</p>
6730
6731 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6732 such service?</p>
6733
6734       </div>
6735       <div class="tags">
6736
6737
6738         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>.
6739
6740
6741       </div>
6742     </div>
6743     <div class="padding"></div>
6744
6745     <div class="entry">
6746       <div class="title">
6747         <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>
6748       </div>
6749       <div class="date">
6750         28th January 2011
6751       </div>
6752       <div class="body">
6753         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6754 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6755 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6756 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6757 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6758 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6759 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6760 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6761 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6762 out which security holes were present in our free software
6763 collection.</p>
6764
6765 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6766 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6767 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6768 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6769 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6770 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6771 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6772 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
6773 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6774 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6775 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
6776 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6777 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6778 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6779 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6780 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6781
6782 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6783 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6784 check out, one could look up
6785 <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
6786 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6787 The most recent one is
6788 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6789 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6790 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6791
6792 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6793 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
6794 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6795 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6796 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6797 security issues out.</p>
6798
6799 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6800 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6801 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6802 RHEL is providing
6803 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
6804 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6805 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6806
6807 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6808 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6809 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6810 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6811 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6812 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6813 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6814 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6815 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6816 established soon.</p>
6817
6818 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6819 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6820 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6821 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6822 for their packages.</p>
6823
6824       </div>
6825       <div class="tags">
6826
6827
6828         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>.
6829
6830
6831       </div>
6832     </div>
6833     <div class="padding"></div>
6834
6835     <div class="entry">
6836       <div class="title">
6837         <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>
6838       </div>
6839       <div class="date">
6840         23rd January 2011
6841       </div>
6842       <div class="body">
6843         <p>In the
6844 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6845 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6846 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6847 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6848 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6849 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6850 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6851 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6852 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6853 one of my machines like this:</p>
6854
6855 <pre>
6856 loaded modules:
6857 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6858 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6859 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6860 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6861 10de:03ec pata_amd
6862 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6863 1022:1103 k8temp
6864 109e:036e bttv
6865 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6866 11ab:4364 sky2
6867 </pre>
6868
6869 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6870 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6871
6872 <pre>
6873 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6874     echo loaded pci modules:
6875     (
6876         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6877         for address in * ; do
6878             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6879                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6880                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6881                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6882                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6883                     echo "$id $module"
6884                 fi
6885             fi
6886         done
6887     )
6888     echo
6889 fi
6890 </pre>
6891
6892 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6893 mappings:</p>
6894
6895 <pre>
6896 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6897     echo loaded usb modules:
6898     (
6899         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6900         for address in * ; do
6901             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6902                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6903                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6904                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6905                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6906                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6907                         echo "$id $module"
6908                     fi
6909                 fi
6910             fi
6911         done
6912     )
6913     echo
6914 fi
6915 </pre>
6916
6917 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6918 well.</p>
6919
6920       </div>
6921       <div class="tags">
6922
6923
6924         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>.
6925
6926
6927       </div>
6928     </div>
6929     <div class="padding"></div>
6930
6931     <div class="entry">
6932       <div class="title">
6933         <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>
6934       </div>
6935       <div class="date">
6936         22nd December 2010
6937       </div>
6938       <div class="body">
6939         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
6940 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
6941 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
6942 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
6943 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
6944 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
6945 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
6946 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
6947 university.</p>
6948
6949 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
6950 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
6951 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
6952 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
6953 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
6954 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
6955 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
6956 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
6957
6958 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
6959 I perform on a new model.</p>
6960
6961 <ul>
6962
6963 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
6964 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
6965 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
6966
6967 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
6968 installation, X.org is working.</li>
6969
6970 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
6971 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
6972 reported by the program.</li>
6973
6974 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
6975 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
6976 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
6977 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
6978 normally test this by playing
6979 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
6980 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
6981
6982 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
6983 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6984
6985 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
6986 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6987
6988 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
6989 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
6990
6991 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
6992 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
6993 few.</li>
6994
6995 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
6996 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
6997 notice this.</li>
6998
6999 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
7000 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
7001 resume.</li>
7002
7003 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
7004 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
7005 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
7006 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
7007 not.</li>
7008
7009 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
7010 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
7011 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
7012 existence.</li>
7013
7014 </ul>
7015
7016 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
7017 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
7018 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
7019 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
7020 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
7021 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
7022 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
7023 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
7024
7025       </div>
7026       <div class="tags">
7027
7028
7029         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>.
7030
7031
7032       </div>
7033     </div>
7034     <div class="padding"></div>
7035
7036     <div class="entry">
7037       <div class="title">
7038         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
7039       </div>
7040       <div class="date">
7041         11th December 2010
7042       </div>
7043       <div class="body">
7044         <p>As I continue to explore
7045 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
7046 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
7047 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
7048
7049 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
7050 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
7051 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
7052 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
7053 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
7054 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
7055 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
7056 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
7057 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
7058 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
7059 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
7060 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
7061 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
7062 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
7063 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
7064 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
7065 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
7066 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
7067 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
7068 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
7069
7070 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
7071 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
7072 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
7073 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
7074 If the Skolelinux foundation
7075 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
7076 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
7077 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
7078 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
7079 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
7080 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
7081 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
7082 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
7083
7084 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
7085 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
7086 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
7087 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
7088 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
7089 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
7090 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
7091 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
7092 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
7093 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
7094 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
7095 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
7096 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
7097 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
7098 currencies.</p>
7099
7100 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
7101 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
7102 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
7103 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
7104 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
7105 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
7106 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
7107 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
7108 BitCoins.  Check out
7109 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
7110 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
7111 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
7112 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
7113 yet.</p>
7114
7115 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
7116 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
7117 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
7118 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
7119 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
7120
7121       </div>
7122       <div class="tags">
7123
7124
7125         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>.
7126
7127
7128       </div>
7129     </div>
7130     <div class="padding"></div>
7131
7132     <div class="entry">
7133       <div class="title">
7134         <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>
7135       </div>
7136       <div class="date">
7137         10th December 2010
7138       </div>
7139       <div class="body">
7140         <p>With this weeks lawless
7141 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
7142 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
7143 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
7144 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
7145 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
7146 A blog post from
7147 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
7148 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
7149 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
7150 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
7151 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
7152 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
7153 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
7154
7155 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
7156 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
7157 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
7158 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
7159 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
7160 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
7161 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
7162 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
7163 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
7164 Debian</a> soon.</p>
7165
7166 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
7167 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
7168 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
7169 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
7170 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
7171 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
7172 you can even get
7173 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
7174 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
7175 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
7176 on the current exchange rates.</p>
7177
7178 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
7179 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
7180 donations to the address
7181 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
7182
7183       </div>
7184       <div class="tags">
7185
7186
7187         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>.
7188
7189
7190       </div>
7191     </div>
7192     <div class="padding"></div>
7193
7194     <div class="entry">
7195       <div class="title">
7196         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
7197       </div>
7198       <div class="date">
7199         27th November 2010
7200       </div>
7201       <div class="body">
7202         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
7203 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
7204 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
7205 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
7206 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
7207 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
7208 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
7209 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
7210
7211 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
7212 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7213 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
7214 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
7215 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
7216 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
7217 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
7218 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
7219 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
7220 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
7221 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
7222
7223 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
7224 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
7225 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
7226 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
7227 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
7228 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
7229 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
7230 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
7231 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
7232 what is going on.</p>
7233
7234       </div>
7235       <div class="tags">
7236
7237
7238         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>.
7239
7240
7241       </div>
7242     </div>
7243     <div class="padding"></div>
7244
7245     <div class="entry">
7246       <div class="title">
7247         <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>
7248       </div>
7249       <div class="date">
7250         22nd November 2010
7251       </div>
7252       <div class="body">
7253         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
7254 upgrade testing of the
7255 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7256 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
7257 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
7258 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
7259
7260 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7261
7262 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7263
7264 <blockquote><p>
7265   apache2.2-bin
7266   aptdaemon
7267   baobab
7268   binfmt-support
7269   browser-plugin-gnash
7270   cheese-common
7271   cli-common
7272   cups-pk-helper
7273   dmz-cursor-theme
7274   empathy
7275   empathy-common
7276   freedesktop-sound-theme
7277   freeglut3
7278   gconf-defaults-service
7279   gdm-themes
7280   gedit-plugins
7281   geoclue
7282   geoclue-hostip
7283   geoclue-localnet
7284   geoclue-manual
7285   geoclue-yahoo
7286   gnash
7287   gnash-common
7288   gnome
7289   gnome-backgrounds
7290   gnome-cards-data
7291   gnome-codec-install
7292   gnome-core
7293   gnome-desktop-environment
7294   gnome-disk-utility
7295   gnome-screenshot
7296   gnome-search-tool
7297   gnome-session-canberra
7298   gnome-system-log
7299   gnome-themes-extras
7300   gnome-themes-more
7301   gnome-user-share
7302   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7303   gstreamer0.10-tools
7304   gtk2-engines
7305   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7306   gtk2-engines-smooth
7307   hamster-applet
7308   libapache2-mod-dnssd
7309   libapr1
7310   libaprutil1
7311   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
7312   libaprutil1-ldap
7313   libart2.0-cil
7314   libboost-date-time1.42.0
7315   libboost-python1.42.0
7316   libboost-thread1.42.0
7317   libchamplain-0.4-0
7318   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
7319   libcheese-gtk18
7320   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7321   libcryptui0
7322   libdiscid0
7323   libelf1
7324   libepc-1.0-2
7325   libepc-common
7326   libepc-ui-1.0-2
7327   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7328   libfreerdp0
7329   libgconf2.0-cil
7330   libgdata-common
7331   libgdata7
7332   libgdu-gtk0
7333   libgee2
7334   libgeoclue0
7335   libgexiv2-0
7336   libgif4
7337   libglade2.0-cil
7338   libglib2.0-cil
7339   libgmime2.4-cil
7340   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7341   libgnome2.24-cil
7342   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
7343   libgpod-common
7344   libgpod4
7345   libgtk2.0-cil
7346   libgtkglext1
7347   libgtksourceview2.0-common
7348   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7349   libmono-addins0.2-cil
7350   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
7351   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7352   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
7353   libmono-posix2.0-cil
7354   libmono-security2.0-cil
7355   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7356   libmono-system2.0-cil
7357   libmtp8
7358   libmusicbrainz3-6
7359   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
7360   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
7361   libopal3.6.8
7362   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
7363   libpt2.6.7
7364   libpython2.6
7365   librpm1
7366   librpmio1
7367   libsdl1.2debian
7368   libsrtp0
7369   libssh-4
7370   libtelepathy-farsight0
7371   libtelepathy-glib0
7372   libtidy-0.99-0
7373   media-player-info
7374   mesa-utils
7375   mono-2.0-gac
7376   mono-gac
7377   mono-runtime
7378   nautilus-sendto
7379   nautilus-sendto-empathy
7380   p7zip-full
7381   pkg-config
7382   python-aptdaemon
7383   python-aptdaemon-gtk
7384   python-axiom
7385   python-beautifulsoup
7386   python-bugbuddy
7387   python-clientform
7388   python-coherence
7389   python-configobj
7390   python-crypto
7391   python-cupshelpers
7392   python-elementtree
7393   python-epsilon
7394   python-evolution
7395   python-feedparser
7396   python-gdata
7397   python-gdbm
7398   python-gst0.10
7399   python-gtkglext1
7400   python-gtksourceview2
7401   python-httplib2
7402   python-louie
7403   python-mako
7404   python-markupsafe
7405   python-mechanize
7406   python-nevow
7407   python-notify
7408   python-opengl
7409   python-openssl
7410   python-pam
7411   python-pkg-resources
7412   python-pyasn1
7413   python-pysqlite2
7414   python-rdflib
7415   python-serial
7416   python-tagpy
7417   python-twisted-bin
7418   python-twisted-conch
7419   python-twisted-core
7420   python-twisted-web
7421   python-utidylib
7422   python-webkit
7423   python-xdg
7424   python-zope.interface
7425   remmina
7426   remmina-plugin-data
7427   remmina-plugin-rdp
7428   remmina-plugin-vnc
7429   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7430   rhythmbox-plugins
7431   rpm-common
7432   rpm2cpio
7433   seahorse-plugins
7434   shotwell
7435   software-center
7436   system-config-printer-udev
7437   telepathy-gabble
7438   telepathy-mission-control-5
7439   telepathy-salut
7440   tomboy
7441   totem
7442   totem-coherence
7443   totem-mozilla
7444   totem-plugins
7445   transmission-common
7446   xdg-user-dirs
7447   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
7448   xserver-xephyr
7449 </p></blockquote>
7450
7451 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7452
7453 <blockquote><p>
7454   cheese
7455   ekiga
7456   eog
7457   epiphany-extensions
7458   evolution-exchange
7459   fast-user-switch-applet
7460   file-roller
7461   gcalctool
7462   gconf-editor
7463   gdm
7464   gedit
7465   gedit-common
7466   gnome-games
7467   gnome-games-data
7468   gnome-nettool
7469   gnome-system-tools
7470   gnome-themes
7471   gnuchess
7472   gucharmap
7473   guile-1.8-libs
7474   libavahi-ui0
7475   libdmx1
7476   libgalago3
7477   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7478   libgtksourceview2.0-0
7479   liblircclient0
7480   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
7481   libspeexdsp1
7482   libsvga1
7483   rhythmbox
7484   seahorse
7485   sound-juicer
7486   system-config-printer
7487   totem-common
7488   transmission-gtk
7489   vinagre
7490   vino
7491 </p></blockquote>
7492
7493 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7494
7495 <blockquote><p>
7496   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7497 </p></blockquote>
7498
7499 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7500
7501 <blockquote><p>
7502 [nothing]
7503 </p></blockquote>
7504
7505 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7506
7507 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7508
7509 <blockquote><p>
7510   ksmserver
7511 </p></blockquote>
7512
7513 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7514
7515 <blockquote><p>
7516   kwin
7517   network-manager-kde
7518 </p></blockquote>
7519
7520 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7521
7522 <blockquote><p>
7523   arts
7524   dolphin
7525   freespacenotifier
7526   google-gadgets-gst
7527   google-gadgets-xul
7528   kappfinder
7529   kcalc
7530   kcharselect
7531   kde-core
7532   kde-plasma-desktop
7533   kde-standard
7534   kde-window-manager
7535   kdeartwork
7536   kdeartwork-emoticons
7537   kdeartwork-style
7538   kdeartwork-theme-icon
7539   kdebase
7540   kdebase-apps
7541   kdebase-workspace
7542   kdebase-workspace-bin
7543   kdebase-workspace-data
7544   kdeeject
7545   kdelibs
7546   kdeplasma-addons
7547   kdeutils
7548   kdewallpapers
7549   kdf
7550   kfloppy
7551   kgpg
7552   khelpcenter4
7553   kinfocenter
7554   konq-plugins-l10n
7555   konqueror-nsplugins
7556   kscreensaver
7557   kscreensaver-xsavers
7558   ktimer
7559   kwrite
7560   libgle3
7561   libkde4-ruby1.8
7562   libkonq5
7563   libkonq5-templates
7564   libnetpbm10
7565   libplasma-ruby
7566   libplasma-ruby1.8
7567   libqt4-ruby1.8
7568   marble-data
7569   marble-plugins
7570   netpbm
7571   nuvola-icon-theme
7572   plasma-dataengines-workspace
7573   plasma-desktop
7574   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7575   plasma-runners-addons
7576   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7577   plasma-scriptengine-python
7578   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7579   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7580   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7581   plasma-scriptengines
7582   plasma-wallpapers-addons
7583   plasma-widget-folderview
7584   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7585   ruby
7586   sweeper
7587   update-notifier-kde
7588   xscreensaver-data-extra
7589   xscreensaver-gl
7590   xscreensaver-gl-extra
7591   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7592 </p></blockquote>
7593
7594 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7595
7596 <blockquote><p>
7597   ark
7598   google-gadgets-common
7599   google-gadgets-qt
7600   htdig
7601   kate
7602   kdebase-bin
7603   kdebase-data
7604   kdepasswd
7605   kfind
7606   klipper
7607   konq-plugins
7608   konqueror
7609   ksysguard
7610   ksysguardd
7611   libarchive1
7612   libcln6
7613   libeet1
7614   libeina-svn-06
7615   libggadget-1.0-0b
7616   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
7617   libgps19
7618   libkdecorations4
7619   libkephal4
7620   libkonq4
7621   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
7622   libkscreensaver5
7623   libksgrd4
7624   libksignalplotter4
7625   libkunitconversion4
7626   libkwineffects1a
7627   libmarblewidget4
7628   libntrack-qt4-1
7629   libntrack0
7630   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
7631   libplasmaclock4a
7632   libplasmagenericshell4
7633   libprocesscore4a
7634   libprocessui4a
7635   libqalculate5
7636   libqedje0a
7637   libqtruby4shared2
7638   libqzion0a
7639   libruby1.8
7640   libscim8c2a
7641   libsmokekdecore4-3
7642   libsmokekdeui4-3
7643   libsmokekfile3
7644   libsmokekhtml3
7645   libsmokekio3
7646   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
7647   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
7648   libsmokekparts3
7649   libsmokektexteditor3
7650   libsmokekutils3
7651   libsmokenepomuk3
7652   libsmokephonon3
7653   libsmokeplasma3
7654   libsmokeqtcore4-3
7655   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
7656   libsmokeqtgui4-3
7657   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
7658   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
7659   libsmokeqtscript4-3
7660   libsmokeqtsql4-3
7661   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
7662   libsmokeqttest4-3
7663   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
7664   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
7665   libsmokeqtxml4-3
7666   libsmokesolid3
7667   libsmokesoprano3
7668   libtaskmanager4a
7669   libtidy-0.99-0
7670   libweather-ion4a
7671   libxklavier16
7672   libxxf86misc1
7673   okteta
7674   oxygencursors
7675   plasma-dataengines-addons
7676   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
7677   plasma-widget-lancelot
7678   plasma-widgets-addons
7679   plasma-widgets-workspace
7680   polkit-kde-1
7681   ruby1.8
7682   systemsettings
7683   update-notifier-common
7684 </p></blockquote>
7685
7686 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
7687 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
7688 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
7689 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
7690
7691       </div>
7692       <div class="tags">
7693
7694
7695         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>.
7696
7697
7698       </div>
7699     </div>
7700     <div class="padding"></div>
7701
7702     <div class="entry">
7703       <div class="title">
7704         <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>
7705       </div>
7706       <div class="date">
7707         22nd November 2010
7708       </div>
7709       <div class="body">
7710         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
7711 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
7712 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
7713 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
7714 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
7715 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
7716 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
7717 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
7718 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
7719
7720 <p>I found
7721 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
7722 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
7723 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
7724 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
7725 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
7726 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
7727
7728 <pre>
7729 #!/bin/sh
7730
7731 # Based on
7732 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
7733
7734 set -e
7735 set -x
7736
7737 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
7738     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
7739     exit 1
7740 else
7741     host="$1"
7742 fi
7743
7744 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
7745     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
7746     exit 1
7747 fi
7748
7749 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
7750 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7751 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7752 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
7753
7754 img=$host.img
7755 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
7756 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
7757
7758 parted $img mklabel msdos
7759 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
7760 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
7761 parted $img set 1 boot on
7762
7763 modprobe dm-mod
7764 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
7765 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
7766
7767 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
7768 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
7769 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
7770
7771 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
7772 losetup -d /dev/loop0
7773 </pre>
7774
7775 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
7776 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
7777
7778 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
7779 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
7780 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
7781 seem to work just fine.</p>
7782
7783       </div>
7784       <div class="tags">
7785
7786
7787         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>.
7788
7789
7790       </div>
7791     </div>
7792     <div class="padding"></div>
7793
7794     <div class="entry">
7795       <div class="title">
7796         <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>
7797       </div>
7798       <div class="date">
7799         20th November 2010
7800       </div>
7801       <div class="body">
7802         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
7803 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7804 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
7805 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
7806
7807 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
7808 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
7809 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
7810
7811 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7812
7813 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7814
7815 <blockquote><p>
7816   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
7817   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
7818   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
7819   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
7820   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
7821   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
7822   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
7823   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
7824   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
7825   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
7826   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7827   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7828   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
7829   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
7830   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
7831   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
7832   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7833   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
7834   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7835   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
7836   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
7837   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7838   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
7839   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
7840   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
7841   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7842   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7843   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
7844   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7845   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
7846   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
7847   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7848   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
7849   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
7850   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
7851   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
7852   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
7853   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
7854   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
7855   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
7856   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
7857   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
7858   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
7859   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
7860   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
7861   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
7862   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
7863   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
7864   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
7865   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
7866   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
7867   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
7868   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7869   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
7870   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
7871   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
7872   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
7873   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
7874   zip
7875 </p></blockquote>
7876
7877 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
7878
7879 <blockquote><p>
7880   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
7881   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
7882   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
7883   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
7884   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
7885   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
7886   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
7887   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
7888   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
7889   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
7890   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
7891   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7892   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7893   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7894   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7895   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
7896   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7897   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
7898   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
7899   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
7900   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
7901   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
7902   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7903   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
7904   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
7905   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
7906   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
7907   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
7908   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
7909 </p></blockquote>
7910
7911 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7912
7913 <blockquote><p>
7914   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7915 </p></blockquote>
7916
7917 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7918
7919 <blockquote><p>
7920 [nothing]
7921 </p></blockquote>
7922
7923 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7924
7925 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7926
7927 <blockquote><p>
7928   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
7929   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7930   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
7931   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
7932   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
7933   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
7934   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7935   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
7936   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
7937   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7938   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
7939   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
7940   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
7941   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
7942   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
7943   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
7944   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
7945   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
7946   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
7947   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
7948   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
7949   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
7950   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
7951   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
7952   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
7953   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
7954   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
7955   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
7956   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
7957   ttf-sazanami-gothic
7958 </p></blockquote>
7959
7960 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7961
7962 <blockquote><p>
7963   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
7964   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
7965   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
7966   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
7967   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
7968   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
7969   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
7970   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
7971   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
7972   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
7973   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
7974   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
7975   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
7976   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
7977   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7978   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7979   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
7980   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
7981   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7982   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
7983   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7984   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
7985   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7986   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7987   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
7988   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
7989   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
7990   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
7991   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
7992   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
7993   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7994   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7995   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7996 </p></blockquote>
7997
7998 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7999
8000 <blockquote><p>
8001   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
8002   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
8003   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
8004   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
8005   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8006   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
8007   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8008 </p></blockquote>
8009
8010 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8011
8012 <blockquote><p>
8013   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
8014 </p></blockquote>
8015
8016       </div>
8017       <div class="tags">
8018
8019
8020         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>.
8021
8022
8023       </div>
8024     </div>
8025     <div class="padding"></div>
8026
8027     <div class="entry">
8028       <div class="title">
8029         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
8030       </div>
8031       <div class="date">
8032         20th November 2010
8033       </div>
8034       <div class="body">
8035         <p>Answering
8036 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
8037 call from the Gnash project</a> for
8038 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
8039 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
8040 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
8041 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
8042 releases out more often.</p>
8043
8044 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
8045 I have considered setting up a <a
8046 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
8047 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
8048 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
8049 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
8050 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
8051 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
8052 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
8053 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
8054 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
8055 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
8056 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
8057 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
8058
8059       </div>
8060       <div class="tags">
8061
8062
8063         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>.
8064
8065
8066       </div>
8067     </div>
8068     <div class="padding"></div>
8069
8070     <div class="entry">
8071       <div class="title">
8072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
8073       </div>
8074       <div class="date">
8075          9th November 2010
8076       </div>
8077       <div class="body">
8078         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
8079
8080 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
8081 3D linked in from
8082 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
8083 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
8084
8085       </div>
8086       <div class="tags">
8087
8088
8089         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>.
8090
8091
8092       </div>
8093     </div>
8094     <div class="padding"></div>
8095
8096     <div class="entry">
8097       <div class="title">
8098         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
8099       </div>
8100       <div class="date">
8101         24th October 2010
8102       </div>
8103       <div class="body">
8104         <p>Some updates.</p>
8105
8106 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
8107 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
8108 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
8109 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
8110 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
8111 :)</p>
8112
8113 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
8114 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
8115 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
8116 It is called
8117 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
8118 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
8119 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
8120 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
8121 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
8122 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
8123
8124 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
8125 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
8126 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
8127 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
8128 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
8129 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
8130 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
8131 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
8132 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
8133 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
8134
8135       </div>
8136       <div class="tags">
8137
8138
8139         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>.
8140
8141
8142       </div>
8143     </div>
8144     <div class="padding"></div>
8145
8146     <div class="entry">
8147       <div class="title">
8148         <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>
8149       </div>
8150       <div class="date">
8151          4th September 2010
8152       </div>
8153       <div class="body">
8154         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
8155 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
8156 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
8157 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
8158 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
8159 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
8160 installed.</p>
8161
8162 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
8163 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
8164 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
8165 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
8166 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
8167 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
8168 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
8169 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
8170 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
8171
8172 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
8173 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
8174 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
8175 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
8176 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
8177 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
8178 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
8179 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
8180 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
8181 pages they want to visit.</p>
8182
8183 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
8184 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
8185 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
8186 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
8187 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
8188 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
8189 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
8190 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
8191 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
8192 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
8193 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
8194
8195       </div>
8196       <div class="tags">
8197
8198
8199         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>.
8200
8201
8202       </div>
8203     </div>
8204     <div class="padding"></div>
8205
8206     <div class="entry">
8207       <div class="title">
8208         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
8209       </div>
8210       <div class="date">
8211         27th July 2010
8212       </div>
8213       <div class="body">
8214         <p>I discovered this while doing
8215 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
8216 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
8217 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
8218 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
8219 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
8220
8221 <p>An example is from todays
8222 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
8223 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
8224 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
8225 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
8226 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
8227 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
8228 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
8229
8230 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
8231
8232 <blockquote><pre>
8233 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
8234  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
8235   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
8236 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
8237  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
8238 </pre></blockquote>
8239
8240 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
8241 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
8242 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
8243 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
8244 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
8245 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
8246 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
8247 of dependency loops.</p>
8248
8249 <p>Thanks to
8250 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
8251 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
8252 dependencies
8253 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
8254 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
8255
8256 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
8257 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
8258 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
8259 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
8260 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
8261 it.</p>
8262
8263       </div>
8264       <div class="tags">
8265
8266
8267         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>.
8268
8269
8270       </div>
8271     </div>
8272     <div class="padding"></div>
8273
8274     <div class="entry">
8275       <div class="title">
8276         <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>
8277       </div>
8278       <div class="date">
8279         17th July 2010
8280       </div>
8281       <div class="body">
8282         <p>This is a
8283 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
8284 on my
8285 <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
8286 work</a> on
8287 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
8288 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
8289
8290 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
8291 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
8292 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
8293 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
8294
8295 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
8296 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
8297 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
8298
8299 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
8300
8301 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
8302 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
8303 the web.
8304
8305 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
8306 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
8307 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
8308 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
8309 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
8310 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
8311
8312 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
8313 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
8314 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
8315 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
8316 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
8317 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
8318 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
8319 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
8320 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
8321 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
8322 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
8323 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
8324 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
8325 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
8326 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
8327 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
8328
8329 <blockquote><pre>
8330 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8331   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8332   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8333   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8334   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8335   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8336   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8337
8338 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8339   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8340   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
8341   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
8342   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
8343   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
8344 </pre></blockquote>
8345
8346 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
8347 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
8348 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
8349 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8350 also exist.</p>
8351
8352 <blockquote><pre>
8353 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8354 objectclass: top
8355 objectclass: dnsdomain
8356 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8357 dc: tjener
8358 arecord: 10.0.2.2
8359 associateddomain: tjener.intern
8360
8361 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8362 objectclass: top
8363 objectclass: dnsdomain2
8364 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8365 dc: 2
8366 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
8367 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
8368 </pre></blockquote>
8369
8370 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
8371 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
8372 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
8373 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
8374 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
8375 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
8376 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
8377 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
8378 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
8379 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
8380 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
8381 instead.</p>
8382
8383 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
8384 like this:</p>
8385
8386 <blockquote><pre>
8387 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8388   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8389   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8390   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8391   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8392   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8393
8394 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8395   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
8396 </pre></blockquote>
8397
8398 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
8399 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
8400 reverse lookups.</p>
8401
8402 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
8403 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
8404 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
8405 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
8406
8407 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
8408 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
8409 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
8410
8411 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
8412 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
8413 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
8414 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
8415 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
8416
8417 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
8418 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
8419 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
8420 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
8421 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
8422
8423 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
8424 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
8425 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
8426 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
8427 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
8428 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
8429
8430 <blockquote><pre>
8431 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
8432     SUP top
8433     AUXILIARY
8434     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
8435           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
8436           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
8437           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
8438           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
8439     ))
8440 </pre></blockquote>
8441
8442 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
8443 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
8444 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
8445 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
8446 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
8447 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
8448
8449 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
8450
8451 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
8452 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
8453 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
8454 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
8455 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
8456
8457 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
8458 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
8459 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
8460 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
8461
8462 <blockquote><pre>
8463 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
8464 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
8465 </pre></blockquote>
8466
8467 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
8468 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
8469 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
8470 search result is this entry:</p>
8471
8472 <blockquote><pre>
8473 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8474 cn: dhcp
8475 objectClass: top
8476 objectClass: dhcpServer
8477 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8478 </pre></blockquote>
8479
8480 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
8481 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
8482 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
8483 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
8484 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
8485 The search result is this entry:</p>
8486
8487 <blockquote><pre>
8488 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8489 cn: DHCP Config
8490 objectClass: top
8491 objectClass: dhcpService
8492 objectClass: dhcpOptions
8493 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8494 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
8495 dhcpStatements: authoritative
8496 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
8497 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
8498 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
8499 </pre></blockquote>
8500
8501 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
8502 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8503 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8504 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8505 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
8506 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
8507 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8508 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8509 related computer objects.</p>
8510
8511 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8512 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
8513 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8514 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8515 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
8516 like:</p>
8517
8518 <blockquote><pre>
8519 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8520 cn: hostname
8521 objectClass: top
8522 objectClass: dhcpHost
8523 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8524 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8525 </pre></blockquote>
8526
8527 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8528 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8529 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
8530 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8531 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
8532 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8533 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8534 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8535 structural object class.
8536
8537 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8538
8539 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8540 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8541 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8542 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8543 in the configuration.</p>
8544
8545 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8546 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8547 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8548 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8549 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8550 structure.</p>
8551
8552 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8553 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
8554
8555 <blockquote><pre>
8556 ou=services
8557   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8558     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8559     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8560       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8561         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8562     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8563       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8564         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8565     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8566       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8567 </pre></blockquote>
8568
8569 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8570 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8571 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8572 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
8573
8574 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8575 like this:</p>
8576
8577 <blockquote><pre>
8578 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8579 dc: hostname
8580 objectClass: top
8581 objectClass: dhcpHost
8582 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8583 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8584 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8585 arecord: 10.11.12.13
8586 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8587 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8588 </pre></blockquote>
8589
8590 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8591 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8592 auxiliary object class.</p>
8593
8594       </div>
8595       <div class="tags">
8596
8597
8598         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>.
8599
8600
8601       </div>
8602     </div>
8603     <div class="padding"></div>
8604
8605     <div class="entry">
8606       <div class="title">
8607         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
8608       </div>
8609       <div class="date">
8610         14th July 2010
8611       </div>
8612       <div class="body">
8613         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8614 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8615 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8616 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8617 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
8618
8619 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8620 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
8621
8622 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8623 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
8624 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8625 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8626 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8627 to a slave DNS server.</p>
8628
8629 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8630 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8631 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8632 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8633 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
8634 seem to work.</p>
8635
8636 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8637 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8638 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
8639 this:</p>
8640
8641 <blockquote><pre>
8642   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8643   cn: hostname
8644   objectClass: dhcphost
8645   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8646   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8647   associateddomain: hostname.intern
8648   arecord: 10.11.12.13
8649   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8650   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8651   ldapconfigsound: Y
8652 </pre></blockquote>
8653
8654 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8655 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8656 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
8657 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
8658
8659 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8660 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8661 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8662 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8663 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8664 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8665 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8666 might be a good place to put it.</p>
8667
8668 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8669 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8670
8671       </div>
8672       <div class="tags">
8673
8674
8675         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>.
8676
8677
8678       </div>
8679     </div>
8680     <div class="padding"></div>
8681
8682     <div class="entry">
8683       <div class="title">
8684         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
8685       </div>
8686       <div class="date">
8687         11th July 2010
8688       </div>
8689       <div class="body">
8690         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8691 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8692 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8693 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
8694
8695 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8696 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
8697 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8698 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8699 LTSP clients.</p>
8700
8701 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8702 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8703 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
8704
8705 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8706 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8707 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
8708
8709 <blockquote><pre>
8710 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8711 #
8712 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8713 #
8714 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8715 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8716 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8717 #
8718 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8719 # existence of attribute names.
8720 #
8721 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8722 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8723 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8724 #
8725 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8726 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
8727 #
8728 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8729 #     SUP top
8730 #     AUXILIARY
8731 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8732
8733 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8734 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8735     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8736     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
8737         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8738         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8739             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8740             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8741             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8742             # bass value on to clients
8743             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8744         done
8745     done
8746 fi
8747 </pre></blockquote>
8748
8749 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8750 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8751 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8752 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8753 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
8754
8755 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8756 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8757
8758 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8759 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
8760 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8761 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
8762 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
8763 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
8764
8765       </div>
8766       <div class="tags">
8767
8768
8769         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>.
8770
8771
8772       </div>
8773     </div>
8774     <div class="padding"></div>
8775
8776     <div class="entry">
8777       <div class="title">
8778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8779       </div>
8780       <div class="date">
8781          9th July 2010
8782       </div>
8783       <div class="body">
8784         <p>Since
8785 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8786 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8787 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
8788 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
8789 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8790 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
8791 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8792 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
8793 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8794 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
8795 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
8796 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8797 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
8798
8799       </div>
8800       <div class="tags">
8801
8802
8803         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>.
8804
8805
8806       </div>
8807     </div>
8808     <div class="padding"></div>
8809
8810     <div class="entry">
8811       <div class="title">
8812         <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>
8813       </div>
8814       <div class="date">
8815          3rd July 2010
8816       </div>
8817       <div class="body">
8818         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
8819 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8820 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
8821 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
8822 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8823 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8824 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
8825 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
8826
8827 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8828 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
8829 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
8830 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8831 publish the difference.</p>
8832
8833 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8834
8835 <blockquote><p>
8836   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8837   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
8838   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8839   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8840   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8841   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8842   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8843   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8844 </p></blockquote>
8845
8846 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8847
8848 <blockquote><p>
8849   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8850   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8851   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
8852   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8853   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
8854   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
8855   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8856   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8857   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8858   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8859   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8860   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
8861   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8862   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
8863   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8864   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8865   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
8866   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8867   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8868   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8869 </p></blockquote>
8870
8871 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8872
8873 <blockquote><p>
8874   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8875   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8876   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8877   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8878   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8879   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8880   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8881   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8882   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8883   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8884   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8885   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8886   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8887   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8888   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8889   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8890   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8891   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8892   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8893   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8894   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8895 </p></blockquote>
8896
8897 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8898
8899 <blockquote><p>
8900   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8901   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8902   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8903 </p></blockquote>
8904
8905 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8906 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8907 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8908 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8909 the difference somewhat.
8910
8911       </div>
8912       <div class="tags">
8913
8914
8915         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>.
8916
8917
8918       </div>
8919     </div>
8920     <div class="padding"></div>
8921
8922     <div class="entry">
8923       <div class="title">
8924         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8925       </div>
8926       <div class="date">
8927         28th June 2010
8928       </div>
8929       <div class="body">
8930         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
8931 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
8932 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
8933 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
8934 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
8935 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
8936 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
8937 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
8938 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
8939 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
8940
8941 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
8942 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
8943 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
8944 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
8945 released.</p>
8946
8947 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
8948 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
8949 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
8950 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
8951
8952 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
8953 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8954
8955 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
8956 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
8957 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
8958 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
8959 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
8960
8961       </div>
8962       <div class="tags">
8963
8964
8965         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>.
8966
8967
8968       </div>
8969     </div>
8970     <div class="padding"></div>
8971
8972     <div class="entry">
8973       <div class="title">
8974         <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>
8975       </div>
8976       <div class="date">
8977         24th June 2010
8978       </div>
8979       <div class="body">
8980         <p>A while back, I
8981 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
8982 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
8983 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
8984 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
8985
8986 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
8987 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
8988 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
8989 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
8990
8991 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
8992 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
8993 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
8994 Debian Edu.</p>
8995
8996 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
8997 the
8998 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
8999 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
9000 available today from IETF.</p>
9001
9002 <pre>
9003 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
9004 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
9005 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
9006  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
9007         NAME 'dhcpHost'
9008         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
9009 -       SUP top
9010 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
9011         MUST cn
9012         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
9013         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
9014 </pre>
9015
9016 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
9017 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
9018 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
9019
9020 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9021 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9022
9023       </div>
9024       <div class="tags">
9025
9026
9027         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>.
9028
9029
9030       </div>
9031     </div>
9032     <div class="padding"></div>
9033
9034     <div class="entry">
9035       <div class="title">
9036         <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>
9037       </div>
9038       <div class="date">
9039         16th June 2010
9040       </div>
9041       <div class="body">
9042         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
9043 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
9044 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
9045 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
9046 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
9047 this:
9048
9049 <blockquote><pre>
9050 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9051 tasksel --new-install
9052 </pre></blockquote>
9053
9054 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
9055 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
9056 any output what so ever.
9057
9058 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
9059 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
9060 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
9061 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
9062 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
9063 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
9064 code like this:
9065
9066 <blockquote><pre>
9067 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9068 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
9069 $cmd
9070 </pre></blockquote>
9071
9072 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
9073 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
9074 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
9075 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
9076 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
9077 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
9078 installation.</p>
9079
9080 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
9081 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
9082 like this.</p>
9083
9084       </div>
9085       <div class="tags">
9086
9087
9088         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>.
9089
9090
9091       </div>
9092     </div>
9093     <div class="padding"></div>
9094
9095     <div class="entry">
9096       <div class="title">
9097         <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>
9098       </div>
9099       <div class="date">
9100         13th June 2010
9101       </div>
9102       <div class="body">
9103         <p>My
9104 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
9105 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
9106 finally made the upgrade logs available from
9107 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
9108 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
9109 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
9110 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
9111
9112 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
9113 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
9114 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
9115 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
9116 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
9117 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
9118 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
9119 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
9120
9121 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
9122 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
9123 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
9124 too surprising.</p>
9125
9126 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
9127 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
9128 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
9129 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
9130 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
9131 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
9132 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
9133 continue.</p>
9134
9135 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
9136 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
9137   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
9138   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
9139   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
9140   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
9141   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
9142   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9143   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9144   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9145   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9146   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9147   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9148   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9149   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9150   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9151   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9152   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9153   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9154   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9155   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9156   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9157   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9158   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9159   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9160   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9161   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9162   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9163   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
9164   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
9165
9166 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
9167
9168 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
9169   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
9170   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
9171   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
9172   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9173   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
9174   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
9175   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
9176   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
9177   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
9178   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9179   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
9180   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
9181   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
9182   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
9183   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
9184   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
9185   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
9186   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
9187   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
9188   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
9189   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
9190   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
9191   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
9192   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
9193   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
9194   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
9195   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
9196   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
9197   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9198   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9199   zip</p>
9200
9201 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
9202
9203 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
9204   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
9205   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
9206   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
9207   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
9208   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
9209   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9210   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9211   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9212   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9213   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9214   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9215   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9216   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9217   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9218   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9219   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9220   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9221   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9222   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9223   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9224   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9225   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9226   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9227   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9228   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9229   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9230   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
9231
9232 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
9233 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
9234   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9235   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
9236   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
9237   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9238   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
9239   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
9240   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9241   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
9242   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
9243   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
9244   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
9245   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
9246   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
9247   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
9248   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
9249   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9250   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9251   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9252   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
9253   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9254   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
9255   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
9256   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9257   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9258   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
9259   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
9260   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
9261   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
9262   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
9263   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
9264   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
9265   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
9266   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
9267   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9268   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9269   xulrunner-1.9</p>
9270
9271
9272       </div>
9273       <div class="tags">
9274
9275
9276         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>.
9277
9278
9279       </div>
9280     </div>
9281     <div class="padding"></div>
9282
9283     <div class="entry">
9284       <div class="title">
9285         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
9286       </div>
9287       <div class="date">
9288         11th June 2010
9289       </div>
9290       <div class="body">
9291         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
9292 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
9293 have been discovered and reported in the process
9294 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
9295 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
9296 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
9297 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
9298 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
9299
9300 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
9301 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
9302 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
9303 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
9304 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
9305 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
9306
9307 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
9308 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
9309 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9310 is created.  The bug report
9311 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
9312 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
9313 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
9314 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
9315 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
9316 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
9317 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
9318 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
9319 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
9320 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
9321 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
9322 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
9323 Debian Squeeze.</p>
9324
9325 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
9326 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
9327 trick:</p>
9328
9329 <blockquote><pre>
9330 #!/bin/sh
9331 set -ex
9332
9333 if [ "$1" ] ; then
9334     desktop=$1
9335 else
9336     desktop=gnome
9337 fi
9338
9339 from=lenny
9340 to=squeeze
9341
9342 exec &lt; /dev/null
9343 unset LANG
9344 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
9345 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
9346 fuser -mv .
9347 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
9348 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9349 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
9350 #!/bin/sh
9351 exit 101
9352 EOF
9353 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
9354 exit_cleanup() {
9355     umount $tmpdir/proc
9356 }
9357 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
9358 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
9359 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
9360
9361 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
9362
9363 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
9364 # to return the correct answers.
9365 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
9366     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
9367
9368 # Include the desktop and laptop task
9369 for test in desktop laptop ; do
9370     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
9371 #!/bin/sh
9372 exit 2
9373 EOF
9374     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
9375 done
9376
9377 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9378 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
9379 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
9380 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
9381
9382 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
9383 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9384 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9385 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
9386 fuser -mv
9387 </pre></blockquote>
9388
9389 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
9390 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
9391 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
9392 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
9393 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
9394 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
9395
9396 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
9397 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
9398 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
9399 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
9400 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
9401 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
9402 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
9403
9404 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
9405 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
9406 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
9407 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
9408 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
9409 packages.</p>
9410
9411       </div>
9412       <div class="tags">
9413
9414
9415         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>.
9416
9417
9418       </div>
9419     </div>
9420     <div class="padding"></div>
9421
9422     <div class="entry">
9423       <div class="title">
9424         <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>
9425       </div>
9426       <div class="date">
9427          6th June 2010
9428       </div>
9429       <div class="body">
9430         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
9431 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
9432 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
9433 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
9434 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
9435 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
9436 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
9437
9438 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
9439 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
9440 COLUMNS):</p>
9441
9442 <blockquote><pre>
9443 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
9444 previous=N
9445 PREVLEVEL=
9446 RUNLEVEL=
9447 runlevel=S
9448 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
9449 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
9450 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
9451 </pre></blockquote>
9452
9453 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
9454 script.</p>
9455
9456 <blockquote><pre>
9457 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
9458 previous=N
9459 PREVLEVEL=N
9460 RUNLEVEL=S
9461 runlevel=S
9462 </pre></blockquote>
9463
9464 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
9465 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
9466 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
9467
9468 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
9469 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
9470 choice.</p>
9471
9472       </div>
9473       <div class="tags">
9474
9475
9476         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>.
9477
9478
9479       </div>
9480     </div>
9481     <div class="padding"></div>
9482
9483     <div class="entry">
9484       <div class="title">
9485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
9486       </div>
9487       <div class="date">
9488          6th June 2010
9489       </div>
9490       <div class="body">
9491         <p>Via the
9492 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
9493 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
9494 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
9495 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
9496 following the standards wars of today.</p>
9497
9498       </div>
9499       <div class="tags">
9500
9501
9502         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>.
9503
9504
9505       </div>
9506     </div>
9507     <div class="padding"></div>
9508
9509     <div class="entry">
9510       <div class="title">
9511         <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>
9512       </div>
9513       <div class="date">
9514          3rd June 2010
9515       </div>
9516       <div class="body">
9517         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9518 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9519 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
9520 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9521 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
9522
9523 <blockquote><pre>
9524 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9525   vendor                    count
9526   Dell Computer Corporation     1
9527     PowerEdge 1750              1
9528   IBM                           1
9529     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
9530   Intel                         2
9531   [no-dmi-info]                 3
9532 maintainer:~#
9533 </pre></blockquote>
9534
9535 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9536 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
9537 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9538 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
9539 option to list the individual machines.</p>
9540
9541 <p>A larger list is
9542 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9543 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9544 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
9545 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9546 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9547 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9548 collector.</p>
9549
9550       </div>
9551       <div class="tags">
9552
9553
9554         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>.
9555
9556
9557       </div>
9558     </div>
9559     <div class="padding"></div>
9560
9561     <div class="entry">
9562       <div class="title">
9563         <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>
9564       </div>
9565       <div class="date">
9566          1st June 2010
9567       </div>
9568       <div class="body">
9569         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9570 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
9571 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9572 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9573 wait.</p>
9574
9575 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9576 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
9577 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9578 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9579 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
9580 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
9581
9582 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9583 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9584 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
9585 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9586 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9587 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9588 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
9589 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
9590
9591 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
9592
9593       </div>
9594       <div class="tags">
9595
9596
9597         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>.
9598
9599
9600       </div>
9601     </div>
9602     <div class="padding"></div>
9603
9604     <div class="entry">
9605       <div class="title">
9606         <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>
9607       </div>
9608       <div class="date">
9609         27th May 2010
9610       </div>
9611       <div class="body">
9612         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
9613 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
9614 issues are known and should be solved:
9615
9616 <p><ul>
9617
9618 <li>The wicd package seen to
9619 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
9620 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
9621 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
9622 seem to be on the case.</li>
9623
9624 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
9625 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
9626 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
9627 maintainer is on the case.</li>
9628
9629 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
9630 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
9631 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
9632 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
9633 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
9634 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
9635 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
9636 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
9637
9638 </ul></p>
9639
9640 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
9641 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
9642 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
9643 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
9644
9645 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9646 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9647 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9648 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9649
9650 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
9651
9652       </div>
9653       <div class="tags">
9654
9655
9656         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>.
9657
9658
9659       </div>
9660     </div>
9661     <div class="padding"></div>
9662
9663     <div class="entry">
9664       <div class="title">
9665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
9666       </div>
9667       <div class="date">
9668         22nd May 2010
9669       </div>
9670       <div class="body">
9671         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
9672 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
9673 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
9674 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
9675
9676 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
9677 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
9678 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
9679 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
9680 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
9681 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
9682 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
9683 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
9684 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
9685 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
9686 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
9687 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
9688 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
9689 going to work.</p>
9690
9691 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
9692 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
9693 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
9694 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
9695 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
9696 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
9697 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
9698 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
9699 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
9700 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
9701 Edu.</p>
9702
9703 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
9704 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
9705 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
9706 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
9707 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
9708 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
9709
9710 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
9711 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</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/debian edu">debian edu</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/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
9727       </div>
9728       <div class="date">
9729         14th May 2010
9730       </div>
9731       <div class="body">
9732         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
9733 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
9734 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
9735 expected, if I am to believe the
9736 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9737 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
9738 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
9739 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
9740 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
9741 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
9742 version.</p>
9743
9744 More information about
9745 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9746 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
9747 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
9748 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9749
9750 <blockquote><pre>
9751 CONCURRENCY=none
9752 </pre></blockquote>
9753
9754 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9755 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9756 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9757 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9758
9759       </div>
9760       <div class="tags">
9761
9762
9763         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>.
9764
9765
9766       </div>
9767     </div>
9768     <div class="padding"></div>
9769
9770     <div class="entry">
9771       <div class="title">
9772         <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>
9773       </div>
9774       <div class="date">
9775         14th May 2010
9776       </div>
9777       <div class="body">
9778         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
9779 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
9780 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
9781 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
9782 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
9783 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
9784 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
9785 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
9786
9787 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
9788 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
9789 this on the collector host:</p>
9790
9791 <blockquote><pre>
9792 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
9793 </pre></blockquote>
9794
9795 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
9796 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
9797
9798 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
9799 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
9800 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
9801 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
9802 written yet.</p>
9803
9804       </div>
9805       <div class="tags">
9806
9807
9808         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>.
9809
9810
9811       </div>
9812     </div>
9813     <div class="padding"></div>
9814
9815     <div class="entry">
9816       <div class="title">
9817         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
9818       </div>
9819       <div class="date">
9820         13th May 2010
9821       </div>
9822       <div class="body">
9823         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
9824 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
9825 has been
9826 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
9827
9828 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
9829 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
9830 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
9831 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
9832 based boot system.  Tollef is
9833 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
9834 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
9835 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
9836 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
9837 at the moment do not.</p>
9838
9839 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
9840 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
9841 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
9842 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
9843 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
9844 way forward.</p>
9845
9846 <p>In the mean time, based on the
9847 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9848 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
9849 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
9850 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
9851 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
9852 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
9853 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
9854 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
9855
9856       </div>
9857       <div class="tags">
9858
9859
9860         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>.
9861
9862
9863       </div>
9864     </div>
9865     <div class="padding"></div>
9866
9867     <div class="entry">
9868       <div class="title">
9869         <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>
9870       </div>
9871       <div class="date">
9872          6th May 2010
9873       </div>
9874       <div class="body">
9875         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
9876 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
9877 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
9878 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
9879 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9880 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
9881 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9882
9883 <blockquote><pre>
9884 CONCURRENCY=makefile
9885 </pre></blockquote>
9886
9887 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
9888 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
9889 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
9890 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
9891 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
9892 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
9893 make this happen.</p>
9894
9895 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
9896 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
9897 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
9898 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
9899 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
9900
9901 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
9902 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
9903 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
9904 fix the remaining issues.</p>
9905
9906 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9907 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9908 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9909 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9910
9911       </div>
9912       <div class="tags">
9913
9914
9915         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>.
9916
9917
9918       </div>
9919     </div>
9920     <div class="padding"></div>
9921
9922     <div class="entry">
9923       <div class="title">
9924         <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>
9925       </div>
9926       <div class="date">
9927         27th July 2009
9928       </div>
9929       <div class="body">
9930         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
9931 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
9932 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
9933 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
9934 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
9935 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
9936 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
9937
9938 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
9939 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
9940 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
9941
9942       </div>
9943       <div class="tags">
9944
9945
9946         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>.
9947
9948
9949       </div>
9950     </div>
9951     <div class="padding"></div>
9952
9953     <div class="entry">
9954       <div class="title">
9955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
9956       </div>
9957       <div class="date">
9958         22nd July 2009
9959       </div>
9960       <div class="body">
9961         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
9962 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
9963 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
9964 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
9965 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
9966 the package up to date.</p>
9967
9968 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
9969 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
9970 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
9971 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
9972 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
9973 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
9974 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
9975 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
9976 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
9977 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
9978 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
9979 working on the future release.</p>
9980
9981 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
9982 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
9983
9984       </div>
9985       <div class="tags">
9986
9987
9988         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>.
9989
9990
9991       </div>
9992     </div>
9993     <div class="padding"></div>
9994
9995     <div class="entry">
9996       <div class="title">
9997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
9998       </div>
9999       <div class="date">
10000         24th June 2009
10001       </div>
10002       <div class="body">
10003         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
10004 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
10005 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
10006 funded
10007 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
10008 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
10009 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
10010 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
10011 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
10012 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
10013
10014 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
10015 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
10016 boot:</p>
10017
10018 <ul>
10019
10020 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
10021
10022 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
10023    clock is in UTC.</li>
10024
10025 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
10026    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10027    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
10028
10029 </ul>
10030
10031 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
10032 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
10033 Villegas</a>.
10034
10035 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
10036 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
10037 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
10038 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
10039 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
10040 using this.</p>
10041
10042 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
10043 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
10044 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
10045 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
10046 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
10047 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
10048 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
10049
10050       </div>
10051       <div class="tags">
10052
10053
10054         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>.
10055
10056
10057       </div>
10058     </div>
10059     <div class="padding"></div>
10060
10061     <div class="entry">
10062       <div class="title">
10063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
10064       </div>
10065       <div class="date">
10066         17th May 2009
10067       </div>
10068       <div class="body">
10069         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
10070 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
10071 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
10072 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
10073 dager siden kom
10074 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
10075 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
10076 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
10077 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
10078 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
10079
10080 <blockquote>
10081 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
10082 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
10083 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
10084 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
10085 </blockquote>
10086
10087 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
10088 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
10089 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
10090 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
10091 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
10092
10093 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
10094 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
10095 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
10096
10097       </div>
10098       <div class="tags">
10099
10100
10101         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>.
10102
10103
10104       </div>
10105     </div>
10106     <div class="padding"></div>
10107
10108     <div class="entry">
10109       <div class="title">
10110         <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>
10111       </div>
10112       <div class="date">
10113          7th May 2009
10114       </div>
10115       <div class="body">
10116         <p>Kom over
10117 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
10118 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
10119 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
10120 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
10121 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
10122 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
10123 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
10124
10125       </div>
10126       <div class="tags">
10127
10128
10129         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>.
10130
10131
10132       </div>
10133     </div>
10134     <div class="padding"></div>
10135
10136     <div class="entry">
10137       <div class="title">
10138         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
10139       </div>
10140       <div class="date">
10141          2nd May 2009
10142       </div>
10143       <div class="body">
10144         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
10145 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
10146 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
10147 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
10148 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
10149 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
10150 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
10151 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
10152 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
10153 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
10154 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
10155 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
10156 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
10157 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
10158 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
10159 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
10160 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
10161 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
10162 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
10163 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
10164
10165 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
10166 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
10167 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
10168 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
10169 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
10170 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
10171 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
10172 betydelige.</p>
10173
10174       </div>
10175       <div class="tags">
10176
10177
10178         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>.
10179
10180
10181       </div>
10182     </div>
10183     <div class="padding"></div>
10184
10185     <div class="entry">
10186       <div class="title">
10187         <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>
10188       </div>
10189       <div class="date">
10190          2nd May 2009
10191       </div>
10192       <div class="body">
10193         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
10194 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
10195 do not yet know them.</p>
10196
10197 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
10198 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
10199 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
10200 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
10201 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
10202 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
10203 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
10204 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
10205 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
10206 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
10207 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
10208
10209 <p>The second one is
10210 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
10211 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
10212 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
10213 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
10214 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
10215 and the company behind it is running
10216 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
10217 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
10218 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
10219 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
10220 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
10221 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
10222 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
10223 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
10224
10225 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
10226 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
10227 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
10228 surrounded by today.</p>
10229
10230       </div>
10231       <div class="tags">
10232
10233
10234         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>.
10235
10236
10237       </div>
10238     </div>
10239     <div class="padding"></div>
10240
10241     <div class="entry">
10242       <div class="title">
10243         <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>
10244       </div>
10245       <div class="date">
10246         28th April 2009
10247       </div>
10248       <div class="body">
10249         <p>Julien Blache
10250 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
10251 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
10252 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
10253 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
10254 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
10255 properties.</p>
10256
10257       </div>
10258       <div class="tags">
10259
10260
10261         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>.
10262
10263
10264       </div>
10265     </div>
10266     <div class="padding"></div>
10267
10268     <div class="entry">
10269       <div class="title">
10270         <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>
10271       </div>
10272       <div class="date">
10273         30th March 2009
10274       </div>
10275       <div class="body">
10276         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
10277 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
10278 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
10279 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
10280 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
10281 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
10282 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
10283 application.</p>
10284
10285 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
10286 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
10287 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
10288 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
10289 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
10290 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
10291 blocked from doing so.</p>
10292
10293 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
10294 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
10295 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
10296 requirements change.</p>
10297
10298 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
10299 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
10300 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
10301
10302       </div>
10303       <div class="tags">
10304
10305
10306         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>.
10307
10308
10309       </div>
10310     </div>
10311     <div class="padding"></div>
10312
10313     <div class="entry">
10314       <div class="title">
10315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
10316       </div>
10317       <div class="date">
10318         29th March 2009
10319       </div>
10320       <div class="body">
10321         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
10322 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
10323 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
10324 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
10325 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
10326 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
10327 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
10328 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
10329 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
10330 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
10331 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
10332 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
10333 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
10334 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
10335 now. :)</p>
10336
10337       </div>
10338       <div class="tags">
10339
10340
10341         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>.
10342
10343
10344       </div>
10345     </div>
10346     <div class="padding"></div>
10347
10348     <div class="entry">
10349       <div class="title">
10350         <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>
10351       </div>
10352       <div class="date">
10353         29th March 2009
10354       </div>
10355       <div class="body">
10356         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
10357 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
10358 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
10359 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
10360 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
10361 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
10362
10363 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
10364 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
10365 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
10366 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
10367 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
10368 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
10369 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
10370 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
10371 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
10372 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
10373 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
10374 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
10375 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
10376
10377 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
10378 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
10379 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
10380 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
10381
10382 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
10383 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
10384
10385 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
10386 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
10387 new IETF work group?</p>
10388
10389       </div>
10390       <div class="tags">
10391
10392
10393         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>.
10394
10395
10396       </div>
10397     </div>
10398     <div class="padding"></div>
10399
10400     <div class="entry">
10401       <div class="title">
10402         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
10403       </div>
10404       <div class="date">
10405         15th February 2009
10406       </div>
10407       <div class="body">
10408         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
10409 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
10410 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
10411 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
10412 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
10413 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
10414 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
10415 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
10416 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
10417 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
10418 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
10419 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
10420
10421       </div>
10422       <div class="tags">
10423
10424
10425         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>.
10426
10427
10428       </div>
10429     </div>
10430     <div class="padding"></div>
10431
10432     <div class="entry">
10433       <div class="title">
10434         <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>
10435       </div>
10436       <div class="date">
10437          7th December 2008
10438       </div>
10439       <div class="body">
10440         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
10441 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
10442 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
10443 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
10444 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
10445 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
10446 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
10447 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
10448
10449 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
10450 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
10451 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
10452 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
10453 of these cards.</p>
10454
10455       </div>
10456       <div class="tags">
10457
10458
10459         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>.
10460
10461
10462       </div>
10463     </div>
10464     <div class="padding"></div>
10465
10466     <div class="entry">
10467       <div class="title">
10468         <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>
10469       </div>
10470       <div class="date">
10471         25th November 2008
10472       </div>
10473       <div class="body">
10474         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
10475 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
10476 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
10477 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
10478 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
10479 notes are available on
10480 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
10481 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
10482 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
10483 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
10484 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
10485 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
10486 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
10487 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
10488 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
10489
10490 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
10491 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
10492
10493       </div>
10494       <div class="tags">
10495
10496
10497         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>.
10498
10499
10500       </div>
10501     </div>
10502     <div class="padding"></div>
10503
10504     <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>
10505     <div id="sidebar">
10506
10507
10508
10509 <h2>Archive</h2>
10510 <ul>
10511
10512 <li>2016
10513 <ul>
10514
10515 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
10516
10517 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
10518
10519 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
10520
10521 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
10522
10523 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
10524
10525 </ul></li>
10526
10527 <li>2015
10528 <ul>
10529
10530 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10531
10532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10533
10534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
10535
10536 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
10537
10538 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10539
10540 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
10541
10542 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
10543
10544 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10545
10546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
10547
10548 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10549
10550 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
10551
10552 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10553
10554 </ul></li>
10555
10556 <li>2014
10557 <ul>
10558
10559 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10560
10561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
10562
10563 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
10564
10565 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10566
10567 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
10568
10569 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10570
10571 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
10572
10573 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10574
10575 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10576
10577 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
10578
10579 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10580
10581 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
10582
10583 </ul></li>
10584
10585 <li>2013
10586 <ul>
10587
10588 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
10589
10590 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
10591
10592 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
10593
10594 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
10595
10596 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10597
10598 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
10599
10600 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10601
10602 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10603
10604 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10605
10606 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
10607
10608 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
10609
10610 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10611
10612 </ul></li>
10613
10614 <li>2012
10615 <ul>
10616
10617 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10618
10619 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
10620
10621 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
10622
10623 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
10624
10625 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
10626
10627 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
10628
10629 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
10630
10631 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10632
10633 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
10634
10635 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
10636
10637 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
10638
10639 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10640
10641 </ul></li>
10642
10643 <li>2011
10644 <ul>
10645
10646 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
10647
10648 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10649
10650 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
10651
10652 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10653
10654 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10655
10656 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10657
10658 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10659
10660 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10661
10662 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
10663
10664 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10665
10666 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10667
10668 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
10669
10670 </ul></li>
10671
10672 <li>2010
10673 <ul>
10674
10675 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10676
10677 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
10678
10679 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
10680
10681 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
10682
10683 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10684
10685 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
10686
10687 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
10688
10689 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
10690
10691 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
10692
10693 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10694
10695 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
10696
10697 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
10698
10699 </ul></li>
10700
10701 <li>2009
10702 <ul>
10703
10704 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
10705
10706 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
10707
10708 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
10709
10710 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
10711
10712 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10713
10714 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
10715
10716 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
10717
10718 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10719
10720 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
10721
10722 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10723
10724 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10725
10726 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10727
10728 </ul></li>
10729
10730 <li>2008
10731 <ul>
10732
10733 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
10734
10735 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10736
10737 </ul></li>
10738
10739 </ul>
10740
10741
10742
10743 <h2>Tags</h2>
10744 <ul>
10745
10746  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
10747
10748  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
10749
10750  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
10751
10752  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
10753
10754  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
10755
10756  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
10757
10758  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
10759
10760  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
10761
10762  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (129)</a></li>
10763
10764  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (156)</a></li>
10765
10766  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
10767
10768  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
10769
10770  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (22)</a></li>
10771
10772  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
10773
10774  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (319)</a></li>
10775
10776  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
10777
10778  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
10779
10780  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (27)</a></li>
10781
10782  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
10783
10784  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (17)</a></li>
10785
10786  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
10787
10788  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
10789
10790  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (12)</a></li>
10791
10792  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
10793
10794  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
10795
10796  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
10797
10798  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
10799
10800  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
10801
10802  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
10803
10804  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (38)</a></li>
10805
10806  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (7)</a></li>
10807
10808  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (275)</a></li>
10809
10810  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (181)</a></li>
10811
10812  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (26)</a></li>
10813
10814  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
10815
10816  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (60)</a></li>
10817
10818  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
10819
10820  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
10821
10822  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
10823
10824  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
10825
10826  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
10827
10828  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
10829
10830  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
10831
10832  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
10833
10834  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
10835
10836  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (46)</a></li>
10837
10838  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
10839
10840  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
10841
10842  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (49)</a></li>
10843
10844  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (4)</a></li>
10845
10846  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
10847
10848  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
10849
10850  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
10851
10852  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
10853
10854  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
10855
10856  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (57)</a></li>
10857
10858  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
10859
10860  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
10861
10862 </ul>
10863
10864
10865     </div>
10866     <p style="text-align: right">
10867  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
10868 </p>
10869
10870   </body>
10871 </html>