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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 edu".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_utgave__v2_2__av_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen_gitt_ut.html">Ny utgave (v2.2) av den frie norske stavekontrollen gitt ut</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         15th April 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>I dag tok jeg mot til meg og pakket sammen en ny versjon av den
  32 frie norske stavekontrollen, ca. tre og et halvt år etter forrige
  33 gang.  Resultatet kan lastes ned fra
  34 <a href="http://no.speling.org/">no.speling.org-prosjeksiden</a>, både
  35 som kildekodepakke og som "pack"-fil som kanskje fortsatt kan brukes
  36 av OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.  Byggesystemet trenger oppussing, men i
  37 denne omgang hadde jeg bare tid til å fikse byggefeil forårsaket av
  38 endringer i GNU grep.  De øvrige endringene var gjort tidligere i
  39 påvente av en ny utgave.</p>
  40
  41 <p><strong>Her er det som er nytt (fra NEWS-fila i
  42 kildekodepakken):</strong></p>
  43
  44 <p>Release 2.2 (2016-04-15)</p>
  45
  46 <ul>
  47
  48  <li>Rewrite how scripts/speling2words handle tripple consonants, to
  49    avoid importing duplicate words from no.speling.org, and getting
  50    rid of the existing duplicates in norsk.words.</li>
  51  <li>Remove duplicate entries with tripple consonants from norsk.words.</li>
  52  <li>Update frequency for entries in norsk.words based on
  53    <URL:http://helmer.aksis.uib.no/nta/ordlistf.zip> (ran 'make
  54    freq-update').</li>
  55  <li>Correct nn ispell build, avoid crash in munchlist causing lots of
  56    words to fall out of the database.</li>
  57  <li>Use grep -a to convince grep it is working on text files, to work
  58    with newer grep versions.</li>
  59
  60  <li>Remove some words disputed in the no.speling.org review process:
  61    <ul>
  62     <li>apparent (nb)</li>
  63     <li>likke (nb)</li>
  64     <li>ugjest, ugjesten, ugjestens (nb)</li>
  65  </ul></li>
  66
  67 </ul>
  68
  69       </div>
  70       <div class="tags">
  71
  72
  73         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
  74
  75
  76       </div>
  77     </div>
  78     <div class="padding"></div>
  79
  80     <div class="entry">
  81       <div class="title">
  82         <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>
  83       </div>
  84       <div class="date">
  85         30th November 2015
  86       </div>
  87       <div class="body">
  88         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
  89 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
  90 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
  91 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
  92 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
  93
  94 <blockquote>
  95
  96 <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>
  97
  98 <blockquote>
  99 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
 100
 101 The first step is to choose a
 102 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
 103 code.<br/>
 104
 105 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
 106 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
 107
 108 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
 109 work<br/>
 110
 111 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
 112 </blockquote>
 113
 114 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
 115 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
 116 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
 117 0x57</a></small></p>
 118
 119 <p>As the Debian Website
 120 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
 121 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
 122 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
 123 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
 124 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
 125 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
 126 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
 127 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
 128 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
 129 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
 130 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
 131 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
 132 Freedom">FaiF</a>
 133 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
 134 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
 135 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
 136 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
 137 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
 138 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
 139 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
 140 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
 141 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
 142 In March the SFC supported a
 143 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
 144 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
 145 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
 146 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
 147 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
 148 conferences
 149 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
 150 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
 151 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
 152 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
 153 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
 154 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
 155 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
 156 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
 157 Software.</p>
 158
 159 <p>If you support Free Software,
 160 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
 161 what the SFC do, agree with their
 162 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
 163 principles</a>, are happy about their
 164 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
 165 work on a project that is an SFC
 166 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
 167 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
 168 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
 169 Allan Webber</a>,
 170 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
 171 Smith</a>,
 172 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
 173 Bacon</a>, myself and
 174 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
 175 becoming a
 176 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
 177 next week your donation will be
 178 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
 179 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
 180 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
 181 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
 182 social media accounts.</p>
 183
 184 </blockquote>
 185
 186 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
 187 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
 188 supporter too?</p>
 189
 190       </div>
 191       <div class="tags">
 192
 193
 194         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>.
 195
 196
 197       </div>
 198     </div>
 199     <div class="padding"></div>
 200
 201     <div class="entry">
 202       <div class="title">
 203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
 204       </div>
 205       <div class="date">
 206         26th April 2015
 207       </div>
 208       <div class="body">
 209         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
 210 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
 211 announcement today</a>:</p>
 212
 213 <pre>
 214 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
 215 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
 216 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
 217 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
 218
 219 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
 220 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
 221 later today ;)
 222
 223 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
 224 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
 225 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
 226 be possible and encouraged!
 227
 228 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
 229 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
 230
 231 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
 232 operating system for schools, universities and other
 233 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
 234 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
 235 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
 236 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
 237 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
 238 days.
 239
 240 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
 241 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
 242 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
 243 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
 244
 245 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
 246 installation instructions are available, including detailed
 247 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
 248 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
 249 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
 250 least 5 characters!
 251
 252 == Where to download ==
 253
 254 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
 255 can be downloaded at the following locations:
 256
 257     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
 258     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
 259
 260 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
 261
 262 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
 263 available, with more software included (saving additional download
 264 time):
 265
 266     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
 267     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
 268
 269 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
 270
 271 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
 272 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
 273 options.
 274
 275 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
 276
 277 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
 278 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
 279
 280 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
 281 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
 282 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
 283 online version of the translated manual.
 284
 285 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
 286 release notes and the installation manual:
 287 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
 288 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
 289
 290
 291 == Errata / known problems ==
 292
 293     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
 294     DHCP (#780461).
 295
 296     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
 297
 298 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
 299 hostname immediately.
 300
 301 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
 302 more current and complete list.
 303
 304 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
 305
 306 === Software updates ===
 307
 308 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
 309
 310  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
 311    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
 312    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
 313
 314  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
 315    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
 316    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
 317    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
 318      the others see the manual.
 319  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
 320  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
 321  * GOsa 2.7.4
 322  * LTSP 5.5.4
 323  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
 324  * new boot framework: systemd
 325  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
 326  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
 327  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
 328  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
 329  * golearn 0.9
 330  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
 331  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
 332  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
 333  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
 334    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
 335
 336 === Installation changes ===
 337
 338     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
 339     for the hardware present.
 340
 341 === Fixed bugs ===
 342
 343 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
 344 from a user perspective:
 345
 346  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
 347    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
 348    information is corrected (710362)
 349
 350  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
 351
 352 === Sugar desktop removed ===
 353
 354 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
 355 available in Debian Edu jessie.
 356
 357
 358 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
 359
 360 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
 361 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 362 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
 363 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 364 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 365 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 366 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 367 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
 368 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 369 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 370 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 371 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
 372 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
 373 environment.
 374
 375 == About Debian ==
 376
 377 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
 378 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
 379 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
 380 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
 381 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
 382 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
 383 operating system.
 384
 385 == Thanks ==
 386
 387 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
 388 You rock.
 389 </pre>
 390
 391       </div>
 392       <div class="tags">
 393
 394
 395         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 396
 397
 398       </div>
 399     </div>
 400     <div class="padding"></div>
 401
 402     <div class="entry">
 403       <div class="title">
 404         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
 405       </div>
 406       <div class="date">
 407         15th April 2015
 408       </div>
 409       <div class="body">
 410         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
 411 computer system for schools I've involved in,
 412 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
 413 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
 414 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
 415 Agarwal.</p>
 416
 417 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 418
 419 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
 420 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
 421 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
 422 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
 423 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
 424 few software start-ups as well.</p>
 425
 426 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 427 project?</strong></p>
 428
 429 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
 430 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
 431 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
 432 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
 433 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
 434 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
 435 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
 436
 437 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 438 Edu?</strong></p>
 439
 440 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
 441 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
 442 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
 443 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
 444 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
 445 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
 446 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
 447 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
 448
 449 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
 450 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
 451 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
 452 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
 453 for the developer per-se.</p>
 454
 455 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 456 Edu?</strong></p>
 457
 458 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
 459 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
 460 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
 461
 462 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
 463 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
 464 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
 465 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
 466 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
 467 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
 468 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
 469
 470 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
 471 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
 472 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
 473
 474 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
 475 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
 476 interactive manner. While sites such as the
 477 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
 478 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
 479 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
 480 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
 481 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
 482 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
 483 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
 484 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
 485 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
 486 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
 487 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
 488
 489 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
 490 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
 491 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
 492 also be used.</p>
 493
 494 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
 495 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
 496 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
 497 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
 498 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
 499 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
 500 the user's input.</p>
 501
 502 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
 503 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
 504 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
 505 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
 506 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
 507 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
 508 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
 509 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
 510
 511 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
 512 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
 513 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
 514 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
 515 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
 516 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
 517 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
 518 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
 519
 520 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 521
 522 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
 523 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
 524 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
 525 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
 526 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
 527
 528 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 529 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 530
 531 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
 532 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
 533 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
 534 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
 535 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
 536 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
 537
 538 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
 539 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
 540 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
 541 well.</p>
 542
 543 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
 544 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
 545 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
 546 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
 547
 548 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
 549 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
 550 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
 551 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
 552 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
 553 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
 554 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
 555 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
 556 releases.</p>
 557
 558 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
 559 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
 560 is aimed at.
 561
 562 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
 563 around 2 years, and
 564 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
 565 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
 566 there was :</p>
 567
 568 <ol>
 569
 570   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
 571    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
 572    portion/syllabus given.</li>
 573
 574   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
 575    is in the syllabus.</li>
 576
 577   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
 578    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
 579    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
 580    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
 581    as recognizable as say a
 582    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
 583    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
 584    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
 585    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
 586    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
 587    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
 588
 589 </ol>
 590
 591       </div>
 592       <div class="tags">
 593
 594
 595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 596
 597
 598       </div>
 599     </div>
 600     <div class="padding"></div>
 601
 602     <div class="entry">
 603       <div class="title">
 604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
 605       </div>
 606       <div class="date">
 607         27th October 2014
 608       </div>
 609       <div class="body">
 610         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
 611 sent out
 612 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
 613 announcement</a>:</p>
 614
 615 <pre>
 616 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
 617 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
 618
 619 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
 620 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
 621 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
 622 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
 623 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
 624 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
 625 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
 626
 627 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
 628 installation instructions are available, including detailed
 629 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
 630 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
 631 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
 632 of at least 5 characters!
 633
 634  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
 635
 636 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
 637 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
 638 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
 639 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
 640 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
 641
 642 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
 643 mostly in Germany and Norway.
 644
 645 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
 646 ===============================
 647
 648 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
 649 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 650 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
 651 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 652 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 653 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 654 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 655 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
 656 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 657 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 658 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 659 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
 660 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
 661 environment.
 662
 663  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
 664  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
 665
 666 Full release notes and manual
 667 =============================
 668
 669 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
 670 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
 671 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
 672 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
 673 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
 674
 675  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
 676  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
 677
 678 Where to get it
 679 ---------------
 680
 681 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
 682
 683  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
 684  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
 685  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
 686
 687 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
 688
 689 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
 690 ===============================================================================
 691
 692
 693 Installation changes
 694 --------------------
 695
 696  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
 697
 698 Software updates
 699 ----------------
 700
 701 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
 702
 703  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
 704  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
 705    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
 706    choose one of the others see manual.)
 707  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
 708  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
 709  * GOsa 2.7.4
 710  * LTSP 5.5.4
 711  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
 712  * new boot framework: systemd
 713  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
 714  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
 715  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
 716  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
 717  * golearn 0.9
 718  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
 719  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
 720  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
 721    installation.
 722  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
 723    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
 724
 725  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
 726  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
 727
 728 Fixed bugs
 729 ----------
 730
 731  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
 732    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
 733    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
 734  * and many others.
 735
 736 Documentation and translation updates
 737 -------------------------------------
 738
 739  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
 740    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
 741    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
 742
 743 Other changes
 744 -------------
 745
 746  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
 747    server takes more time.
 748  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
 749    doesn't work.
 750
 751 Regressions / known problems
 752 ----------------------------
 753
 754  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
 755    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
 756    and Debian bug #762103).
 757  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
 758    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
 759  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
 760    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
 761    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
 762
 763 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
 764
 765  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
 766
 767 How to report bugs
 768 ------------------
 769
 770 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
 771
 772 About Debian
 773 ============
 774
 775 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
 776 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
 777 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
 778 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
 779 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
 780 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
 781 operating system.
 782
 783 Contact Information
 784 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
 785 mail to press@debian.org.
 786
 787  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
 788 </pre>
 789
 790       </div>
 791       <div class="tags">
 792
 793
 794         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 795
 796
 797       </div>
 798     </div>
 799     <div class="padding"></div>
 800
 801     <div class="entry">
 802       <div class="title">
 803         <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>
 804       </div>
 805       <div class="date">
 806         26th September 2014
 807       </div>
 808       <div class="body">
 809         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 810 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
 811 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
 812 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
 813 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
 814 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
 815 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
 816 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
 817 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
 818 future.  The
 819 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
 820 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
 821 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
 822 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
 823 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
 824
 825 <p>First, download the test ISO via
 826 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
 827 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
 828 or rsync (use
 829 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
 830 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
 831 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
 832 install with some tweaking.</p>
 833
 834 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
 835 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
 836
 837 <p><blockquote><pre>
 838 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
 839 </pre></blockquote></p>
 840
 841 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
 842 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
 843 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
 844 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
 845
 846 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
 847 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
 848 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
 849 your need.</p>
 850
 851 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
 852 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
 853 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
 854 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
 855 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
 856 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
 857 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
 858 days.</p>
 859
 860 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
 861 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
 862 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
 863 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
 864 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
 865 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
 866 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
 867 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
 868 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
 869
 870 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
 871 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
 872 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
 873
 874       </div>
 875       <div class="tags">
 876
 877
 878         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>.
 879
 880
 881       </div>
 882     </div>
 883     <div class="padding"></div>
 884
 885     <div class="entry">
 886       <div class="title">
 887         <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>
 888       </div>
 889       <div class="date">
 890         16th September 2014
 891       </div>
 892       <div class="body">
 893         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
 894 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
 895 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
 896 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
 897 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
 898 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
 899 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
 900 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
 901 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
 902 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
 903 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
 904 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
 905 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
 906 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
 907
 908 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
 909 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
 910 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
 911 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
 912 depend on the small and clever package
 913 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
 914 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
 915 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
 916 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
 917 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
 918 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
 919 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
 920 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
 921 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
 922 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
 923 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
 924
 925 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
 926 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
 927 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
 928 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
 929 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
 930 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
 931 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
 932 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
 933 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
 934 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
 935 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
 936 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
 937 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
 938 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
 939 dialog.</p>
 940
 941 <p><table>
 942
 943 <tr>
 944 <th>Machine/setup</th>
 945 <th>Original tasksel</th>
 946 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
 947 <th>Reduction</th>
 948 </tr>
 949
 950 <tr>
 951 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
 952 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
 953 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
 954 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
 955 </tr>
 956
 957 <tr>
 958 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
 959 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
 960 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
 961 <td>23 min 40%</td>
 962 </tr>
 963
 964 <tr>
 965 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
 966 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
 967 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
 968 <td>11 min 50%</td>
 969 </tr>
 970
 971 <tr>
 972 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
 973 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
 974 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
 975 <td>2 min 33%</td>
 976 </tr>
 977
 978 <tr>
 979 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
 980 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
 981 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
 982 <td>4 min 21%</td>
 983 </tr>
 984
 985 </table></p>
 986
 987 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
 988 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
 989 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
 990 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
 991 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
 992 installed.</p>
 993
 994 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
 995 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
 996 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
 997 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
 998 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
 999 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1000 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1001 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1002 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1003 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1004 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1005 for the entire installation.</p>
1006
1007 <p>I've implemented this in the
1008 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1009 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1010 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1011 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1012 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1013
1014 <p><blockquote><pre>
1015 #!/bin/sh
1016 set -e
1017 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1018 info() {
1019     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1020 }
1021 error() {
1022     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1023 }
1024 override_install() {
1025     apt-install eatmydata || true
1026     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1027         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1028             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1029             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1030             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1031                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1032                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1033                     > /target$file.edu
1034                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1035                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1036                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1037                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1038             else
1039                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1040             fi
1041         done
1042     else
1043         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1044     fi
1045 }
1046
1047 override_install
1048 </pre></blockquote></p>
1049
1050 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1051 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1052
1053 <p><blockquote><pre>
1054 #! /bin/sh -e
1055 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1056 error() {
1057     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1058 }
1059 remove_install_override() {
1060     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1061         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1062         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1063             rm /target$file
1064             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1065                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1066             rm /target$file.edu
1067         else
1068             error "Missing divert for $file."
1069         fi
1070     done
1071     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1072 }
1073
1074 remove_install_override
1075 </pre></blockquote></p>
1076
1077 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1078 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1079 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1080
1081 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1082 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1083 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1084 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1085 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1086 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1087 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1088 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1089 everyone.</p>
1090
1091 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1092 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1093 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1094 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1095
1096 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1097 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1098 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1099 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1100 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1101
1102 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1103 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1104 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1105 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1106 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1107
1108       </div>
1109       <div class="tags">
1110
1111
1112         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>.
1113
1114
1115       </div>
1116     </div>
1117     <div class="padding"></div>
1118
1119     <div class="entry">
1120       <div class="title">
1121         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
1122       </div>
1123       <div class="date">
1124         31st July 2014
1125       </div>
1126       <div class="body">
1127         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
1128 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1129 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
1130 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
1131 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
1132 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
1133
1134 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1135
1136 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
1137 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
1138 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
1139 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
1140 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
1141 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
1142 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
1143 works with Windows . :-(</p>
1144
1145 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
1146 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
1147 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
1148 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
1149 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
1150 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
1151
1152 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1153 project?</strong></p>
1154
1155 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
1156 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
1157 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
1158 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
1159 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
1160 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
1161 with this job.</p>
1162
1163 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1164 Edu?</strong></p>
1165
1166 <p>The independence.</p>
1167
1168 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
1169 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
1170 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
1171
1172 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
1173 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
1174 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
1175 working reliable. </p>
1176
1177 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
1178 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
1179 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
1180 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
1181 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
1182 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
1183 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
1184 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
1185
1186 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1187 Edu?</strong></p>
1188
1189 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
1190 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
1191 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
1192
1193 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1194
1195 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
1196 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
1197
1198 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1199 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1200
1201 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
1202 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
1203 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
1204 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
1205 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
1206 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
1207 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
1208
1209       </div>
1210       <div class="tags">
1211
1212
1213         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1214
1215
1216       </div>
1217     </div>
1218     <div class="padding"></div>
1219
1220     <div class="entry">
1221       <div class="title">
1222         <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>
1223       </div>
1224       <div class="date">
1225         17th June 2014
1226       </div>
1227       <div class="body">
1228         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1229 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1230 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1231 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1232 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
1233
1234 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1235 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1236 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1237 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1238 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1239 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1240 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1241 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1242 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1243 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1244 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1245 goals.</p>
1246
1247 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1248 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1249 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1250 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1251 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1252 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1253 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1254 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1255 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1256 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1257 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1258 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1259 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1260 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1261 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1262 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1263 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1264 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1265 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1266 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1267 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1268 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1269 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1270 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1271
1272 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1273 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1274 track the English original.  For this we use the
1275 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1276 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1277 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1278 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1279 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1280 files), which the translations update with the native language
1281 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1282 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1283 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1284 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1285 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1286 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1287 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1288 of the documentation.</p>
1289
1290 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1291 recommend using
1292 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
1293 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1294 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1295 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1296 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1297 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1298 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1299 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1300
1301 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1302 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1303 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1304 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1305 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1306 translated images by storing translated versions in
1307 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1308 package maintainers know more.</p>
1309
1310 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1311 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1312 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
1313 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1314 PDF version</a> or the
1315 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1316 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1317 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
1318
1319 <p>To learn more, check out
1320 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1321 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
1322 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1323 manual on the wiki</a> and
1324 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1325 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
1326
1327       </div>
1328       <div class="tags">
1329
1330
1331         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>.
1332
1333
1334       </div>
1335     </div>
1336     <div class="padding"></div>
1337
1338     <div class="entry">
1339       <div class="title">
1340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
1341       </div>
1342       <div class="date">
1343         30th March 2014
1344       </div>
1345       <div class="body">
1346         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
1347 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
1348 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
1349 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
1350 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
1351
1352 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1353
1354 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
1355 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
1356 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
1357 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
1358 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
1359
1360 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
1361 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
1362 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
1363
1364 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
1365 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
1366 hunger.</p>
1367
1368 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1369 project?</strong></p>
1370
1371 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
1372 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
1373 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
1374 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
1375 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
1376 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
1377 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
1378 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
1379 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
1380 running.  I just loved it.</p>
1381
1382 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1383 Edu?</strong></p>
1384
1385 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
1386 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
1387 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
1388 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
1389 be made of steel.</p>
1390
1391 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1392 Edu?</strong></p>
1393
1394 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
1395
1396 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
1397 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
1398 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
1399 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
1400 or dropped.</p>
1401
1402 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
1403 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
1404 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
1405 discourage many people too.</p>
1406
1407 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1408
1409 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
1410 Virtualbox.</p>
1411
1412
1413 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1414 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1415
1416 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
1417 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
1418 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
1419 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
1420 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
1421 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
1422 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
1423 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
1424 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
1425
1426       </div>
1427       <div class="tags">
1428
1429
1430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1431
1432
1433       </div>
1434     </div>
1435     <div class="padding"></div>
1436
1437     <div class="entry">
1438       <div class="title">
1439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
1440       </div>
1441       <div class="date">
1442         12th March 2014
1443       </div>
1444       <div class="body">
1445         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
1446 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
1447 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
1448 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
1449 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
1450 document this better when one of the customers of
1451 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
1452 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
1453 get this working are the following:</p>
1454
1455 <p><ol>
1456
1457 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
1458 example host here.</li>
1459
1460 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
1461 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
1462
1463 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
1464 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
1465
1466 </ol></p>
1467
1468 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
1469 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
1470 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
1471 started).</p>
1472
1473 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
1474 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
1475
1476 <p><blockquote><pre>
1477 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
1478 Export list for nas-server:
1479 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
1480 root@tjener:~#
1481 </pre></blockquote></p>
1482
1483 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
1484 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
1485 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
1486 NFS access.</p>
1487
1488 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
1489 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
1490 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
1491
1492 <p><blockquote><pre>
1493 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1494 </pre></blockquote></p>
1495
1496 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
1497 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
1498 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
1499 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
1500
1501 <p><blockquote><pre>
1502 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1503 objectClass: automount
1504 cn: nas-server
1505 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1506
1507 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1508 objectClass: top
1509 objectClass: automountMap
1510 ou: auto.nas-server
1511
1512 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1513 objectClass: automount
1514 cn: /
1515 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
1516 </pre></blockquote></p>
1517
1518 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
1519 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
1520 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
1521
1522 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
1523 the storage server directly by just visiting the
1524 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
1525 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
1526
1527       </div>
1528       <div class="tags">
1529
1530
1531         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
1532
1533
1534       </div>
1535     </div>
1536     <div class="padding"></div>
1537
1538     <div class="entry">
1539       <div class="title">
1540         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
1541       </div>
1542       <div class="date">
1543         25th December 2013
1544       </div>
1545       <div class="body">
1546         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1547 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
1548 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
1549 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
1550 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
1551 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
1552 George</a>.</p>
1553
1554 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
1555
1556 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1557
1558 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
1559 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
1560 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
1561 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
1562 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
1563 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
1564
1565 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
1566 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
1567 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
1568 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
1569 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
1570 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
1571 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
1572 to help building another school's informational education concept from
1573 scratch.</p>
1574
1575 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
1576 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
1577 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
1578
1579 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
1580 and cycling.</p>
1581
1582 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1583 project?</strong></p>
1584
1585 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
1586 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
1587 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
1588 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
1589 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
1590 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
1591
1592 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
1593 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
1594 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
1595 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
1596 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
1597 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
1598 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
1599 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
1600 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
1601
1602 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
1603 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
1604 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
1605 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
1606
1607 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1608 Edu?</strong></p>
1609
1610 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
1611 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
1612 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
1613 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
1614 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
1615 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
1616 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
1617 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
1618 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
1619 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
1620 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
1621 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
1622 that it rocks!</p>
1623
1624 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
1625 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
1626 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
1627 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
1628 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
1629 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
1630 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
1631
1632 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1633 Edu?</strong></p>
1634
1635 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
1636 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
1637 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
1638 can list a few points about that:</p>
1639
1640 <ul>
1641
1642  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
1643  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
1644  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
1645
1646 </ul>
1647
1648 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
1649
1650 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1651
1652 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
1653 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
1654 year.</p>
1655
1656 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
1657 run text tools. I use
1658 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
1659 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
1660 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
1661 based full-featured student management software with the two),
1662 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
1663 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
1664 coloured world called the WWW, I use
1665 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
1666 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
1667 e-mail.</p>
1668
1669 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
1670 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
1671 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
1672 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
1673 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
1674 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
1675 Facebook now ;).</p>
1676
1677 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1678 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1679
1680 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
1681 side is what I have experienced.</p>
1682
1683 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
1684 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
1685 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
1686 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
1687 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
1688 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
1689 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
1690 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
1691 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
1692 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
1693 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
1694 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
1695 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
1696 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
1697 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
1698 plain criminal.</p>
1699
1700 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
1701 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
1702 founded an association named
1703 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
1704 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
1705 area of free and open source software, for example the
1706 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
1707 Teckids and are the youth programme of
1708 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
1709 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
1710 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
1711 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
1712 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
1713 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
1714
1715 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
1716 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
1717 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
1718 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
1719 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
1720 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
1721 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
1722 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
1723 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
1724 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
1725 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
1726 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
1727
1728 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
1729 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
1730 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
1731 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
1732
1733 <!--
1734
1735 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
1736
1737 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
1738 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
1739
1740  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
1741    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
1742    of the decision makers above;
1743  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
1744    knowledge about free software
1745
1746 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
1747
1748 -->
1749
1750       </div>
1751       <div class="tags">
1752
1753
1754         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1755
1756
1757       </div>
1758     </div>
1759     <div class="padding"></div>
1760
1761     <div class="entry">
1762       <div class="title">
1763         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
1764       </div>
1765       <div class="date">
1766          6th December 2013
1767       </div>
1768       <div class="body">
1769         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
1770 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1771 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
1772 had a new school administrator show up on
1773 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
1774 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
1775 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
1776 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
1777 Germany a few years ago.</p>
1778
1779 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1780
1781 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
1782 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
1783 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
1784 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
1785
1786 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
1787 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
1788 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
1789 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
1790 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
1791 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
1792 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
1793 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
1794 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
1795
1796 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1797 project?</strong></p>
1798
1799 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
1800 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
1801 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
1802 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
1803
1804 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1805 Edu?</strong></p>
1806
1807 <ul>
1808   <li>Quick installation,</li>
1809   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
1810   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
1811   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
1812     single company,</li>
1813   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
1814     experience and problem solutions.</li>
1815 </ul>
1816
1817 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1818 Edu?</strong></p>
1819
1820 <ul>
1821   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
1822   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
1823   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
1824   working again reliably.
1825
1826   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
1827   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
1828   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
1829   as their base.
1830
1831   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
1832   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
1833   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
1834   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
1835   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
1836   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
1837
1838   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
1839   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
1840   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
1841   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
1842   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
1843   schemes.</li>
1844
1845   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
1846   compared to Debian.</li>
1847
1848 </ul>
1849
1850 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
1851 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
1852 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
1853 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
1854
1855 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1856
1857 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
1858 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
1859 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
1860 programming languages for teaching.</p>
1861
1862 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1863 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1864
1865 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
1866
1867 <ul>
1868
1869   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
1870     teaching and learning.</li>
1871
1872   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
1873     home, and at their working place without running into license or
1874     conversion problems.</li>
1875
1876   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
1877     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
1878     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
1879     science, not products.</li>
1880
1881   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
1882     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
1883
1884 </ul>
1885
1886       </div>
1887       <div class="tags">
1888
1889
1890         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1891
1892
1893       </div>
1894     </div>
1895     <div class="padding"></div>
1896
1897     <div class="entry">
1898       <div class="title">
1899         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
1900       </div>
1901       <div class="date">
1902          8th October 2013
1903       </div>
1904       <div class="body">
1905         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
1906 Salvador had published a
1907 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
1908 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
1909 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
1910 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
1911 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
1912 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
1913 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
1914 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
1915 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
1916 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
1917 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
1918 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
1919 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
1920 computers without hard drives by installing one central
1921 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
1922
1923 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
1924
1925 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1926
1927 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
1928 me know. :)</p>
1929
1930       </div>
1931       <div class="tags">
1932
1933
1934         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1935
1936
1937       </div>
1938     </div>
1939     <div class="padding"></div>
1940
1941     <div class="entry">
1942       <div class="title">
1943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
1944       </div>
1945       <div class="date">
1946         29th September 2013
1947       </div>
1948       <div class="body">
1949         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
1950 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
1951 complete announcement text can be found at
1952 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
1953 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
1954
1955 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
1956 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
1957 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
1958 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
1959
1960       </div>
1961       <div class="tags">
1962
1963
1964         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1965
1966
1967       </div>
1968     </div>
1969     <div class="padding"></div>
1970
1971     <div class="entry">
1972       <div class="title">
1973         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
1974       </div>
1975       <div class="date">
1976         16th September 2013
1977       </div>
1978       <div class="body">
1979         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1980 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
1981
1982 <blockquote>
1983 <p>Hi,</p>
1984
1985 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
1986 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1987 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
1988
1989 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
1990 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
1991 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
1992 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
1993
1994 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
1995 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
1996
1997 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
1998 compared to beta1:</p>
1999
2000 <ul>
2001
2002 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
2003 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
2004 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
2005 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
2006 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
2007 main server.</li>
2008 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
2009 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
2010 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
2011 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
2012 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
2013
2014 </ul>
2015
2016 <p>Where to get it:</p>
2017
2018 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2019
2020 <ul>
2021 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
2022 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
2023 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
2024 </ul>
2025
2026 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
2027
2028 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
2029 <ul>
2030 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
2031 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
2032 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
2033 </ul>
2034
2035 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
2036
2037 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
2038 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
2039 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
2040 as the other isos.</p>
2041
2042 <p>How to report bugs</p>
2043
2044 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
2045 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
2046
2047
2048 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
2049
2050 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
2051 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2052 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2053 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2054 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2055 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2056 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2057 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
2058 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2059 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2060 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2061 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
2062 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2063
2064 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2065 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2066 Squeeze release.</p>
2067
2068 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
2069
2070 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2071 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2072 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2073 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2074 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
2075 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
2076 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
2077 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
2078 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
2079 directory.</p>
2080
2081
2082 <p>cheers,
2083 <br>        Holger</p>
2084 </blockquote>
2085
2086       </div>
2087       <div class="tags">
2088
2089
2090         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2091
2092
2093       </div>
2094     </div>
2095     <div class="padding"></div>
2096
2097     <div class="entry">
2098       <div class="title">
2099         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2100       </div>
2101       <div class="date">
2102         22nd August 2013
2103       </div>
2104       <div class="body">
2105         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2106 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
2107 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
2108
2109 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
2110
2111 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2112 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2113
2114 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2115
2116 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2117 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2118 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2119 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2120 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2121 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2122 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2123 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
2124 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2125 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2126 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2127 desktop contains
2128 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2129 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2130 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2131 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2132
2133 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
2134 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
2135 release.</p>
2136
2137 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2138 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2139 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2140 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2141 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
2142 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
2143 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
2144 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
2145 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
2146 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
2147 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
2148
2149 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2150
2151 <ul>
2152
2153 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
2154     work also without a attached tty.</li>
2155 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
2156     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
2157     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
2158     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
2159     required).</li>
2160
2161 </ul>
2162
2163 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2164
2165 <ul>
2166
2167 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
2168 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
2169 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
2170 stick ISO image.</li>
2171 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
2172 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
2173 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
2174     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
2175     cope with this.</li>
2176 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
2177 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
2178     empty password hashes.</li>
2179 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
2180     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
2181     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
2182
2183 </ul>
2184
2185 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2186
2187 <ul>
2188
2189 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2190     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2191 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
2192     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
2193
2194 </ul>
2195
2196 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2197
2198 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2199
2200 <ul>
2201
2202 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
2203
2204 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
2205
2206 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
2207
2208 </ul>
2209
2210 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
2211 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
2212
2213 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2214
2215 <ul>
2216
2217 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
2218 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
2219 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
2220
2221 </ul>
2222
2223 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
2224 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
2225
2226
2227 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2228
2229 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2230
2231       </div>
2232       <div class="tags">
2233
2234
2235         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2236
2237
2238       </div>
2239     </div>
2240     <div class="padding"></div>
2241
2242     <div class="entry">
2243       <div class="title">
2244         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2245       </div>
2246       <div class="date">
2247         27th July 2013
2248       </div>
2249       <div class="body">
2250         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2251 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2252
2253 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
2254 2013-07-27</strong></p>
2255
2256 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2257 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2258
2259 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2260
2261 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2262 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2263 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2264 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2265 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2266 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2267 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2268 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2269 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2270 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2271 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2272 desktop contains
2273 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2274 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2275 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2276 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2277
2278 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2279 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2280 Squeeze release.</p>
2281
2282 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2283 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2284 release.</p>
2285
2286 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2287
2288 <ul>
2289
2290 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
2291    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
2292 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
2293    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
2294    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
2295    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
2296    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
2297 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
2298 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
2299 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
2300    crash bugs.</li>
2301
2302 </ul>
2303
2304 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2305
2306 <ul>
2307
2308 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
2309    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
2310 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
2311    netinst CD.</li>
2312 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
2313    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
2314 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
2315    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
2316    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
2317 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
2318    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
2319    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
2320 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
2321    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
2322    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
2323 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
2324    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
2325 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
2326
2327 </ul>
2328
2329 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2330
2331 <ul>
2332
2333 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
2334 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2335     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2336 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
2337
2338 </ul>
2339
2340 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2341
2342 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2343
2344 <ul>
2345
2346 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
2347
2348 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
2349
2350 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
2351
2352 </ul>
2353
2354 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
2355 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
2356
2357 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2358
2359 <ul>
2360
2361 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
2362 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
2363 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
2364
2365 </ul>
2366
2367 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
2368 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
2369
2370
2371 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2372
2373 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2374
2375       </div>
2376       <div class="tags">
2377
2378
2379         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2380
2381
2382       </div>
2383     </div>
2384     <div class="padding"></div>
2385
2386     <div class="entry">
2387       <div class="title">
2388         <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>
2389       </div>
2390       <div class="date">
2391          9th July 2013
2392       </div>
2393       <div class="body">
2394         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
2395 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2396 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
2397 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
2398 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2399 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2400 Bitraf</a>.</p>
2401
2402 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
2403 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
2404 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
2405 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2406 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
2407
2408       </div>
2409       <div class="tags">
2410
2411
2412         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>.
2413
2414
2415       </div>
2416     </div>
2417     <div class="padding"></div>
2418
2419     <div class="entry">
2420       <div class="title">
2421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2422       </div>
2423       <div class="date">
2424          3rd July 2013
2425       </div>
2426       <div class="body">
2427         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2428 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2429
2430 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
2431 2013-07-03</strong></p>
2432
2433 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2434 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2435
2436 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2437
2438 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2439 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2440 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2441 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2442 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2443 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2444 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2445 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2446 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2447 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2448 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2449 desktop contains
2450 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2451 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2452 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2453 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2454
2455 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2456 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2457 Squeeze release.</p>
2458
2459 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2460 <ul>
2461   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
2462   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
2463     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
2464     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
2465   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
2466     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
2467     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
2468   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
2469     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
2470     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
2471     too.</li>
2472   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
2473     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
2474 </ul>
2475 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2476 <ul>
2477   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
2478   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
2479   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
2480     up for some language options.</li>
2481   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
2482   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
2483   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
2484     d-i is doing it.</li>
2485   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
2486     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
2487   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
2488     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
2489     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
2490   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
2491     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
2492   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
2493   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
2494     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
2495   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
2496     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
2497 </ul>
2498 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2499 <ul>
2500   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2501     available yet (698840).</li>
2502   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
2503 </ul>
2504 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2505
2506 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2507 <ul>
2508   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
2509   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
2510   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
2511 </ul>
2512
2513 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
2514 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
2515
2516 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2517 <ul>
2518   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
2519   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
2520   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
2521 </ul>
2522
2523 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
2524 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
2525
2526 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2527
2528 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
2529
2530       </div>
2531       <div class="tags">
2532
2533
2534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2535
2536
2537       </div>
2538     </div>
2539     <div class="padding"></div>
2540
2541     <div class="entry">
2542       <div class="title">
2543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
2544       </div>
2545       <div class="date">
2546         22nd June 2013
2547       </div>
2548       <div class="body">
2549         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2550 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
2551 which check that services are running, working, and return the
2552 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
2553 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
2554 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
2555 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
2556 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
2557 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
2558
2559 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
2560 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
2561 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
2562 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
2563 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
2564 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
2565 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
2566 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
2567 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
2568 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
2569 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
2570 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
2571 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
2572 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
2573
2574 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
2575 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
2576 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
2577 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
2578 the problem.</p>
2579
2580 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
2581 please join us on
2582 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
2583 irc.debian.org</a> and the
2584 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
2585 list.</p>
2586
2587       </div>
2588       <div class="tags">
2589
2590
2591         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2592
2593
2594       </div>
2595     </div>
2596     <div class="padding"></div>
2597
2598     <div class="entry">
2599       <div class="title">
2600         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
2601       </div>
2602       <div class="date">
2603         17th June 2013
2604       </div>
2605       <div class="body">
2606         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2607 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
2608 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
2609 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
2610 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
2611 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
2612 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
2613 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
2614
2615 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2616
2617 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
2618 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
2619 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
2620 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
2621 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
2622 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
2623 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
2624 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
2625 field.</p>
2626
2627 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
2628 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
2629 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
2630 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
2631 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
2632 the only one we have in our country.</p>
2633
2634 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2635 project?</strong></p>
2636
2637 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
2638 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
2639 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
2640 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
2641 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
2642 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
2643 ways to contribute.</p>
2644
2645 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
2646 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
2647 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
2648 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
2649 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
2650 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
2651 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
2652 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
2653 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
2654 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
2655
2656 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2657 Edu?</strong></p>
2658
2659 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
2660 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
2661 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
2662 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
2663 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
2664 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
2665 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
2666 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
2667
2668 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
2669 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
2670 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
2671 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
2672 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
2673 project.</p>
2674
2675 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2676 Edu?</strong></p>
2677
2678 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
2679 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
2680 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
2681 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
2682 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
2683 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
2684 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
2685 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
2686 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
2687
2688 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
2689 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
2690 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
2691 on.</p>
2692
2693 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2694
2695 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
2696 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
2697 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
2698 Enlightenment project a lot!),
2699 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
2700 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
2701 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
2702 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
2703 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
2704
2705 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2706 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2707
2708 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
2709 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
2710 that:</p>
2711
2712 <ul>
2713
2714 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
2715
2716 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
2717     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
2718     of teenagers more?</li>
2719
2720 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
2721     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
2722     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
2723     them!)</li>
2724
2725 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
2726     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
2727     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
2728
2729 </ul>
2730
2731 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
2732 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
2733 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
2734 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
2735 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
2736
2737       </div>
2738       <div class="tags">
2739
2740
2741         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2742
2743
2744       </div>
2745     </div>
2746     <div class="padding"></div>
2747
2748     <div class="entry">
2749       <div class="title">
2750         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
2751       </div>
2752       <div class="date">
2753         12th June 2013
2754       </div>
2755       <div class="body">
2756         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
2757 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2758 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
2759 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
2760 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
2761 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
2762
2763 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2764
2765 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
2766 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
2767 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
2768
2769 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
2770 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
2771 each other.</p>
2772
2773 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2774 project?</strong></p>
2775
2776 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
2777 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
2778 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
2779 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
2780 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
2781 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
2782 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
2783 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
2784 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
2785 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
2786 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
2787 we'll get there one day.</p>
2788
2789 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2790 Edu?</strong></p>
2791
2792 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
2793 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
2794 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
2795 very high quality work.</p>
2796
2797 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
2798 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
2799 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
2800 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
2801 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
2802
2803 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2804 Edu?</strong></p>
2805
2806 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
2807 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
2808 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
2809
2810 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
2811 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
2812 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
2813 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
2814 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
2815 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
2816 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
2817 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
2818 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
2819 currently.</p>
2820
2821 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
2822 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
2823 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
2824 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
2825 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
2826 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
2827 autonomous.</p>
2828
2829 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2830
2831 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
2832 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
2833 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
2834 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
2835 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
2836
2837 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
2838 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
2839 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
2840 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
2841 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
2842 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
2843 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
2844 X.</p>
2845
2846 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
2847 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
2848 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
2849 it :p)
2850
2851 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2852 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2853
2854 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
2855 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
2856 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
2857 that.</p>
2858
2859 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
2860 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
2861 advantage of that.</p>
2862
2863 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
2864 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
2865 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
2866 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
2867 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
2868 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
2869 best solution for them.</p>
2870
2871 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
2872 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
2873 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
2874
2875       </div>
2876       <div class="tags">
2877
2878
2879         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2880
2881
2882       </div>
2883     </div>
2884     <div class="padding"></div>
2885
2886     <div class="entry">
2887       <div class="title">
2888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2889       </div>
2890       <div class="date">
2891         10th June 2013
2892       </div>
2893       <div class="body">
2894         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2895 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2896
2897 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
2898 2013-06-10</strong></p>
2899
2900 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
2901 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2902
2903 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2904
2905 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2906 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2907 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2908 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2909 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2910 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2911 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2912 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2913 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2914 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2915 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2916 desktop contains
2917 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2918 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2919 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2920 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2921
2922 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2923 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2924 Squeeze release.</p>
2925
2926 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2927
2928 <ul>
2929
2930 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
2931 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
2932 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
2933 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
2934 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
2935
2936 </ul>
2937
2938 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2939
2940 <ul>
2941
2942 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
2943 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
2944 <li>New Romanian translation.
2945 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
2946 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
2947 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
2948 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
2949 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
2950 <li>More testsuite tests.
2951 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
2952 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
2953
2954 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
2955 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
2956
2957 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
2958 them up with GOsa².</li>
2959
2960 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
2961
2962 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
2963 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
2964 entered password). </li>
2965
2966 </ul>
2967
2968 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2969
2970 <ul>
2971
2972 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
2973
2974 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2975 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
2976 missing import feature).</li>
2977
2978 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
2979
2980 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
2981 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
2982 unfixed.</li>
2983
2984 </ul>
2985
2986 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2987
2988 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2989
2990 <ul>
2991
2992 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
2993
2994 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
2995
2996 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
2997
2998 </ul>
2999
3000 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
3001 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
3002
3003 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3004
3005 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3006
3007       </div>
3008       <div class="tags">
3009
3010
3011         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3012
3013
3014       </div>
3015     </div>
3016     <div class="padding"></div>
3017
3018     <div class="entry">
3019       <div class="title">
3020         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
3021       </div>
3022       <div class="date">
3023          5th June 2013
3024       </div>
3025       <div class="body">
3026         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
3027 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
3028 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
3029 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
3030 the project:
3031
3032 <ol>
3033
3034 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
3035   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
3036   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
3037   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
3038   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
3039
3040 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
3041   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
3042   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
3043   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
3044   #698840</a>.</li>
3045
3046 </ol>
3047
3048 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
3049 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3050 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
3051
3052       </div>
3053       <div class="tags">
3054
3055
3056         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3057
3058
3059       </div>
3060     </div>
3061     <div class="padding"></div>
3062
3063     <div class="entry">
3064       <div class="title">
3065         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
3066       </div>
3067       <div class="date">
3068          4th June 2013
3069       </div>
3070       <div class="body">
3071         <p>It has been a while since my last English
3072 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3073 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
3074 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
3075 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
3076 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
3077
3078 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3079
3080 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
3081 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
3082 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
3083 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
3084
3085 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
3086 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
3087 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
3088
3089 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3090 project?</strong></p>
3091
3092 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
3093 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
3094 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
3095 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
3096 manual.
3097
3098 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
3099 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
3100 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
3101 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
3102
3103 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
3104 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
3105 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
3106 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
3107 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
3108 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
3109 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
3110 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
3111 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
3112 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
3113
3114 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
3115 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
3116 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
3117 beautiful project.</p>
3118
3119 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3120 Edu?</strong></p>
3121
3122 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
3123 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
3124 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
3125
3126 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
3127 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
3128 of educational free software.</p>
3129
3130 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3131 Edu?</strong></p>
3132
3133 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
3134 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
3135 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
3136 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
3137 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
3138
3139 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
3140 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
3141 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
3142 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
3143 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
3144 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
3145 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
3146 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
3147
3148 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3149
3150 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
3151 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
3152 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
3153 also using the mathematical software
3154 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
3155 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
3156 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
3157
3158 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
3159 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
3160 statistics?</strong></p>
3161
3162 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
3163 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
3164 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
3165 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
3166
3167 <ul>
3168
3169 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
3170 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
3171 constructions in planar geometry
3172
3173 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
3174 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
3175 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
3176
3177 </ul>
3178
3179 <p>I like also
3180 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
3181 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
3182 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
3183
3184 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3185 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3186
3187 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
3188
3189 <ul>
3190
3191 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
3192
3193 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
3194     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
3195     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
3196
3197 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
3198
3199 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
3200     system.</li>
3201
3202 </ul>
3203
3204       </div>
3205       <div class="tags">
3206
3207
3208         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3209
3210
3211       </div>
3212     </div>
3213     <div class="padding"></div>
3214
3215     <div class="entry">
3216       <div class="title">
3217         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
3218       </div>
3219       <div class="date">
3220          1st June 2013
3221       </div>
3222       <div class="body">
3223         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3224 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
3225 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
3226 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
3227 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
3228 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
3229 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
3230 program.</p>
3231
3232 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
3233
3234 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
3235 <p>
3236 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
3237 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
3238 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
3239 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
3240 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3241 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
3242 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
3243 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
3244 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
3245 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
3246 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
3247 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
3248 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
3249 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
3250 </p>
3251
3252 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
3253 <p>
3254 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
3255 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
3256 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
3257 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
3258 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
3259 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
3260 </p>
3261
3262 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
3263 <p>
3264 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
3265 </p>
3266
3267 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
3268 <p>
3269 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
3270 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
3271 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
3272 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
3273 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
3274 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
3275 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
3276 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
3277 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
3278 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
3279 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
3280 </p>
3281
3282 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
3283 <p>
3284 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3285 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
3286 </p>
3287
3288 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
3289 <p>
3290 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
3291 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
3292 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
3293 </p>
3294
3295 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
3296 <p>
3297 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3298 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
3299 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
3300 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
3301 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
3302 </p>
3303
3304 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
3305 <p>
3306 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
3307 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
3308 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3309 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
3310 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
3311 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
3312 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
3313 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
3314 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
3315 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
3316 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
3317 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
3318 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
3319 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
3320 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
3321 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
3322 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
3323 </p>
3324
3325 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
3326 <p>
3327 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3328 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
3329 </p>
3330
3331 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
3332 <p>
3333 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
3334 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
3335 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
3336 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3337 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
3338 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
3339 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
3340 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
3341 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
3342 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
3343 </p>
3344
3345 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
3346 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
3347 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
3348 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
3349 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
3350 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
3351 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
3352
3353       </div>
3354       <div class="tags">
3355
3356
3357         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3358
3359
3360       </div>
3361     </div>
3362     <div class="padding"></div>
3363
3364     <div class="entry">
3365       <div class="title">
3366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Nirosan_Thiyagalingam.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Nirosan Thiyagalingam</a>
3367       </div>
3368       <div class="date">
3369         24th May 2013
3370       </div>
3371       <div class="body">
3372         <p>En ting
3373 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux-prosjektet</a> har
3374 hatt mye glede av er studentprosjekter.  F.eks.  er
3375 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.org/">stillbildeanimasjonssystemet
3376 Stopmotion</a> resultat av et studentprosjekt i Skolelinux.  De siste
3377 månedene har en ivrig student veiledet av Marius Kotsbak i
3378 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRiSK</a> testet hva en
3379 kan få til med en datamaskin til NOK 400,- (antagelig 1700,- med
3380 skjerm, tastatur og mus) når det brukes i Skolelinux.  Jeg spurte han
3381 om et intervju.</p>
3382
3383 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
3384
3385 <p>Jeg heter Nirosan Thiyagalingam. Jeg er 24 år og studerer
3386 dataingeniør studiet ved Høgskolen i Sør Trøndelag. Interessen for
3387 data har siden ung alder vært tilstede og jeg har i tillegg alltid
3388 vært glad i å lære nye ting. Med teknologi som endres svært hurtig er
3389 det alltid noe nytt å lære.  Noe som igjen har gjort det svært
3390 interessant å følge med på utviklingen.  Jeg valgte dataingeniør
3391 studiet grunnet ønske om å lære enda mer om programmering og utvikling
3392 av store systemer.</p>
3393
3394 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
3395
3396 <p>Skolelinux prosjektet hørte jeg først om i media. Men det var først
3397 når jeg skulle velge bacheloroppgave at jeg fattet mer interesse for
3398 prosjektet. Et enkelt søk på nettet førte meg til skolelinux sine
3399 hjemmesider.  Informasjonen jeg fant der gjorde meg enda nysgjerrig og
3400 jeg valgte derfor en oppgave som gikk ut på å få en
3401 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry PI</a>.  Altså en
3402 ultra-billig datamaskin til å kjøre Debian Edu på lik linje med
3403 vanlige datamaskiner. I løpet av prosjektet ble det gjort mye
3404 forskning på nettet. Det var mye jeg måtte forstå rundt hvordan
3405 operativsystemet Linux fungerte før jeg kunne angripe
3406 problemet. Prøvde først å finne ut hvordan man kunne transformere en
3407 vanlig installasjon av Skolelinux til Raspberry PI, men dette var
3408 altfor vanskelig å jeg endte opp med mer spørsmål enn svar. Det ble
3409 videre opprettet kontakt med Skolelinux utviklere på IRC der jeg fikk
3410 diskutert hvilken retning jeg burde gå for å få til en fullverdig
3411 løsning. Det ble bestemt at jeg skulle gå for å først installere
3412 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspian</a>. Dette er et
3413 operativsystem basert på Debian spesiallaget for Raspberry Pi sin
3414 maskinvare. Nå som Debian var installert på datamaskinen gjenstod det
3415 å installere de nødvendige Skolelinux pakkene for å få til et
3416 fullverdig system. Disse pakkene ble installert manuelt i første
3417 omgang, men ble senere installert automatisk via et script som Petter
3418 Reinholdtsen laget. Dette scriptet er så enkel å bruke at man er i
3419 gang med installasjonen i løpet av bare 5 minutter. Ikke nok med det,
3420 alt skjer helt automatisk. Alt i alt er jeg veldig fornøyd med
3421 resultatet av installasjonsprosessen. Raspberry Pi er en veldig svak
3422 maskin og det merkes godt når man har installert Skolelinux på
3423 den. Video og 3D-rendering fungerer utrolig dårlig, men nettsurfing og
3424 kontorprogrammer fungerer godt.  Det kan derfor konkluderes med at
3425 datamaskinen er egnet for enkle oppgaver.
3426
3427 <p>Jeg syns det er viktig påpeke at dette kun er startfasen av en slik
3428 løsning. På markedet finnes det nå maskiner som har bedre hardware enn
3429 Raspberry Pi. Det er store muligheter for at man kan klare å
3430 installere Skolelinux på disse også, og da forsvinner nok mest
3431 sannsynlig ytelsesproblemene med Video og 3D rendering også.</p>
3432
3433 <p>Det ble også prøvd med en løsning som gjorde at Raspberry Pi
3434 fungerte som en tynnklient. Denne løsningen hadde langt bedre ytelse
3435 med tanke på hastighet og brukeropplevelse. Men også her var video og
3436 3D rendering dårlig. Det ble brukt en liten Linux distribusjon kalt
3437 <a href="http://www.berryterminal.com/">BerryTerminal</a> for å få til
3438 dette.</p>
3439
3440 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
3441
3442 <p>Fordelen med Skolelinux er mange. At det er gratis er en stor
3443 fordel, men at det er så mange som er med på å utvikle det og
3444 vedlikeholde det er en enda større fordel. Allerede før jeg startet
3445 med prosjektet så jeg mange fordeler, og når jeg nærmet meg sluttfasen
3446 så jeg langt flere. At prosjektet skulle inneha en så høy kvalitet
3447 hadde jeg aldri trodd. En vanlig Skolelinux installasjon har de
3448 nødvendige programmene og funksjonen som både små og store skoler i
3449 tillegg til organisasjoner kan klare seg med.  At prosjektet tilbyr en
3450 så komplett løsning er en kjempefordel.  Installasjonen er knirkefri
3451 og det er svært enkelt å installere og komme i gang.</p>
3452
3453 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
3454
3455 <p>Ulempene jeg ser med prosjektet er ryddigheten av websidene. Selv
3456 om websidene er enkle og konsise er det allikevel ikke appellerende i
3457 like stor grad som for eksempel
3458 <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com">Ubuntu</a> sine sider.  Deres side
3459 tilbyr, i tillegg til godt design og presentasjon, en nettbasert
3460 emulator av deres operativsystem. Dette er en stor fordel slik jeg ser
3461 det.  Bortsett fra dette ser jeg absolutt ingen ulemper med
3462 Skolelinux-prosjektet.</p>
3463
3464 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
3465
3466 <p>Til daglig er jeg en flittig bruker av det åpne media
3467 sentersystemet <a href="http://xbmc.org/">XBMC</a>. Det enorme
3468 samfunnet rundt dette prosjektet har gjort dette til et program som
3469 dekker alles behov. Man kan tilpasse det akkurat slik man vil både med
3470 tanke på utseende og funksjoner ved installere plug-ins eller
3471 scripts.</p>
3472
3473 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
3474 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
3475
3476 <p>Strategien som burde brukes sett fra mine øyne er
3477 markedsføring. Jeg er sikker på at om flere skoler fikk et lite innsyn
3478 i hvor bra Skolelinux er så ville de ikke nølt med å gå over fra noe
3479 annet som koster de store summer. At skolelinux til de grader tilbyr
3480 en så komplett løsning bure komme frem. Enten via reklamekampanjer
3481 eller ved å sende ut folk til skoler for så å la skolenettverk
3482 ansvarlige få teste ut hvordan Skolelinux fungerer i praksis. Om det
3483 i tillegg ble utviklet gode websider og en emulator for å la brukere
3484 prøve operativsystemet ville nok dette ha styrket inntrykket
3485 betraktelig.</p>
3486
3487       </div>
3488       <div class="tags">
3489
3490
3491         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
3492
3493
3494       </div>
3495     </div>
3496     <div class="padding"></div>
3497
3498     <div class="entry">
3499       <div class="title">
3500         <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>
3501       </div>
3502       <div class="date">
3503         17th May 2013
3504       </div>
3505       <div class="body">
3506         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
3507 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
3508 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3509 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
3510 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3511 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
3512 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3513 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3514 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
3515 donate some money</a>.
3516
3517 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3518 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3519 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
3520 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3521 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
3522
3523 <p>The script,
3524 <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/>
3525 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3526 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3527 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
3528
3529 <ol>
3530
3531 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
3532 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
3533 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3534     our configuration.</li>
3535 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3536     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3537     according to the profile specified in the config above,
3538     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
3539 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3540     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
3541 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
3542
3543 </ol>
3544
3545 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3546 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3547 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3548 the needed packages.</p>
3549
3550 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3551 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
3552 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3553 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
3554 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3555 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
3556
3557 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3558 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3559 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
3560
3561 <p><pre>
3562 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
3563 DESKTOP="lxde"
3564 </pre></p>
3565
3566 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
3567 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
3568 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
3569 boot.</p>
3570
3571       </div>
3572       <div class="tags">
3573
3574
3575         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>.
3576
3577
3578       </div>
3579     </div>
3580     <div class="padding"></div>
3581
3582     <div class="entry">
3583       <div class="title">
3584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3585       </div>
3586       <div class="date">
3587         14th May 2013
3588       </div>
3589       <div class="body">
3590         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3591 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
3592 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3593
3594 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
3595 2013-05-14</strong></p>
3596
3597 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
3598 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
3599 codename "Wheezy".</p>
3600
3601 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3602
3603 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
3604 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
3605 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
3606 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
3607 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
3608 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
3609 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
3610 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
3611
3612 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3613 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3614 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
3615
3616 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3617 <ul>
3618   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
3619     default.</li>
3620   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
3621   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
3622   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
3623     ibus-anthy.</li>
3624 </ul>
3625
3626 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3627 <ul>
3628
3629   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
3630     reliability improvements.</li>
3631   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
3632     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
3633   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
3634     problems.</li>
3635   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
3636     direct:// URL.</li>
3637   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
3638   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
3639   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
3640   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
3641     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
3642   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
3643     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
3644 </ul>
3645
3646 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3647 <ul>
3648
3649   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
3650     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
3651     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
3652   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
3653   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3654     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
3655   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
3656   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
3657   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
3658     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
3659   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
3660     password submission problem
3661     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
3662
3663 </ul>
3664
3665 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3666
3667 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3668 <ul>
3669
3670   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
3671   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
3672   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
3673
3674 </ul>
3675
3676 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
3677
3678 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
3679
3680 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3681
3682 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3683
3684       </div>
3685       <div class="tags">
3686
3687
3688         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3689
3690
3691       </div>
3692     </div>
3693     <div class="padding"></div>
3694
3695     <div class="entry">
3696       <div class="title">
3697         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Narvik_sparer_minst_9_millioner_p____bruke_Skolelinux.html">Narvik sparer minst 9 millioner på å bruke Skolelinux</a>
3698       </div>
3699       <div class="date">
3700         10th May 2013
3701       </div>
3702       <div class="body">
3703         <p>I fjor sommer ble jeg
3704 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gladoppslag_om_Skolelinux_i_avisen_Fremover.html">gledelig
3705 overrasket</a> over et oppslag i avisen Fremover om Narvik kommunes
3706 bruk av <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  Oppslaget
3707 var basert på et notat som besvarte spørsmål fra ordfører Tor Nysæter
3708 og rådgiver for skolesektoren, Petter Falkbu, om bruken av Skolelinux
3709 i Narvikskolene og konstnaden ved å gå over til Windows.  For litt
3710 over en uke siden siden fikk jeg endelig bedt kommunen om å få innsyn
3711 i dette notatet, og det ble oversendt på epost tirsdag.  Jeg fikk
3712 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/offentliginnsyn/from-Narvik-kommune/2013-04-29-09:12-skolelinux-notat/PetterFalkbuogwindowsfornarvikskolen%20(L)351310.pdf">lagt
3713 ut notatet</a> samme dag, og fikk i dag sjekket postlista til Narvik,
3714 der jeg fant notatet som
3715 <a href="https://www.narvik.kommune.no/innsyn.aspx?response=arkivsak_detaljer&arkivsakid=2013001023&scripturi=/innsyn.aspx&skin=infolink&Mid1=301&">sak
3716 2013/1023</a>.</p>
3717
3718 <p>Notatet forteller at Narvik ville måtte betalt minst 9 millioner
3719 for å gå over til Windows på skolene.  I tillegg dokumenterer notatet
3720 at læreplanens krav oppfylles uten problemer ved bruk av Skolelinux.
3721 Jeg anbefaler alle å lese de 10 sidene med gode argumenter for å kutte
3722 unødige utgifter på IT i skoleverket. :)</p>
3723
3724       </div>
3725       <div class="tags">
3726
3727
3728         Tags: <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>.
3729
3730
3731       </div>
3732     </div>
3733     <div class="padding"></div>
3734
3735     <div class="entry">
3736       <div class="title">
3737         <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>
3738       </div>
3739       <div class="date">
3740          5th May 2013
3741       </div>
3742       <div class="body">
3743         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3744 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
3745 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
3746 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3747 soon.</p>
3748
3749 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3750 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
3751 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
3752 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
3753 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
3754 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
3755 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
3756 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3757 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3758 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3759 Edu.</a>
3760
3761 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3762 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
3763 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
3764 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3765 follow.<p>
3766
3767       </div>
3768       <div class="tags">
3769
3770
3771         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>.
3772
3773
3774       </div>
3775     </div>
3776     <div class="padding"></div>
3777
3778     <div class="entry">
3779       <div class="title">
3780         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3781       </div>
3782       <div class="date">
3783         26th April 2013
3784       </div>
3785       <div class="body">
3786         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
3787 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
3788 announcement:</p>
3789
3790 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
3791 2013-04-26</strong></p>
3792
3793 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
3794 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3795
3796 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3797
3798 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3799 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3800 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3801 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
3802 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3803 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3804 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3805 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3806 installed via the network.</p>
3807
3808 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3809 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3810 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
3811
3812 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3813
3814 <ul>
3815 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
3816   <ul>
3817      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
3818      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
3819          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
3820          manual.)</li>
3821      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
3822      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
3823      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
3824      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
3825      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
3826      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
3827      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
3828      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
3829      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
3830      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
3831      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
3832      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
3833          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
3834          manual</a> for more details.</li>
3835      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
3836          installation.</li>
3837      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
3838          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
3839   </ul></li>
3840 </ul>
3841
3842 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
3843 <ul>
3844 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
3845     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
3846     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
3847 </ul>
3848
3849 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
3850 <ul>
3851 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
3852     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
3853     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
3854 </ul>
3855
3856 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3857 <ul>
3858 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
3859     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
3860     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
3861 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
3862     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
3863     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
3864 </ul>
3865
3866 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
3867 <ul>
3868 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
3869     yet.</li>
3870 </ul>
3871
3872 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
3873
3874 <ul>
3875 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
3876     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
3877     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
3878 </ul>
3879
3880 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3881
3882 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
3883 <ul>
3884 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
3885 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
3886 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
3887 </ul>
3888
3889 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
3890
3891 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
3892
3893 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3894
3895 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3896
3897       </div>
3898       <div class="tags">
3899
3900
3901         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3902
3903
3904       </div>
3905     </div>
3906     <div class="padding"></div>
3907
3908     <div class="entry">
3909       <div class="title">
3910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
3911       </div>
3912       <div class="date">
3913         16th April 2013
3914       </div>
3915       <div class="body">
3916         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
3917 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
3918 Details about the gathering can be found
3919 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
3920 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
3921 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
3922 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
3923 weekend.</p>
3924
3925 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
3926 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
3927 Edu release.</p>
3928
3929 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
3930
3931       </div>
3932       <div class="tags">
3933
3934
3935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3936
3937
3938       </div>
3939     </div>
3940     <div class="padding"></div>
3941
3942     <div class="entry">
3943       <div class="title">
3944         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
3945       </div>
3946       <div class="date">
3947         17th March 2013
3948       </div>
3949       <div class="body">
3950         <p>Via
3951 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
3952 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
3953 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
3954 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
3955 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
3956 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
3957 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
3958
3959 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
3960 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
3961
3962 <blockquote>
3963 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
3964 </blockquote>
3965
3966 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
3967
3968 <blockquote>
3969 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
3970 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
3971 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
3972 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
3973 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
3974 </blockquote>
3975
3976 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
3977 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
3978 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
3979 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
3980
3981 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
3982 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
3983
3984 <blockquote>
3985 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
3986 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
3987 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
3988 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
3989 </blockquote>
3990
3991 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
3992 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
3993 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
3994 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
3995 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
3996
3997 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
3998 embedding:</p>
3999
4000 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
4001
4002       </div>
4003       <div class="tags">
4004
4005
4006         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4007
4008
4009       </div>
4010     </div>
4011     <div class="padding"></div>
4012
4013     <div class="entry">
4014       <div class="title">
4015         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
4016       </div>
4017       <div class="date">
4018          8th March 2013
4019       </div>
4020       <div class="body">
4021         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
4022 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
4023 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
4024 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
4025 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
4026 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
4027 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
4028
4029 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
4030
4031 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
4032 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
4033
4034 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
4035 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
4036 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
4037 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
4038 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
4039 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
4040
4041 <p>Images are available for download at
4042 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
4043
4044 <p>md5sums:
4045 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
4046 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
4047 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
4048
4049 <p>sha1sums:
4050 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
4051 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
4052 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
4053
4054 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
4055
4056 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
4057 2013-03-03:</p>
4058
4059 <ul>
4060   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
4061   <ul>
4062         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
4063         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
4064   </ul></li>
4065   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
4066   <ul>
4067         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
4068         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
4069   </ul></li>
4070   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
4071      <ul>
4072         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
4073         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
4074         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
4075                 Closes: #664596</li>
4076         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
4077                 Closes: #664976</li>
4078         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
4079            <ul>
4080                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
4081                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
4082            </ul></li>
4083         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
4084            <ul>
4085                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
4086                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
4087                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
4088                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
4089                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
4090            </ul></li>
4091         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
4092     </ul>
4093   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
4094     <ul>
4095         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
4096     </ul></li>
4097 </ul>
4098
4099 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
4100 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
4101 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
4102 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
4103
4104 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
4105 mailinglist
4106 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
4107 </p></blockquote>
4108
4109 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
4110
4111       </div>
4112       <div class="tags">
4113
4114
4115         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4116
4117
4118       </div>
4119     </div>
4120     <div class="padding"></div>
4121
4122     <div class="entry">
4123       <div class="title">
4124         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Helge_Tore_H_yland.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Helge Tore Høyland</a>
4125       </div>
4126       <div class="date">
4127         22nd February 2013
4128       </div>
4129       <div class="body">
4130         <p>Etter en lang pause og travle uker har jeg endelig klart å få
4131 samlet et nytt intervju med en av folkene i
4132 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet.
4133 Denne gang er det Helge Tore Høyland, en mangeårig bidragsyter på
4134 epostlistene og ellers i prosjektet.</p>
4135
4136 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
4137
4138 <p>Eg er IT-konsulent/teknikker hjå eit firma i Steinkjer med navn
4139 <a href="http://unoit.no/">Uno IT</a>.  Uno IT er eit lite firma som
4140 drifter nettverk og maskiner for små og mellomstore firma
4141 Steinkjer-området. Per dags dato er me 2 ansatte. Min faglege bakgrunn
4142 er Fagbrev som it-teknikker, samt nokre fag innen nettverk- og
4143 server-drift frå HiST og NTNU. Dagleg arbeid består i oppsett av nye
4144 maskiner og hjelp til sluttbrukere, samt oppsett og vedlikehold av eit
4145 vidt spekter av fagsystemer ute hjå kunder. Erfaring med Skolelinux
4146 har eg hatt i forbindelse med drifting av
4147 <a href="http://www.bjorkly.no/">Bjørkly skule</a>, ein privat
4148 grunnskule i Namsos-området.  I dag har skulen 65 elever, 15 lærere, 1
4149 hovedserver og ca 60 klienter som kjører halvtjukt.  Eg har bygd og
4150 driftet systemet sidan summaren 2006.</p>
4151
4152 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
4153
4154 <p>Eg kom i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet via ein artikkel i eit
4155 fagblad, som eg ikkje lenger hugsar namnet på.  I og med at eg allereie
4156 hadde pusla med nettverk for ein annan skule, fatta eg straks
4157 interesse for prosjektet.</p>
4158
4159 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
4160
4161 <p>Fordelane med Skolelinux er sentralisert administrasjon og svært
4162 mange gode verktøy «ut av boksen». Veldig kjekt å kunne drifte 60
4163 klientar med berre å «bry» seg med ein server. Levetid for systemets
4164 hardware er og ein veldig fin effekt. I tillegg kjem fordelar som økt
4165 sikkerhet og mindre lisenskostnader. Etter min erfaring er det og
4166 mykje mindre driftskostnader med eit slikt system enn konkurrerande
4167 system, pga enkelhet med sentralisert administrasjon. På grunn av at
4168 Skolelinux er basert på Debian er det òg svært stabilt.</p>
4169
4170 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
4171
4172 <p>Ulemper er mangel på vilje til å følge standarer ute i markedet,
4173 som fører til mangel på støtte til nokre mykje brukte ting. Flash og
4174 Java er typiske eksempel. Sidan Debian satsar på stabilitet framfor å
4175 ha nyeste pakke av eit program, kan ein i nokre tilfeller kome borti
4176 at program vert «for gamle». Det er spesielt nettlesaren som er
4177 utsett. Mangel på vilje til å utvikle pedagogisk programvare, i Noreg,
4178 for «alle» platformer fører òg til noko hovudbry.</p>
4179
4180 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
4181
4182 <p>Til dagleg bruker eg svært mange forskjellige «fri programvare»
4183 program.  Firefox, Thunderbird, Freecommander, ImgBurn, Clonezilla,
4184 OCS inventory, Icinga, Skolelinux, SystemRescueCD og mykje meir.</p>
4185
4186 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
4187 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
4188
4189 <p>Strategisk må ein fokusere på at sluttbruker eigentleg ikkje er så
4190 fokusert på at det er fri programvare men at det skal «berre fungere».
4191 Gjer det enkelt å bruker og ikkje minst å administrere. For Skolelinux
4192 sin del må ein få eit betre fokus på overganger. Utbytting av servere
4193 må gå meir automatisk, import og eksport av brukerbase og maskinbase
4194 med meir må kunne gå enkelt og oppgradering til neste versjon må bli
4195 mykje meir automatisk og gjennomtesta. Ein må unngå at ein må sette
4196 opp frå start når ein byter ut ein server eller oppgraderer til neste
4197 versjon. For å få Skolelinux til å bli eit betre alternativ for skular
4198 må ein ha fokus på nettlesaren. Denne må bli «up to date» og støtte
4199 dei protokollar og tillegg som vert brukt av forlag med meir.  Etter
4200 kvart som meir og meir blir flytta ut i «skya» vert dette viktigare og
4201 viktigare. Ein kunne ynskje og jobbe for at forlag med fleire tar i
4202 bruk opne standarer, men inntil det skjer, må systemet kunne brukast
4203 mot desse fagsystema.</p>
4204
4205 <p>For meg har prosjektet med Skolelinux vore ein svært artig og
4206 lærerik prosess. Miljøet rundt er ikkje enormt stort, dog stort nok,
4207 men det er svært hjelpevillig og engasjert.</p>
4208
4209       </div>
4210       <div class="tags">
4211
4212
4213         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
4214
4215
4216       </div>
4217     </div>
4218     <div class="padding"></div>
4219
4220     <div class="entry">
4221       <div class="title">
4222         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
4223       </div>
4224       <div class="date">
4225         28th December 2012
4226       </div>
4227       <div class="body">
4228         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
4229 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
4230 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
4231 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
4232 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
4233 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
4234 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
4235 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
4236 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
4237 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
4238 followed by many others. :)</p>
4239
4240 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
4241 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
4242 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
4243 you want to donate to the project.</p>
4244
4245       </div>
4246       <div class="tags">
4247
4248
4249         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4250
4251
4252       </div>
4253     </div>
4254     <div class="padding"></div>
4255
4256     <div class="entry">
4257       <div class="title">
4258         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
4259       </div>
4260       <div class="date">
4261         18th December 2012
4262       </div>
4263       <div class="body">
4264         <p>A few days ago I came across
4265 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
4266 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
4267 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
4268 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
4269 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
4270 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
4271 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
4272 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
4273 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
4274
4275 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
4276 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
4277 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
4278 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
4279
4280 <blockquote><pre>
4281 2004-05-27 Book Store
4282       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
4283       Liabilities:Visa
4284 </pre></blockquote>
4285
4286 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
4287 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
4288 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
4289 Spang</a>,
4290 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
4291 Keen</a>,
4292 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
4293 Cantino</a> and
4294 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
4295 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
4296 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
4297 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
4298 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
4299
4300 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
4301 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
4302 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
4303 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
4304 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
4305
4306 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
4307 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
4308 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
4309 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
4310 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
4311 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
4312 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
4313 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
4314 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
4315
4316       </div>
4317       <div class="tags">
4318
4319
4320         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4321
4322
4323       </div>
4324     </div>
4325     <div class="padding"></div>
4326
4327     <div class="entry">
4328       <div class="title">
4329         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
4330       </div>
4331       <div class="date">
4332         14th November 2012
4333       </div>
4334       <div class="body">
4335         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
4336 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4337 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
4338 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
4339 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
4340 the people behind the German
4341 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
4342 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
4343 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
4344
4345 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4346
4347 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
4348 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
4349 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
4350
4351 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
4352 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
4353 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
4354 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
4355 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
4356 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
4357
4358 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
4359 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
4360 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
4361 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
4362 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
4363 relationship management and the communication processes in the
4364 project.</p>
4365
4366 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
4367 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
4368 and a yoga teacher.</p>
4369
4370 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4371 project?</strong></p>
4372
4373 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
4374
4375 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
4376 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
4377 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
4378 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
4379 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
4380 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
4381 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
4382 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
4383 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
4384 parents.</p>
4385
4386 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
4387 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
4388 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
4389 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
4390 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
4391 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
4392 Germany.</p>
4393
4394 <p>For information about our school project you can read
4395 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
4396 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
4397
4398 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4399 Edu?</strong></p>
4400
4401 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
4402 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
4403
4404 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
4405 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
4406 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
4407 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
4408 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
4409 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
4410 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
4411 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
4412 teachers, parents...</p>
4413
4414 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4415 Edu?</strong></p>
4416
4417 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
4418 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
4419
4420 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
4421 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
4422 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
4423 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
4424 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
4425
4426 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
4427 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
4428 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
4429 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
4430 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
4431 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
4432 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
4433
4434 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4435
4436 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
4437 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
4438 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
4439 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
4440
4441 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4442 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4443
4444 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
4445 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
4446 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
4447 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
4448 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
4449
4450 <ul>
4451
4452 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
4453 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
4454 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
4455
4456 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
4457 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
4458 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
4459 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
4460 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
4461 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
4462 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
4463
4464 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
4465 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
4466 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
4467 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
4468
4469 </ul>
4470
4471       </div>
4472       <div class="tags">
4473
4474
4475         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4476
4477
4478       </div>
4479     </div>
4480     <div class="padding"></div>
4481
4482     <div class="entry">
4483       <div class="title">
4484         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_noe_for_Ballangen___Leserinnlegg_til_avisen_Fremover_.html">Skolelinux noe for Ballangen? (Leserinnlegg til avisen Fremover)</a>
4485       </div>
4486       <div class="date">
4487         14th October 2012
4488       </div>
4489       <div class="body">
4490         <p>Tirsdag 2012-10-09 sendte jeg følgende leserinnlegg til avisen
4491 <a href="http://www.fremover.no/">Fremover</a>, etter å ha vært nordpå
4492 noen dager og lest noen gamle aviser.  Publiserer den her i sin helhet
4493 for fremtidig referanse.  Fremover publiserer dessverre ikke
4494 leserinnlegg på nett.</p>
4495
4496 <blockquote>
4497 <p>To: redaksjon (at) fremover.no
4498 <br>Subject: Leserinnlegg til Fremover: Skolelinux noe for Ballangen?</p>
4499
4500 <p>Ærede redaktør</p>
4501
4502 <p>I sommer (2012-07-23) hadde Fremover et oppslag om at Narvik
4503 kommune hadde spart mellom 10 og 20 millioner kroner de siste årene på
4504 å bruke Skolelinux på sine skoler.  Harstad har også tatt i bruk
4505 Skolelinux på alle sine skoler.  Som tidligere Ballangsværing gledet
4506 det meg stort å se at skoleløsningen vi har utviklet siden 2001 tas i
4507 bruk i området der jeg vokste opp, og dermed bidrar til en bedre og
4508 billigere skolehverdag.</p>
4509
4510 <p>Skolelinux er en komplett IT-løsning for elevnettverket på en
4511 skole, med både nettverkstjenester og løsning for elevmaskiner med
4512 pedagogisk programvare, som tillater en å øke levetiden på en
4513 datamaskin i skolen med mange år.  En undersøkelse publisert i mars
4514 2012 viste at de 56 norske skolene som har offentliggjort at de bruker
4515 Skolelinux eller annen Linuxutgave hadde 36% større PC-tetthet enn
4516 landsgjennomsnittet, når en ser på tall rapportert til Grunnskolens
4517 Informasjonssystem.  I følge Paul Reidar Løsnesløkken, IKT-konsulent i
4518 Nord-Odal, fungerer datamaskiner godt til de er 8 til 10 år gamle.</p>
4519
4520 <p>I høst (2012-09-29) fortalte Fremover hvordan Ballangen kommune har
4521 opparbeidet seg 20 millioner i underskudd og nok havner på Robek-lista
4522 fra nyttår.  Kanskje Ballangen også burde ta i bruk Skolelinux for å
4523 spare penger?  Hvis kommunen mangler kompetanse lokalt på Linux finnes
4524 det kommersielle selskaper som tilbyr driftstjenester rundt
4525 Skolelinux, og jeg bør vel avsløre at jeg selv er involvert i et av
4526 dem, Skolelinux Drift AS.  Kommunen kan dermed få hjelp hvis de ikke
4527 ønsker å bygge opp egen kompetanse.</p>
4528
4529 <p>Vennlig hilsen
4530 <br>Petter Reinholdtsen
4531 <br>Fri programvareutvikler</p>
4532
4533 <p>Referanser:</p>
4534
4535 <ul>
4536
4537 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Linux_skoler_har_h_yere_PC_tetthet_enn_landsgjennomsnittet___pressemelding_fra_FRiSK.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Linux_skoler_har_h_yere_PC_tetthet_enn_landsgjennomsnittet___pressemelding_fra_FRiSK.html</a></li>
4538 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gladoppslag_om_Skolelinux_i_avisen_Fremover.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gladoppslag_om_Skolelinux_i_avisen_Fremover.html</a></li>
4539
4540 </ul>
4541
4542 </blockquote>
4543
4544 <p>Innlegget ble så vidt jeg vet trykket i papirutgaven et par dager
4545 senere, men jeg har ikke sett det selv.</p>
4546
4547       </div>
4548       <div class="tags">
4549
4550
4551         Tags: <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>.
4552
4553
4554       </div>
4555     </div>
4556     <div class="padding"></div>
4557
4558     <div class="entry">
4559       <div class="title">
4560         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trengs_flere_frivillige_til_korrektur_av_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen.html">Trengs flere frivillige til korrektur av den frie norske stavekontrollen</a>
4561       </div>
4562       <div class="date">
4563         13th October 2012
4564       </div>
4565       <div class="body">
4566         <p><a href="http://no.speling.org/">Den frie norske stavekontrollen</a>
4567 består av ca. 1,3 millioner bokmåls- og nynorskord.  Det er mange
4568 kilder til ordene, f.eks. den norske ordbanken, norske nett-aviser,
4569 stavekontrollbrukere og korrekturlesere, og endel feil har sneket seg
4570 inn i databasen over ord.  For å finne og fikse feilene trengs det
4571 korrekturlesing.  Her kommer frivillige inn.</p>
4572
4573 <p>Hvis du vil bidra med korrektur av orddatabasen, kan du melde deg
4574 frivillig som bokmåls- eller nynorskkorrekturleser og få tilsendt en
4575 liten bunke ord på epost hver dag, lese over og sende inn på epost
4576 tilbake til korrekturlesing-systemet.  Jo flere som sjekker, jo
4577 raskere kommer vi igjennom hele databasen.  Så langt har vi oppdaget
4578 341 bokmålsord og 50 nynorskord som ikke skal vært med i databasen.
4579 Det er nok noen flere.  I tillegg har korrekturleserne oppdaget flere
4580 ord som manglet, og fått lagt dem inn i stavekontrollen.</p>
4581
4582 <p>Hvis du vil bidra, følg instruksene på
4583 <a href="http://no.speling.org/dokumentasjon.html">prosjektsidene</a>
4584
4585 for nye bidragsytere, og ta kontakt med Håvard eller epostlisten
4586 <a href="https://lister.ping.uio.no/mailman/listinfo/i18n-no">i18n-no</a>.
4587 Gode norskkunnskaper er en fordel, og vilje til å sjekke
4588 <a href="http://www.nob-ordbok.uio.no/perl/ordbok.cgi">ordboka</a> et
4589 krav!</p>
4590
4591       </div>
4592       <div class="tags">
4593
4594
4595         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
4596
4597
4598       </div>
4599     </div>
4600     <div class="padding"></div>
4601
4602     <div class="entry">
4603       <div class="title">
4604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_utgave__v2_1__av_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen_gitt_ut.html">Ny utgave (v2.1) av den frie norske stavekontrollen gitt ut</a>
4605       </div>
4606       <div class="date">
4607          2nd October 2012
4608       </div>
4609       <div class="body">
4610         <p>I helga fikk jeg endelig pakket sammen en ny versjon av den norske
4611 stavekontrollen, og gikk ut versjon 2.1 etter at det var gått fire og
4612 et halvt år siden sist.  I dag fikk vi sendt ut annonseringen.  Her er
4613 det vi sendte ut:</p>
4614
4615 <p>Oslo, 2012-10-02</p>
4616
4617 <p><strong>Pressemelding: Ny utgave av norsk stavekontroll med
4618 synonymordliste</strong></p>
4619
4620 <p>Mer enn fire år etter at forrige utgave av den frie norske
4621 stavekontrollen ble utgitt, er en ny og forbedret versjon klar. Dette er
4622 noe utviklerne er veldig glade for.</p>
4623
4624 <p>Den største endringen er at byggesystemet for stavekontrollen er
4625 skrevet om til å akseptere ord med bindestrek (f.eks. «e-post»). Litt
4626 over 10.000 slike ordformer er lagt til i orddatabasen. I tillegg er
4627 det kommet en del nye ord og rettelser rapportert inn av de frivillige
4628 som gjennomfører korrektur av orddatabasen i prosjektet. For å få
4629 fortgang i dette korrekturarbeidet er det fint med flere frivillige
4630 som kan bidra i prosjektet.</p>
4631
4632 <p><blockquote>
4633  - En god og fritt tilgjengelig stavekontroll er en viktig byggestein
4634    for å fremme bruken av korrekt norsk språk, sier prosjektdeltager
4635    Petter Reinholdtsen.
4636 </blockquote></p>
4637
4638 <p>Takket være samarbeidet med synonymordlisteprosjektet er
4639 synonymordlista for bokmål tilgjengelig sammen med ordlista for bokmål
4640 og nynorsk. En synonymordliste for nynorsk er også med, men den er på
4641 prøvestadiet og meget liten.</p>
4642
4643 <p>Stavekontrollpakken og synonymordlistene brukes i
4644 LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org, Koffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, Firefox og
4645 en rekke andre programmer, og på både Windows, Mac OS X, Linux og
4646 BSD.</p>
4647
4648 <p>Det hele utgis under den frie lisensen GPL og kan fritt lastes ned
4649 fra prosjektsidene på
4650 <a href="http://no.speling.org">no.speling.org</a>. Ferdige pakker for
4651 LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org er også tilgjengelige fra samme sted.</p>
4652
4653 <p>Det norske stavekontrollprosjektet er i kontakt med lignende
4654 prosjekter for blant annet å forbedre stavekontrollteknologien, å
4655 utveksle verktøy for vedlikehold av orddatabasen og å få tilgang til
4656 relevante datasett. Et av disse prosjektene er et separat prosjekt ved
4657 Sametinget som er i gang med å utvikle samisk stavekontroll for blant
4658 annet Microsoft Word og OpenOffice.org.</p>
4659
4660 <p>Et søsterprosjekt for å lage grammatikk-kontroll for
4661 LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org er igangsatt, men har ennå ikke kommet
4662 langt nok til å brukes. Frivillige til å bidra i dette prosjektet er
4663 også svært velkomne.</p>
4664
4665 <p><strong>Kontaktperson</strong></p>
4666
4667 <p><blockquote>
4668 Axel Bojer, prosjektdeltager
4669 <br>E-post: fri_programvare (at) bojer.no
4670 <br>Tlf: +47 954 32 417
4671 </blockquote></p>
4672
4673 <p><strong>Referanser</strong></p>
4674
4675 <ul>
4676
4677 <li>Det frie norske stavekontrollprosjektet for bokmål og nynorsk:
4678     <a href="http://no.speling.org">http://no.speling.org</a></li>
4679 <li>Samiske korrekturverktøy:
4680     <a href="http://divvun.no/">http://divvun.no/</a></li>
4681 <li>Ordlistene fra Norsk ordbank:
4682     <a href="http://www.edd.uio.no/prosjekt/ordbanken/">http://www.edd.uio.no/prosjekt/ordbanken/</a></li>
4683 <li>Last ned ordlistene:
4684     <a href="http://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=30577">http://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=30577</a>
4685     (PS: no_NO-pack2 for OOo 2.x))</li>
4686 </ul>
4687
4688 <p><strong>Fra NEWS-fila i kildekodepakken</strong></p>
4689
4690 <p>Release 2.1 (2012-09-30)</p>
4691
4692 <ul>
4693
4694 <li>Switch to new version scheme. Make new version 2.1, not 2.0.11. We do not
4695     release often enough to justify three digits.</li>
4696 <li>Switch build rules to build OOo v2 thesaurus files, as the v1 build rules
4697     no longer work. This require the libmythes-dev package on Debian.</li>
4698 <li>Introduce new Makefile variables hyphendir and thesdir to make it easier to
4699     control where to install these.</li>
4700 <li>Change script used to import from no.speling.org, to load new word
4701     boundaries if at least two people believed the boundaries was correct.</li>
4702 <li>Added word boundaries for several words (around 500 words) using the
4703     updated script.</li>
4704 <li>Imported thesarus for bokmål from synonymer.merg.net.</li>
4705 <li>Rewrote build rules to use = instead of - as combined word marker, thus
4706     allowing words like e-post.</li>
4707 <li>Imported a lot (around 10k words) of new words with dash (-) in them from
4708     no.speling.org now that it is handled by the build system.</li>
4709 </ul>
4710
4711       </div>
4712       <div class="tags">
4713
4714
4715         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
4716
4717
4718       </div>
4719     </div>
4720     <div class="padding"></div>
4721
4722     <div class="entry">
4723       <div class="title">
4724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
4725       </div>
4726       <div class="date">
4727         17th September 2012
4728       </div>
4729       <div class="body">
4730         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
4731 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4732 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
4733 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
4734 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
4735 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
4736 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
4737
4738 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4739
4740 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
4741 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
4742 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
4743 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
4744 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
4745 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
4746 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
4747 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
4748 training is anyway very important</p>
4749
4750 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
4751 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
4752 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
4753 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
4754 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
4755
4756 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4757 project?</strong></p>
4758
4759 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
4760 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
4761 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
4762 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
4763 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
4764 hole.</p>
4765
4766 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4767 Edu?</strong></p>
4768
4769 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
4770 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
4771 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
4772 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
4773 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
4774 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
4775 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
4776 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
4777 hassle.</p>
4778
4779 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4780 Edu?</strong></p>
4781
4782 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
4783 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
4784 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
4785 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
4786 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
4787 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
4788 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
4789 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
4790
4791 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4792
4793 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
4794 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
4795 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
4796 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
4797 has the same...</p>
4798
4799 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
4800 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
4801 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
4802 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
4803
4804 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4805 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4806
4807 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
4808 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
4809 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
4810
4811 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
4812 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
4813 don't.</p>
4814
4815 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
4816 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
4817 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
4818 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
4819 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
4820 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
4821 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
4822
4823       </div>
4824       <div class="tags">
4825
4826
4827         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4828
4829
4830       </div>
4831     </div>
4832     <div class="padding"></div>
4833
4834     <div class="entry">
4835       <div class="title">
4836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gladoppslag_om_Skolelinux_i_avisen_Fremover.html">Gladoppslag om Skolelinux i avisen Fremover</a>
4837       </div>
4838       <div class="date">
4839         15th August 2012
4840       </div>
4841       <div class="body">
4842         <p>I sommer hadde avisen <a href="http://www.fremover.no/">Fremover</a>
4843 et flott oppslag om bruken av
4844 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> på alle skolene
4845 der.  Artikkelen var på trykk på side 4 og 5 i papirutgaven
4846 2012-07-23, men mangler dessverre i nettutgaven av avisen.  Mine
4847 henvendelser til avisen for å få artikkelen på nett har så langt ikke
4848 vært vellykket.</p>
4849
4850 <p>Artikkelen med tittelen "Narvik kommune bruker gratisprogram i
4851 skolen - Har spart millioner", forteller om hvordan bruken av
4852 Skolelinux er en stor suksess i Narvik siden det ble tatt i bruk i
4853 2004.  Her er noen fine sitater:</p>
4854
4855 <blockquote>
4856 "- Skolelinux har spart kommunen for store pengesummer, millionbeløp,
4857   som de heller kan bruke på andre ting, sier IKT-konsulent Viggo
4858   Fedreheim."
4859 </blockquote>
4860
4861 <p>Avisen forteller at de har fått tilgang til beregninger som viser
4862 at Narvik kommune har spart noe mellom 10 og 20 millioner kroner de
4863 siste 8 årene på å bruke Skolelinux, og fortsetter:</p>
4864
4865 <blockquote>
4866
4867 "Regnestykket tar høyde for sparte kostnader til lisenser som medfølger
4868 de alternative operativsystemene, lavere driftskostnader og lengre
4869 levetid på datautstyret.  Totalt har Narvikskolen en maskinpark på
4870 1600 maskiner fordelt på de 11 skolene fra Skjomen i sør til Bjerkvik
4871 i nord."
4872
4873 </blockquote>
4874
4875 <p>Viggo Fedreheim sier dette om hvor noe av gevinsten kommer fra:</p>
4876
4877 <blockquote>
4878 "- Vi kan gjenbruke gamle maskiner i skolen som er for dårlig andre
4879   steder i kommunen der de ikke bruker Skolelinux.  Levetiden på en
4880   datamaskin blir 3-5 år lenger med Skolelinux.  Vi kaller det for
4881   grønn IT, miljøvennlig IT."
4882 </blockquote>
4883
4884 <p>Her er det mulighet for flere kommuner å få et godt IT-system på
4885 skolene, hvis de er villige til å forsøke.  De som ikke har kompetanse
4886 innomhus kan kjøpe det fra en av de kommersielle leverandørene av
4887 Skolelinux-tjenester, som <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux
4888 Drift AS</a> (der jeg er styremedlem).  Komplett liste er tilgjengelig
4889 via
4890 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">wikien</a>.</p>
4891
4892 <p>Update 2012-08-16: Today I was allowed by Fremover to put the PDF I
4893 received from them with a copy of the article on the Internet.  It is
4894 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/2012-07-23-fremover-narvik.pdf">now
4895 available</a> in the Skolelinux press archive.</p>
4896
4897       </div>
4898       <div class="tags">
4899
4900
4901         Tags: <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>.
4902
4903
4904       </div>
4905     </div>
4906     <div class="padding"></div>
4907
4908     <div class="entry">
4909       <div class="title">
4910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tips_for___bli_med_i_Skolelinux_prosjektet__som_faktisk_er_aktivt_.html">Tips for å bli med i Skolelinux-prosjektet (som faktisk er aktivt)</a>
4911       </div>
4912       <div class="date">
4913         19th July 2012
4914       </div>
4915       <div class="body">
4916         <p>Jeg fikk nettopp spørsmål på epost om Skolelinux-prosjektet lever
4917 fra en som var interessert i å bidra, og måtte jo konstatere at i og
4918 med at spørsmålet ble stilt har prosjektet ikke lyktes med å formidle
4919 sin aktivitet.  Her er det jeg svarte:</p>
4920
4921 <p><blockquote>
4922 <p>Jada, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux-prosjektet</a>
4923 lever, men det meste av utvikling foregår nå under paraplyen
4924 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> som er det
4925 internasjonale navnet på prosjektet.  Dugnaden i Norge organiseres av
4926 medlemsforeningen
4927 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
4928 Skolen</a>, og det finnes minst ett selskap som selger kommersiell
4929 support på løsningen (<a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux
4930 Drift AS</a>, der jeg er styremedlem).  Anbefaler at du melder deg på
4931 epostlisten
4932 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>
4933 (og debian-edu-announce) og
4934 <a href="http://medlem.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">melder deg inn i
4935 foreningen</a> for å få beskjed om aktivitet som planlegges.  Det
4936 planlegges
4937 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering">utviklersamlinger
4938 i august</a> og utover høsten.</p>
4939
4940 <p>Bidra gjerne med å spre ordet om Skolelinux.  Det er alt for få som
4941 bidrar til pressedekning, bloggposter, twittermeldinger, etc. :)</p>
4942
4943 <p>Jeg antar du har funnet
4944 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju/">bloggserien
4945 min med intervjuer</a>.  Det er antagelig også interessant for deg å
4946 følge med på <a href="http://planet.skolelinux.org/">Planet
4947 Skolelinux</a>.</p>
4948
4949 <p>Hm, jeg burde vel blogge alle disse lenkene slik at de blir enklere
4950 å finne...</p>
4951 </blockquote></p>
4952 <p>Herved gjort. :)</p>
4953
4954       </div>
4955       <div class="tags">
4956
4957
4958         Tags: <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>.
4959
4960
4961       </div>
4962     </div>
4963     <div class="padding"></div>
4964
4965     <div class="entry">
4966       <div class="title">
4967         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
4968       </div>
4969       <div class="date">
4970          9th July 2012
4971       </div>
4972       <div class="body">
4973         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4974 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
4975 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
4976 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
4977 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
4978 to adjust and scale the just released
4979 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4980 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
4981 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
4982
4983 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4984
4985 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
4986 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
4987 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
4988 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
4989 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
4990 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
4991 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
4992 perspective when working with IT.</p>
4993
4994 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4995 project?</strong></p>
4996
4997 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
4998 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
4999 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
5000 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
5001 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
5002 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
5003
5004 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5005 Edu?</strong></p>
5006
5007 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
5008 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
5009 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
5010 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
5011 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
5012 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
5013 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
5014 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
5015 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
5016 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
5017 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
5018 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
5019 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
5020 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
5021 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
5022 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
5023 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
5024 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
5025 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
5026 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
5027 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
5028 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
5029 quicker to update.
5030
5031 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5032 Edu?</strong></p>
5033
5034 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
5035 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
5036 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
5037 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
5038 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
5039 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
5040
5041 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
5042 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
5043 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
5044 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
5045 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
5046 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
5047 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
5048 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
5049 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
5050 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
5051 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
5052 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
5053 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
5054 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
5055 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
5056
5057 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
5058 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
5059 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
5060 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
5061 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
5062 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
5063 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
5064 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
5065
5066 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
5067 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
5068 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
5069 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
5070 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
5071 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
5072 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
5073 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
5074 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
5075 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
5076 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
5077 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
5078 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
5079 sound file.</p>
5080
5081 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
5082 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
5083 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
5084 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
5085 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
5086 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
5087 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
5088 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
5089 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
5090
5091 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5092
5093 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
5094 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
5095 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
5096 )</p>
5097
5098 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5099 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5100
5101 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
5102 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
5103 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
5104 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
5105 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
5106 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
5107 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
5108 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
5109 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
5110 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
5111 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
5112 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
5113 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
5114 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
5115 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
5116
5117 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
5118 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
5119 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
5120 management with Airtime</a>,
5121 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
5122 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
5123 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
5124 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
5125 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
5126
5127       </div>
5128       <div class="tags">
5129
5130
5131         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5132
5133
5134       </div>
5135     </div>
5136     <div class="padding"></div>
5137
5138     <div class="entry">
5139       <div class="title">
5140         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
5141       </div>
5142       <div class="date">
5143          8th July 2012
5144       </div>
5145       <div class="body">
5146         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
5147 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
5148 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
5149 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
5150 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
5151 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
5152 Steinberg in his blog post
5153 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
5154 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
5155 spending of your tax money.</p>
5156
5157 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
5158 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
5159 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
5160 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
5161 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
5162 purchases.</p>
5163
5164       </div>
5165       <div class="tags">
5166
5167
5168         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5169
5170
5171       </div>
5172     </div>
5173     <div class="padding"></div>
5174
5175     <div class="entry">
5176       <div class="title">
5177         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
5178       </div>
5179       <div class="date">
5180          7th July 2012
5181       </div>
5182       <div class="body">
5183         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5184 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
5185 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
5186 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
5187 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
5188 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
5189 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
5190 receive.  The software is
5191
5192 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
5193 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
5194 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
5195 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
5196 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
5197 Windows</a>.</p>
5198
5199 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
5200 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
5201
5202 <p><ul>
5203
5204   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
5205     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
5206
5207   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
5208     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
5209     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
5210     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
5211     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
5212     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
5213     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
5214     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
5215     </li>
5216
5217   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
5218     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
5219
5220   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
5221     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
5222
5223   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
5224     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
5225
5226   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
5227
5228   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
5229     formats </li>
5230
5231   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
5232     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
5233     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
5234     (as separate sets)</li>
5235
5236   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
5237     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
5238     percentage)</li>
5239
5240   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
5241     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
5242     memory):
5243     <ul>
5244       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
5245       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
5246       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
5247       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
5248       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
5249       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
5250       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
5251       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
5252       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
5253       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
5254           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
5255           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
5256           activity)</li>
5257       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
5258       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
5259     </ul></li>
5260
5261   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
5262     <ul>
5263       <li>Break periods</li>
5264       <li>For teacher(s):
5265         <ul>
5266           <li>Not available periods</li>
5267           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
5268           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
5269           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
5270           <li>Min hours daily</li>
5271           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
5272
5273           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
5274             days per week</li>
5275         </ul></li>
5276       <li>For students (sets):
5277         <ul>
5278           <li>Not available periods</li>
5279           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
5280           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
5281           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
5282           <li>Min hours daily</li>
5283           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
5284
5285           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
5286             days per week</li>
5287         </ul></li>
5288       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
5289         <ul>
5290           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
5291           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
5292           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
5293           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
5294           <li>End(s) students day</li>
5295           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
5296           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
5297             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
5298           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
5299           <li>Not overlapping</li>
5300           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
5301           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
5302         </ul></li>
5303     </ul></li>
5304
5305   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
5306     <ul>
5307       <li>Room not available periods</li>
5308       <li>For teacher(s):
5309         <ul>
5310           <li>Home room(s)</li>
5311           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
5312           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
5313         </ul>
5314       </li>
5315
5316       <li>For students (sets):
5317         <ul>
5318           <li>Home room(s)</li>
5319           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
5320           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
5321         </ul>
5322       </li>
5323       <li>Preferred room(s):
5324         <ul>
5325           <li>For a subject</li>
5326           <li>For an activity tag</li>
5327           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
5328           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
5329         </ul>
5330       </li>
5331
5332       <li>For a set of activities:
5333         <ul>
5334           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
5335         </ul>
5336       </li>
5337     </ul>
5338   </li>
5339 </ul></p>
5340
5341 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
5342 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
5343 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
5344 manually, check it out.
5345
5346 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
5347 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
5348 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
5349 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
5350 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
5351 section</a>.</p>
5352
5353       </div>
5354       <div class="tags">
5355
5356
5357         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
5358
5359
5360       </div>
5361     </div>
5362     <div class="padding"></div>
5363
5364     <div class="entry">
5365       <div class="title">
5366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Markus_Gamenius.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Markus Gamenius</a>
5367       </div>
5368       <div class="date">
5369         30th June 2012
5370       </div>
5371       <div class="body">
5372         <p>Tidligere leder av
5373 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no">foreningen som
5374 organiserer Skolelinux-dugnaden</a>, Markus Gamenius , har i vår vært
5375 i media og
5376 <a href="http://www.dn.no/privatokonomi/article2345489.ece">debattert
5377 skattepolitikk</a>, og det fikk meg til å høre om han kunne lokkes til
5378 å fortelle om hans inntrykk nå, etter at han ble lokket bort fra
5379 Linux- og <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-verden
5380 for å overta familiebedriften.  Her har vi hans betraktninger i dag,
5381 noen måneder etter at
5382 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Skolelinux
5383 Squeeze</a>-utgaven ble gitt ut.</p>
5384
5385 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
5386
5387 <p>Jeg heter Markus Gamenius og er 40 år.  Utdannet biolog med ymse
5388 fag på siden.  Har jobbet som lærer der jeg var driftsansvarlig på
5389 Ulsrud VGS i Oslo.  Senere eide og jobbet jeg flere år i Linuxlabs AS,
5390 som jeg solgte til Redpill Linpro AS (den gangen Linpro AS).  I dag
5391 jobber jeg med ulike investeringer, hovedsaklig i eiendom, men også i
5392 en del ulike IT-relaterte bedrifter.</p>
5393
5394 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
5395
5396 <p>Fruen og jeg dro på en lengre seiltur i 2000, der jeg måtte ha "noe
5397 å gjøre" under hjemturen over Atlanteren.  Jeg kjøpte et par bøker om
5398 Linux i en bokhandel i New York og ble veldig fascinert.  Etter
5399 hjemkomsten begynte jeg å jobbe på Ulsrud VGS, som naturfagslærer, men
5400 som IT-interessert ble jeg fort en del av den nye IT-satsningen som
5401 skulle løfte Ulsrud og gi skolen en bedre rykte.  Vi hadde ganske
5402 mange maskiner, som gikk på Win98 og to servere som ble oppgradert til
5403 Win2000.  Systemene var ustabil og dårlige.  På leting etter noe
5404 bedre, uten å knekke ryggen økonomisk, kom jeg over "Linux i Skolen"
5405 og Skolelinux.  Jeg tok kontakt med miljøet og en gjeng møtte opp på
5406 skolen, der vi gjorde en liten testinstallasjon.  Etter et par år var
5407 ryggraden på skolen Linux (Skolelinux) og vi hadde flere hundre
5408 maskiner, både tynne klienter (gamle og nye), bærbare (Debian) og noen
5409 stasjonære (Win2000).  På et tidspunkt var Ulsrud den råeste IT-skolen
5410 og det irriterte skolesjefen i Oslo, da de satset hardt på
5411 Windows.</p>
5412
5413 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
5414
5415 <p>Det som gjorde at vi fikk inn Skolelinux var ene og alene
5416 økonomiske.  Det faktum at vi slapp å kjøpe masse nye lisenser og at
5417 vi kunne bruke gammel hardware.  Alt i alt gjorde dette at vi sparte
5418 mye, men i stede for å bruke mindre på IT brukte vi det vi sparte på å
5419 skaffe mer hardware og på den måten gi det beste tilbudet i landet til
5420 våre elever.  For oss som driftet var det himmel å ha et system som
5421 gikk å administrere sentralt og effektivt.  Det var heller ikke så
5422 dumt at vi kunne "låse" maskinene mer effektivt enn vi kunne med
5423 Microsoft Windows, slik at vi slapp mye feil og problemer som ble
5424 forårsaket av "kreative" elever.</p>
5425
5426 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
5427
5428 <p>Det vi slet med var mangelen av en del programmer lærerne ville ha.
5429 Husker ikke alle, men det var et knippe med pedagogiske programmer de
5430 ikke fikk.  I dag tror jeg det problemet er langt mindre da det meste
5431 av disse kjøres gjennom nettleseren.</p>
5432
5433 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
5434
5435 <p>Jeg bruker mye Apple i dag og er ikke så stolt av det, men jeg har
5436 både OpenOffice, Firefox og en del andre programmer på den bærbare.
5437 Firefox brukes mest av disse.  På Apple-serveren hjemme bruker jeg
5438 HandBrake mye, og jeg har installert OpenWRT på flere av
5439 basestasjonene både hjemme og på jobben.  I tillegg til det har jeg i
5440 flere år finansiert et prosjekt som heter
5441 <a href="http://www.found.no/">Found IT</a>.  Dette er et prosjekt der
5442 vi lager et rammeverk for søk, der alt vi bruker fri programvare.  Det
5443 er Alex Brasetvik som er daglig leder i Found IT.</p>
5444
5445 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
5446 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
5447
5448 <p>Når det gjelder IT og skole er fortsatt økonomi veldig viktig.  Så
5449 man må oppfylle minimumskravene (ikke være best, men bra nok) og selge
5450 seg inn på hvor mye man sparer.  Det betyr selvsagt at man sparer på
5451 lisenser, men også på driftsinnsats.  Men nå når jeg ikke er en aktiv
5452 del av miljøet lenger hører jeg nesten ingen ting om fri programvare.
5453 Jeg stiller meg da spørsmålet om det har blitt stille rundt miljøet,
5454 eller om jeg kun så det tydeligere før når jeg var aktiv? Uansett er
5455 det for stille rundt Skolelinux-prosjektet nå.</p>
5456
5457       </div>
5458       <div class="tags">
5459
5460
5461         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
5462
5463
5464       </div>
5465     </div>
5466     <div class="padding"></div>
5467
5468     <div class="entry">
5469       <div class="title">
5470         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
5471       </div>
5472       <div class="date">
5473         26th June 2012
5474       </div>
5475       <div class="body">
5476         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
5477 another interview with the people behind
5478 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
5479 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
5480 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
5481 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
5482 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
5483 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
5484 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
5485
5486 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5487
5488 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
5489 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
5490 ICT in schools</p>
5491
5492 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5493 project?</strong></p>
5494
5495 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
5496 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
5497 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
5498 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
5499
5500 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5501 Edu?</strong></p>
5502
5503 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
5504 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
5505 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
5506 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
5507
5508 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5509 Edu?</strong></p>
5510
5511 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
5512 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
5513 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
5514 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
5515 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
5516 technologies in school.</p>
5517
5518 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5519
5520 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
5521 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
5522 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
5523
5524 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5525 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5526
5527 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
5528 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
5529 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
5530 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
5531
5532 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
5533 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
5534 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
5535
5536 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
5537 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
5538 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
5539 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
5540 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
5541 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
5542 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
5543 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
5544 working there.</p>
5545
5546       </div>
5547       <div class="tags">
5548
5549
5550         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5551
5552
5553       </div>
5554     </div>
5555     <div class="padding"></div>
5556
5557     <div class="entry">
5558       <div class="title">
5559         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
5560       </div>
5561       <div class="date">
5562         11th June 2012
5563       </div>
5564       <div class="body">
5565         <p>During my work on
5566 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
5567 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
5568 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
5569 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
5570 explanation.</p>
5571
5572 <p><ul>
5573
5574 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
5575 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
5576 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
5577 system depend on tasksel tasks in
5578 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
5579 installation.</li>
5580
5581 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
5582 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
5583 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
5584 at least try to enable it for these services:
5585 <ul>
5586
5587   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
5588     quotas.</li>
5589   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
5590   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
5591   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
5592   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
5593   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
5594
5595 </ul></li>
5596
5597 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
5598 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
5599 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
5600 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
5601
5602 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
5603 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
5604 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
5605
5606 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
5607 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
5608 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
5609 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
5610 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
5611 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
5612
5613 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
5614 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
5615 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
5616 in Wheezy.
5617
5618 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
5619 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
5620 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
5621
5622 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
5623 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
5624 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
5625 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
5626
5627 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
5628 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
5629 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
5630 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
5631
5632 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
5633 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
5634 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
5635
5636 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
5637 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
5638 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
5639
5640 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
5641 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
5642 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
5643 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
5644 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
5645
5646 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
5647 <ul>
5648
5649 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
5650 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
5651 <li>and probably more?</li>
5652 </ul></li>
5653
5654 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
5655 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
5656 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
5657 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
5658 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
5659 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
5660 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
5661 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
5662
5663
5664 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
5665 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
5666 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
5667 use.</li>
5668
5669 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
5670 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
5671 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
5672 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
5673 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
5674
5675 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
5676 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
5677 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
5678 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
5679 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
5680 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
5681
5682 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
5683 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
5684 There are at least three implementations,
5685 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
5686 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
5687 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
5688 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
5689 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
5690 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
5691 given room.</li>
5692
5693 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
5694 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
5695 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
5696 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
5697 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
5698 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
5699 investigated.</li>
5700
5701 </ul></p>
5702
5703 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
5704 version.</p>
5705
5706       </div>
5707       <div class="tags">
5708
5709
5710         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5711
5712
5713       </div>
5714     </div>
5715     <div class="padding"></div>
5716
5717     <div class="entry">
5718       <div class="title">
5719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
5720       </div>
5721       <div class="date">
5722          2nd June 2012
5723       </div>
5724       <div class="body">
5725         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
5726 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5727 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
5728 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
5729 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
5730 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
5731
5732 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5733
5734 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
5735 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
5736 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
5737 by Angela).</p>
5738
5739 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
5740 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
5741 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
5742 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
5743 becoming an osteopath.</p>
5744
5745 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
5746 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
5747 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
5748 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
5749 skills with communication skills.</p>
5750
5751 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5752 project?</strong></p>
5753
5754 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
5755 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
5756 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
5757 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
5758 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
5759
5760 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
5761 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
5762 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
5763 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
5764 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
5765 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
5766 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
5767 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
5768 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
5769
5770 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
5771 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
5772 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
5773
5774 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
5775
5776 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
5777 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
5778 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
5779 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
5780 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
5781 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
5782 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
5783 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
5784 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
5785 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
5786 point.</p>
5787
5788 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
5789 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
5790 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
5791 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
5792 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
5793 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
5794
5795 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
5796 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
5797 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
5798 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
5799 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
5800 spare time.</p>
5801
5802 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
5803 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
5804 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
5805 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
5806 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
5807
5808 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
5809 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
5810 avoidance do exist.</p>
5811
5812 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
5813 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
5814 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
5815 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
5816 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
5817 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
5818 and probably a gain for all.</p>
5819
5820 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5821 Edu?</strong></p>
5822
5823 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
5824 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
5825 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
5826 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
5827 project communication, honest communication within the group of
5828 developers, etc.</p>
5829
5830 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5831 Edu?</strong></p>
5832
5833 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
5834
5835 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
5836 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
5837 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
5838 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
5839 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
5840 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
5841 contribute).</p>
5842
5843 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
5844 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
5845 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
5846 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
5847 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
5848 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
5849 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
5850 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
5851 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
5852 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
5853
5854 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5855
5856 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
5857
5858 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
5859 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
5860 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
5861
5862 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
5863 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
5864 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
5865 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
5866
5867 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
5868 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
5869 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
5870 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
5871 whiteboard.</p>
5872
5873 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
5874
5875 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5876 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5877
5878 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
5879 enrol people.</p>
5880
5881       </div>
5882       <div class="tags">
5883
5884
5885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5886
5887
5888       </div>
5889     </div>
5890     <div class="padding"></div>
5891
5892     <div class="entry">
5893       <div class="title">
5894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
5895       </div>
5896       <div class="date">
5897         27th May 2012
5898       </div>
5899       <div class="body">
5900         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
5901 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5902 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
5903 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
5904 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
5905 since then, helping to make sure the
5906 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
5907 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
5908
5909 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5910
5911 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
5912 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
5913 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
5914 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
5915 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
5916 our computer network.</p>
5917
5918 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
5919 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
5920 (4 months).</p>
5921
5922 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5923 project?</strong></p>
5924
5925 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
5926 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
5927 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
5928 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
5929 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
5930 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
5931 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
5932 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
5933 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
5934 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
5935 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
5936 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
5937 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
5938 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
5939
5940 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5941 Edu?</strong></p>
5942
5943 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
5944 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
5945 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
5946 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
5947 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
5948 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
5949 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
5950 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
5951
5952 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5953 Edu?</strong></p>
5954
5955 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
5956 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
5957 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
5958 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
5959 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
5960 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
5961 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
5962 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
5963 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
5964 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
5965 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
5966 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
5967
5968 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5969
5970 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
5971 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
5972 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
5973
5974 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5975 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5976
5977 <p><ol>
5978
5979 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
5980 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
5981 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
5982 developing.</li>
5983
5984 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
5985 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
5986 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
5987 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
5988 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
5989
5990 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
5991 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
5992 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
5993
5994 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
5995 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
5996 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
5997 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
5998
5999 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
6000 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
6001 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
6002
6003 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
6004
6005 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
6006 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
6007 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
6008 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
6009
6010 </ol></p>
6011
6012       </div>
6013       <div class="tags">
6014
6015
6016         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6017
6018
6019       </div>
6020     </div>
6021     <div class="padding"></div>
6022
6023     <div class="entry">
6024       <div class="title">
6025         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Alf_Tonny_B_tz.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Alf Tonny Bätz</a>
6026       </div>
6027       <div class="date">
6028         20th May 2012
6029       </div>
6030       <div class="body">
6031         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux-prosjektets</a>
6032 musiker og mannen bak
6033 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals/Rosegarden/">opplæringsdokumentene
6034 i Rosegarden</a>
6035 (<a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/nb/rosegarden-manual.html">norsk
6036 utgave</a>) for musikklærere, Alf Tonny Bätz, er neste mann ut i min
6037 intervjurunde av folkene bak Skolelinux-løsningen.  Jeg har kjent Alf
6038 Tonny siden vi møttes som barn på påskefjellet i Ofoten, og ble
6039 gledelig overrasket da han dukket opp i Skolelinux-prosjektet etter å
6040 ikke ha sett noe til ham på mange år.</p>
6041
6042 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
6043
6044 <p>Jeg er utdannet kokk av yrke, og har utøvet yrket i 12 år.  Men
6045 etter at ryggen sa takk før seg, studerte jeg nettverksadministrasjon
6046 ved Næringsakademiet i Bergen årene 2008-2009 slik at jeg kunne
6047 forfølge en av mine største interesser - data.  Til daglig jobber jeg
6048 ved <a href="http://www.narvikskolen.no/parken/">Parken
6049 ungdomsskole</a> med å drifte skolens PC-er. Har også litt
6050 musikkundervisning.</p>
6051
6052 <p>Mitt mål er å bevisstgjøre musikklærene mulighetene med de frie
6053 programmene som finnes i Skolelinux, blant annet Rosegarden.</p>
6054
6055 <p>Har i mange år drevet med musikk og en av grunnen til at Rosegarden
6056 falt i smak for min del, var fordi denne fungere og ligner mest på
6057 Windows-programmet (cubase) jeg jobbet mye med da jeg i mine yngre
6058 dager var «Windows fanatiker».  Ble introdusert til Linux av en kompis
6059 av meg for omtrent 14 år siden, og har bare blitt mer og mer glad i
6060 dette operativsystemet.</p>
6061
6062 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
6063
6064 <p>Da jeg ble sykemeldt fra min gamle jobb, og måtte omskoleres,
6065 havnet jeg i 2007 sammen med Viggo Fedreheim på IKT-avdelingen i
6066 Narvik kommune, der ble jeg for første gang introdusert til
6067 Skolelinuxprosjektet.</p>
6068
6069 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
6070
6071 <p>Skolelinux er enkelt å holde i drift og masse flotte programmer som
6072 geogebra, ktouch og kgeografi følger med pakken.  Man kan ta i bruk
6073 gamle PC-er igjen, slik at skoler med dårlig råd får opp en brukbar
6074 PC-park.  PC-er som er ca 6-9 år gamle fungere tilfredstillende, bare
6075 de har 512 MB RAM eller mer.</p>
6076
6077 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
6078
6079 <p>Ulempene er at noen av de pedagogiske programmene som lærene ønsker
6080 å bruke fungere dårlig med Linux.  Mye pga. av at disse programmene
6081 blir ikke laget til Linuxbaserte operativsystemer.</p>
6082
6083 <p>Video- og bilde-redigering har dessverre en del mangler, mange av
6084 programmene har en tendens til og krasje.  Det gjelder blant annet
6085 <a href="http://www.kdenlive.org/">kdenlive</a> og
6086 <a href="http://www.openshotvideo.com/">openshot</a>, for å nevne
6087 noen.  De er ikke stabile nok.  Når elevene kommer med filmsnutter de
6088 ønsker og jobbe med, så godtar ikke programmene filene, og når elevene
6089 jobber med redigering bare krasjer programmene uten forvarsel.  Det er
6090 for vanskelig å få noe som bare fungerer ut av boksen her. Når en elev
6091 plugger inn et videokamera eller fotoapparat så er det alltid noe som
6092 ikke vil fungere.  Programmene godtar ikke format, godtar ikke
6093 kameraet, osv., osv. Det er dessverre med på og dra ned en positiv
6094 opplevelse av bruk av fri programvare.</p>
6095
6096 <p>Man må ofte bruke flere en et video redigerings program før og få
6097 fullført en ønsket oppgave.</p>
6098
6099 <p>Eksempel:</p>
6100
6101 <p>Hvis det ene programmet ikke vil ta i mot videofilen klarer et
6102 annet det, men det programmet som klarer det kan ikke gjøre de samme
6103 oppgavene som det programmet som ikke ville ta i mot filen,
6104 Tilsvarende er det med foto, man må bruke flere programmer for å få
6105 et ferdig resultat. Til dags dato har jeg enda ikke funnet et video-
6106 og fotoprogram som kan tilfredstillende fullføre en oppgave.</p>
6107
6108 <p>Så man kan klare og fullføre en oppgave, men i verste fall må man
6109 innom 3-4 programmer for å få det til.  Så jeg har enda ikke til dags
6110 dato sett at et program fungere 100% til alt.</p>
6111
6112 <p>Det programmet jeg har best erfaring til er
6113 <a href="http://cinelerra.org/">cinelerra</a>, men dessverre har det
6114 også tendenser og krasje av og til uten grunn.</p>
6115
6116 Lydsystemet kan også være et mareritt.  Konkret snakker jeg om når du
6117 bruker for eksempel et smartboard, så følger det med USB-lydkort på
6118 disse.  Problemet ligger her i at systemet ikke vil velge rett
6119 lydkort, så man må inn med padevchooser for å sette opp PulseAudio
6120 til og velge at USB-lydkortet skal brukes.  Det blir for tungvindt for
6121 lærene, de ønsker at ting skal fungere med en gang. (min løsning på
6122 det problemet ble at jeg måtte deaktivere lydkortet som fantes på
6123 maskinen) men da må man bestandig slå på smartboard-tavla.
6124
6125 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
6126
6127 Programmene jeg bruker mest av er: Rosegarden, jack, qsynth, audacity,
6128 k3b, openttd og libreoffice.
6129
6130 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
6131 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
6132
6133 Jeg tror det må bevisstgjøring av Skolene til, dvs. reklamere høylytt
6134 og fortelle og vise de andre skolene at frie programvarer faktisk
6135 fungere.  Jeg trur faktisk mange ikke vet at det finnes frie
6136 alternativer.
6137
6138       </div>
6139       <div class="tags">
6140
6141
6142         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
6143
6144
6145       </div>
6146     </div>
6147     <div class="padding"></div>
6148
6149     <div class="entry">
6150       <div class="title">
6151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
6152       </div>
6153       <div class="date">
6154         13th May 2012
6155       </div>
6156       <div class="body">
6157         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
6158 publish another interview with the people behind
6159 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
6160 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
6161 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
6162 details get right before release.
6163
6164 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6165
6166 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
6167 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
6168 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
6169 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
6170 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
6171 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
6172 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
6173 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
6174
6175 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
6176 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
6177 home since 2006.</p>
6178
6179 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6180 project?</strong></p>
6181
6182 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
6183 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
6184 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
6185 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
6186 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
6187 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
6188
6189 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
6190 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
6191 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
6192 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
6193 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
6194 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
6195 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
6196 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
6197 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
6198 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
6199 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
6200 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
6201 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
6202 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
6203 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
6204 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
6205
6206 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6207 Edu?</strong></p>
6208
6209 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
6210 for me as today.</p>
6211
6212 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
6213
6214 <p><ul>
6215
6216 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
6217 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
6218
6219 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
6220 cost.</li>
6221
6222 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
6223 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
6224 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
6225 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
6226 server</li>
6227
6228 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
6229 school.</li>
6230
6231 </ul></p>
6232
6233 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
6234 came up in this way:</p>
6235
6236 <p><ul>
6237
6238 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
6239 now.</li>
6240
6241 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
6242 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
6243 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
6244
6245 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
6246 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
6247 interfaces used in the past.</li>
6248
6249 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
6250 different needs.</li>
6251
6252 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
6253
6254 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
6255 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
6256 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
6257
6258 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
6259 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
6260
6261 </ul></p>
6262
6263 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6264 Edu?</strong></p>
6265
6266 <p><ul>
6267
6268 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
6269 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
6270 whole municipality areas.</li>
6271
6272 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
6273 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
6274 politicians.</li>
6275
6276 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
6277
6278 </ul></p>
6279
6280 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6281
6282 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
6283 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
6284 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
6285 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
6286 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
6287 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
6288
6289 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
6290 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
6291 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
6292 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
6293 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
6294
6295 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6296 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6297
6298 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
6299 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
6300 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
6301
6302       </div>
6303       <div class="tags">
6304
6305
6306         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6307
6308
6309       </div>
6310     </div>
6311     <div class="padding"></div>
6312
6313     <div class="entry">
6314       <div class="title">
6315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forskning___GPL_gir_lokal_frihet_og_kontroll_gjennom_omfordeling_av_makt_fra_produsent_til_bruker_.html">Forskning: "GPL gir lokal frihet og kontroll gjennom omfordeling av makt fra produsent til bruker"</a>
6316       </div>
6317       <div class="date">
6318         15th April 2012
6319       </div>
6320       <div class="body">
6321         <p>Da jeg googlet etter noe annet kom jeg tilfeldigvis over
6322 <a href="http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/work.html?WORKID=58309">en
6323 hovedfagsoppgave</a> ved Universitetet i Oslo som diskuterer verdien
6324 av GPLs fire friheter for brukerne av IT-systemer.  Jeg ble fascinert
6325 over det som presenteres der.  Her er sammendraget:</p>
6326
6327 <p><blockquote>
6328
6329 <p>Motivasjonen til å skrive denne oppgaven er en personlig undring
6330 over hvorfor det primært, og ofte eksklusivt, fokuseres på det
6331 økonomiske aspektet ved utredninger om fri programvare er et godt valg
6332 for det offentlige. Fri og produsenteid programvare bygger på
6333 fundamentalt forskjellige ideologier som kan ha implikasjoner utover
6334 økonomiske kostnader. Kunnskapskulturen som er med på å definere fri
6335 programvare er basert på åpenhet, og er en verdi i seg selv.</p>
6336
6337 <p>Oppgavens tema er programvarelisensen GPL og frihet. GPL-lisensiert
6338 programvare gir visse friheter i forhold til produsenteid
6339 programvare. Mitt spørsmål er om, og eventuelt i hvilken utstrekning,
6340 disse frihetene blir benyttet av ulike brukere og hvordan de
6341 manifesterer seg for disse brukerne. Sentrale spørsmål i oppgaven
6342 er:</p>
6343
6344 <ul>
6345 <li>Hvordan fordeles handlekraft gjennom lisensieringen av programvaren?</li>
6346 <li>Hvilke konsekvenser har programvarelisensen for de ulike brukere? </li>
6347 </ul>
6348
6349 <p>Fri programvare gir blant annet brukeren mulighet til å studere og
6350 modifisere kildekoden. Denne formen for frihet erverves gjennom
6351 kunnskap og krever at brukeren også er en ekspert. Hva skjer med
6352 frihetene til GPL når sluttbrukeren er en annen? Dette diskuteres i
6353 dialog med informantene.</p>
6354
6355 <p>Jeg har i denne oppgaven samlet inn intervjudata fra IKT-ansvarlige
6356 ved grunnskolene i Nittedal kommune, driftsansvarlig og IKT-veilederen
6357 for skolene i kommunen, samt IKT-koordinator for utdanning i Akershus
6358 fylkeskommune og bokmåloversettere av OpenOffice.org. Den empiriske
6359 delen av oppgaven er delt inn i to seksjoner; den første omhandler
6360 operativsystemet Skolelinux, den andre kontorprogrampakken
6361 OpenOffice.org.</p>
6362
6363 <p>Som vi vil se gir GPL lokal frihet og kontroll gjennom omfordeling
6364 av makt fra produsent til bruker. Brukerens makt analyseres gjennom
6365 begrepene brukermedvirkning og handlingsfrihet. Det blir også lagt
6366 vekt på strukturelle forhold rundt bruken av teknologi, og spesielt de
6367 økonomiske begrepene nettverkseksternaliteter, innlåsing og
6368 stiavhengighet. Dette er begreper av spesiell nytte når objektet som
6369 omsettes eller distribueres er et kommunikasjonsprodukt, fordi verdien
6370 til et slikt gode for en potensiell bruker avhenger av antall
6371 eksisterende brukere av godet. I tilknytning til denne problematikken
6372 inneholder oppgaven også en diskusjon rundt åpne standarder og
6373 formater.</p>
6374
6375 <p>Oppgaven konkluderer med at de «fire frihetene» som GPL-lisensen er
6376 laget for å beskytte er av avgjørende betydning for bruken av
6377 OpenOffice.org og Skolelinux, i Akershus fylkeskommune såvel som i
6378 skolene i Nittedal. Distribusjonen av handlekraft er ikke helt
6379 symmetrisk. Det er først og fremst de profesjonelle utviklerne i
6380 Skolelinux som direkte kan nyttiggjøre seg friheten til å endre kode,
6381 mens en sluttbruker som Nittedal kommune nyttiggjør seg den økonomiske
6382 friheten til å kunne distribuere programmene. Det er imidlertid også
6383 slik at ingen aktør klarer seg uten alle disse «frihetene».</p>
6384 </blockquote></p>
6385
6386 <p>Jeg fant også en masteroppgave fra 2006, men der ligger ikke
6387 komplett oppgave tilgjengelig.  På tide å holde et øye med
6388 <a href="http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/search.html?q=skolelinux">Skolelinux-søket</a>
6389 til DUO...</p>
6390
6391
6392       </div>
6393       <div class="tags">
6394
6395
6396         Tags: <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>.
6397
6398
6399       </div>
6400     </div>
6401     <div class="padding"></div>
6402
6403     <div class="entry">
6404       <div class="title">
6405         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
6406       </div>
6407       <div class="date">
6408         15th April 2012
6409       </div>
6410       <div class="body">
6411         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
6412 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
6413 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
6414 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
6415 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
6416 up in the recently released
6417 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
6418 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
6419
6420 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6421
6422 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
6423 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
6424 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
6425 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
6426 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
6427 information technology and science/technology.</p>
6428
6429 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6430 project?</strong></p>
6431
6432 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
6433 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
6434 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
6435 contributing.</p>
6436
6437 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6438 Edu?</strong></p>
6439
6440 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
6441 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
6442 Debian Project!</p>
6443
6444 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6445 Edu?</strong></p>
6446
6447 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
6448 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
6449 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
6450 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
6451 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
6452 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
6453 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
6454
6455 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
6456 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
6457
6458 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6459
6460 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
6461 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
6462 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
6463 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
6464
6465 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6466 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6467
6468 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
6469 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
6470 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
6471 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
6472 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
6473 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
6474 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
6475
6476 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
6477 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
6478 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
6479 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
6480 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
6481 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
6482 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
6483 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
6484
6485       </div>
6486       <div class="tags">
6487
6488
6489         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6490
6491
6492       </div>
6493     </div>
6494     <div class="padding"></div>
6495
6496     <div class="entry">
6497       <div class="title">
6498         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
6499       </div>
6500       <div class="date">
6501          8th April 2012
6502       </div>
6503       <div class="body">
6504         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
6505 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
6506 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
6507 contributor to the
6508 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
6509 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
6510
6511 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6512
6513 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
6514 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
6515
6516 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6517 project?</strong></p>
6518
6519 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
6520 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
6521 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
6522 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
6523 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
6524 "localisation".</p>
6525
6526 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6527 Edu?</strong></p>
6528
6529 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6530 Edu?</strong></p>
6531
6532 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
6533 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
6534 education system.</p>
6535
6536 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
6537 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
6538 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
6539 money on the latest hardware.</p>
6540
6541 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6542
6543 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
6544 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
6545 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
6546
6547 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6548 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6549
6550 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
6551 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
6552 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
6553
6554       </div>
6555       <div class="tags">
6556
6557
6558         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6559
6560
6561       </div>
6562     </div>
6563     <div class="padding"></div>
6564
6565     <div class="entry">
6566       <div class="title">
6567         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
6568       </div>
6569       <div class="date">
6570          6th April 2012
6571       </div>
6572       <div class="body">
6573         <p>Recently I have spent time with
6574 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
6575 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
6576 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
6577 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
6578 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
6579 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
6580 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
6581 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
6582
6583 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
6584 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
6585 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
6586 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
6587 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
6588 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
6589 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
6590 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
6591
6592 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
6593 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
6594 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
6595 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
6596 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
6597 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
6598 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
6599 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
6600
6601 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
6602 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
6603 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
6604 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
6605 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
6606 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
6607 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
6608 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
6609 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
6610 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
6611
6612 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
6613 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
6614 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
6615 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
6616
6617 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
6618 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
6619
6620 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
6621 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
6622 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
6623 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
6624
6625       </div>
6626       <div class="tags">
6627
6628
6629         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6630
6631
6632       </div>
6633     </div>
6634     <div class="padding"></div>
6635
6636     <div class="entry">
6637       <div class="title">
6638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
6639       </div>
6640       <div class="date">
6641          5th April 2012
6642       </div>
6643       <div class="body">
6644         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
6645 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
6646 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
6647 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
6648 for schools.  Check out his article
6649 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
6650 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
6651
6652       </div>
6653       <div class="tags">
6654
6655
6656         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6657
6658
6659       </div>
6660     </div>
6661     <div class="padding"></div>
6662
6663     <div class="entry">
6664       <div class="title">
6665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
6666       </div>
6667       <div class="date">
6668          1st April 2012
6669       </div>
6670       <div class="body">
6671         <p>Germany is a core area for the
6672 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6673 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
6674 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
6675
6676 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6677
6678 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
6679 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
6680 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
6681 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
6682 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
6683 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
6684 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
6685 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
6686
6687 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
6688 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
6689 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
6690 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
6691 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
6692 the end of April this year.</p>
6693
6694 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6695 project?</strong></p>
6696
6697 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
6698 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
6699 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
6700 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
6701 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
6702 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
6703 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
6704 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
6705 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
6706 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
6707 Skolelinux.</p>
6708
6709 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
6710 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
6711 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
6712 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
6713 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
6714 the admin teachers.</p>
6715
6716 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6717 Edu?</strong></p>
6718
6719 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
6720 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
6721 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
6722
6723 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
6724 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
6725 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
6726 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
6727 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
6728
6729 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6730 Edu?</strong></p>
6731
6732 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
6733
6734 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6735
6736 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
6737 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
6738 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
6739 LibreOffice.</p>
6740
6741 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6742 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6743
6744 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
6745 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
6746 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
6747
6748       </div>
6749       <div class="tags">
6750
6751
6752         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6753
6754
6755       </div>
6756     </div>
6757     <div class="padding"></div>
6758
6759     <div class="entry">
6760       <div class="title">
6761         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Linux_skoler_har_h_yere_PC_tetthet_enn_landsgjennomsnittet___pressemelding_fra_FRiSK.html">Linux-skoler har høyere PC-tetthet enn landsgjennomsnittet - pressemelding fra FRiSK</a>
6762       </div>
6763       <div class="date">
6764         30th March 2012
6765       </div>
6766       <div class="body">
6767         <p>I dag har <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no">FRiSK</a>
6768 sendt ut følgende pressemelding basert på mine beregninger av
6769 PC-tetthet på Linux-skoler:</p>
6770
6771 <p><strong>Linux-skoler har høyere PC-tetthet enn
6772 landsgjennomsnittet</strong></p>
6773
6774 <p>Oslo, 30 Mars 2012</p>
6775
6776 <p>Det er store forskjeller på skolenes digitale tilstand, viser
6777 undersøkelsen Monitor 2011 som er laget på oppdrag fra
6778 Kunnskapsdepartementet. Dette har ført til debatt om PC-tilgangen i
6779 skolen, og om de med Linux i skolen gjør det bedre bedre eller
6780 dårligere enn snittet i landet.</p>
6781
6782 <p>Nå har vi tallene. Skoler med Linux har 36% større PC-tetthet en
6783 landsgjennomsnittet. På spørsmål hvorfor skoler med Linux har større
6784 PC-tetthet, observerer Paul Reidar Løsnesløkken som er IKT-konsulent i
6785 Nord-Odal:</p>
6786
6787 <p><blockquote>"Vi erfarer at klienter med Skolelinux har god funksjon
6788 til de er 8 til 10 år gamle. Dette er omtrent dobbelt så lenge som
6789 andre løsninger, og skolene får mer datautstyr for
6790 pengene."</blockquote></p>
6791
6792 <p>Undersøkelsen baserer seg på 56 skoler som har gjort det offentlig
6793 at de kjører Skolelinux eller annen Linux-utgave. De kan også ha PC-er
6794 med Windows i skolenettet. Når en sammenligner PC-tetthetene på
6795 skolene i kommunene Flora, Harstad, Kongsvinger, Narvik, Nittedal,
6796 Nord-Odal og Randaberg, er det i snitt 2,28 elev pr. PC på skolene med
6797 Linux. På landsbasis er det 3.11 elev per PC i grunnskolen, i følge
6798 side 95 i Monitor-rapporten for 2011. Målingen viser dermed 36% større
6799 PC-tetthet i skoler med Linux.</p>
6800
6801 <p><strong>Om Skolelinux/Debian Edu</strong></p>
6802
6803 <p>Skolelinux har til hensikt å gi alle barn full tilgang til
6804 skoleaktuelle dataprogram på sitt eget morsmål. Derfor følger det med
6805 godt over 100 skoleaktuelle programmene laget for læring. De fleste
6806 programmene er oversatt til over 50 språk. Elevene skal også kunne
6807 studere alle sider av dataprogrammene. Derfor følger også kildekode
6808 med. Elever med interesse kan lære av eksperter som har laget
6809 systemet. Dette med enkelt programmering i læreprogram som KTurtle,
6810 til profesjonelle verktøy som Qt Creator eller Java.</p>
6811
6812 <p>Skolelinux er laget for sentralisert drift, der alt teknisk
6813 administrasjon av alle skolene kan gjøres sentralt fra kommunehuset
6814 eller sentralt i en region.  F.eks. drifter to-tre personer 70.000
6815 skoledatamaskiner på 200 skoler i delstaten Extremadura i
6816 Spania. Etter velykket bruk av Debian Edu i skolen, legger delstaten
6817 over til Debian på 40.000 datamaskiner i administrasjonen. Det er idag
6818 mange selskap som tilbyr profesjonell støtte til innføring og drift i
6819 Norge og verden.</p>
6820
6821 <p><strong>Om FRiSK</strong></p>
6822
6823 <p>Medlemsforeningen Fri Programvare i Skolen organiserer
6824 dugnadsprosjektet som står bak Skolelinux.</p>
6825
6826 <p><strong>Kontaktperson</strong></p>
6827
6828 <p>Knut Yrvin</p>
6829
6830 <p>Leder av Fri Programvare i Skolen (FRISK)</p>
6831
6832 <p>Epost: knuty at skolelinux.no
6833 <br>Mobil: +47 93 479 561</p>
6834
6835 <p><strong>Referanser</strong></p>
6836
6837 <p><ul>
6838
6839  <li><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a></li>
6840  <li><a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/</a></li>
6841  <li><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Download">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Download</a></li>
6842  <li><a href="https://www.wis.no/gsi">https://www.wis.no/gsi</a></li>
6843  <li><a href="http://iktsenteret.no/sites/iktsenteret.no/files/attachments/monitor2011.pdf">http://iktsenteret.no/sites/iktsenteret.no/files/attachments/monitor2011.pdf</a></li>
6844  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/St_rre_PC_tetthet_i_skolen_med_Skolelinux_.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/St_rre_PC_tetthet_i_skolen_med_Skolelinux_.html</a></li>
6845  <li><a href="https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/linuxiskolen/2012-March/018500.html">https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/linuxiskolen/2012-March/018500.html</a></li>
6846
6847 </ul></p>
6848
6849       </div>
6850       <div class="tags">
6851
6852
6853         Tags: <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>.
6854
6855
6856       </div>
6857     </div>
6858     <div class="padding"></div>
6859
6860     <div class="entry">
6861       <div class="title">
6862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Roy_Arne_Myhre.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Roy-Arne Myhre</a>
6863       </div>
6864       <div class="date">
6865         28th March 2012
6866       </div>
6867       <div class="body">
6868         <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
6869 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet, får vi
6870 denne gangen høre fra en IKT-ansvarlig som har brukt Skolelinux i
6871 mange år, og vært storfornøyd med erfaringene så langt.</p>
6872
6873 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
6874
6875 <p>Mitt navn er Roy-Arne Myhre og jeg er 42 år.  Jeg er ansatt hos
6876 <a href="http://www.sandskole.no/">Sand skole</a> (Balsfjord kommune)
6877 og har stort sett vært det siden 1990.  Jeg er IKT ansvarlig ved
6878 skolen i 40% stilling – 10% undervisning – musikk.</p>
6879
6880 <p>Ved skolen er det ca 100 elever og ca 18 lærere + 4 assistenter i
6881 hele og delte stillinger. Alle lærerne har bærbar PC (dessverre med
6882 Win Vista) – assistenter har tilgang til egne. Vi benytter Fronter i
6883 det daglige arbeidet.  Vi har ca 90 elevmaskiner som fungerer til
6884 daglig opp mot Linux server (XFCE) som driftes av
6885 <a href="http://www.bzz.no/">BzzWare AS</a> via nett. Maskinparken
6886 består kun av brukt utstyr for elevene – og noe av dette begynner å
6887 bli vel gammelt selv som halvtykke klienter.</p>
6888
6889 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med
6890 Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
6891
6892 <p>Vi kom første gang i kontakt med Skolelinux rundt 1997. Den gang
6893 var det oppstart-disketter i hver maskin, ikke mulighet for lyd og
6894 video, gamle nettverkskort og mye plundring.  Vi hadde en ihuga
6895 forelder med som pådriver, forsker og inspirator for hele opplegget.
6896 Selv ante jeg knapt at Skolelinux fantes, men han var av den
6897 utforskende typen, og fikk både meg og skolelederen i trua på at dette
6898 var ting som kunne fungere.  Etter dette har det gått gradvis
6899 framover; flere maskiner er hentet inn gjennom bl.a
6900 <a href="http://www.greentech.no/">Greentech</a> og utrangert utstyr
6901 fra høgskole / Avinor og private givere. Når maskinene ble for trege
6902 for nye Windows-versjoner, sto vi klare til å putte dem i nettverket
6903 vårt.  Dette betyr at vi i dag har 1:1 dekning av maskiner på
6904 ungdomstrinnet og bedre enn 1:2 på barnetrinnet. Dette er vi veldig
6905 fornøyd med, og vi kan ikke se for oss hverdagen som ville vært
6906 alternativet ved bruk av Windows med sine lisenser pr. Bruker/maskin.
6907 Da ville vi nok vært tilbake til 1-2 maskiner pr klasserom med de
6908 negative konsekvenser det ville hatt for undervisningsformene våre. Vi
6909 kan ha en hel klasse i prosjektjobbing eller individuell jobbing
6910 samtidig – vi kan avholde tentamen og eksamen uten
6911 logistikkproblemer.</p>
6912
6913 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
6914
6915 Hvor skal jeg begynne... Stabiliteten er et nøkkelord - det bare
6916 virker.  Har du først fått en server med Skolelinux opp og gå, så må
6917 det en maskinarefeil eller sabotasje til for å stoppe den.  Det at man
6918 kan bruke eldre maskiner som normalt sett ville gått på dynga, er også
6919 glimrende - billig for skoler med dårlig økonomi og bra for miljøet
6920 siden vi gjenbruker utstyr i stedet for å skaffe nytt. Vi ville aldri
6921 hatt mulighet til å operere med det maskinantallet vi har pr i dag
6922 hvis det ikke var for Skolelinux - så tilgjengelighet er et annet
6923 nøkkelord. Et tredje moment er sikkerhet og brukertilgang. Alle
6924 brukerer opererer med egne brukernavn og passord, samt egne
6925 brukerområder som kan tilpasses for både enbrukertilgang og for
6926 samarbeid med andre.
6927
6928 Elever har godt av å se at det finnes andre alternativer enn de som
6929 storindustrien selger på lisensbasis - på den måten trenes de opp til
6930 å se flere muligheter og å foreta valg ut fra flere opsjoner.
6931
6932 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
6933
6934 <p>Ulempene med Skolelinux er nok utbredelsen og mangelen på kjennskap
6935 til dette i skolenorge.  De som skal ta økonomiske avgjørelser rynker
6936 på nesen og vil gå for det kjente og «sikre» selv om det koster mye
6937 mer. Man får rett og slett litt hetta av å ikke kunne noe – og unngår
6938 dette for enhver pris.</p>
6939
6940 <p>I tillegg er mye av linux-systemet administrert av tekstkommandoer
6941 og er lite intuitiv/visuell for oss som ikke er «inne i»
6942 kildekodene». Så problemet er nok mye godt at de som
6943 utarbeider/drifter Skolelinux ikke helt klarer å sette seg ned på
6944 skoleadministratorens nivå når det gjelder problemer og
6945 utfordringer. Men dette er nok en utfordring alle administratorer
6946 sliter med uansett OS.</p>
6947
6948 <p>Derfor har vi valgt å støtte oss til BzzWare AS for assistanse i
6949 drifta slik at jeg har kunnet konsentrere meg mer om kabling, skifting
6950 av komponenter, veiledning av lærere og elever, vedlikehold av
6951 skrivere og annen daglig drift.</p>
6952
6953 <p>Elevene mestrer Skolelinux helt fint.  Så lenge Internett
6954 (Iceweasel) og Libreoffice (Openoffice) fungerer er 90% av
6955 skolehverdagen velfungerende. I tillegg brukes jo en del av den
6956 pedagogiske programpakken bla. i forhold til matematikk og geografi,
6957 men det er såpass mye bra på nett om dagen, så disse programmene er
6958 mer som krydder å regne.</p>
6959
6960 <p>Jeg skulle ønske neste versjon av Skolelinux kunne komme litt
6961 mindre stappet med programmer, for halvparten blir aldri brukt, eller
6962 fungerer ikke uansett.  Hva med et pedagogisk panel av lærere/IKT
6963 ansvarlige som kunne sagt: disse programmene skal være standard, så
6964 får resten være slike man kan legge til ved behov – det kan lett bli
6965 en jungel å bevege seg i.</p>
6966
6967 <p>Jeg ønsker meg også en mer grafisk versjon av
6968 <a href="http://bzz.no/lwat/trac/trac.cgi">Lwat</a> hvor man kan krysse
6969 ut de som f.eks ikke skal ha internett-tilgang en dag pga
6970 eksamen/tentamen, samt en noe enklere brannmurløsning hvor man kan
6971 stenge for en del (få) sider på en enkel måte.  Jeg liker godt
6972 Skolelinux sin ideologi om at filteret skal trenes i hodet på eleven –
6973 men av og til skulle jeg ønske at f.eks Facebook og Youtube kunne vært
6974 koblet vekk en periode for å få bedre utnyttelse av tid og
6975 ressurser. Disse to nettstedene er nok mye av årsaken til at mange
6976 lærere holder igjen databruken noe mer enn man kunne ønske.</p>
6977
6978 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
6979
6980 Jeg benytter nesten bare fri programvare til daglig. LibreOffice,
6981 Iceweasel (Firefox), Thunderbird til e-post og Gimp til
6982 bildebehandling.  Vi har PHP-Nuke-oppsatt hjemmeside. Det eneste som
6983 jeg ikke har fått helt til enda er videoredigering - her må man vel
6984 innrømme at Mac er hakket over, men da er vi igjen over på å se hva
6985 som egner seg best, og ta valg ut fra det. Folk flest lever i
6986 villfarelsen om at regneark HETER Excel og tekstbehandling HETER
6987 Word. Dette er en misforståelse som jeg bruker mye energi på å
6988 diskutere og "åpne sinn" på Microsoft-slaver.  Dessverre er det mange
6989 IKT-ansvarlige som også har låst seg på at det eneste saliggjørende er
6990 Bill G sine produkter.
6991
6992 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
6993 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
6994
6995 <p>For å komme lenger i utbredelsen av Skolelinux tror jeg det må mer
6996 fram i nasjonale medier, samt komme bedre fram hva økonomien i dette
6997 valget vil være – samt mulighetene. Fri programvare er en berikelse og
6998 gjør oss i stand til å utføre arbeidet i skolen uten å måtte legge
6999 igjen tusener på tusener i Bill Gates lomme.. Få ETT nettsted med
7000 forståelig veiledning av installasjon/oppgradering og ETT forum med
7001 konkrete feilrettinger og problemer, så tror jeg vi kunne kommet et
7002 par skritt framover. Ellers tror jeg bare at ildsjelene må fortsette å
7003 skinne – kanskje flere enn oss følger etter på veien.</p>
7004
7005       </div>
7006       <div class="tags">
7007
7008
7009         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
7010
7011
7012       </div>
7013     </div>
7014     <div class="padding"></div>
7015
7016     <div class="entry">
7017       <div class="title">
7018         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
7019       </div>
7020       <div class="date">
7021         25th March 2012
7022       </div>
7023       <div class="body">
7024         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
7025
7026 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
7027 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
7028 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
7029 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
7030 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
7031 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
7032 and download as a
7033 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
7034 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
7035
7036 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
7037   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
7038     <p>Download video as
7039       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
7040 </video></p>
7041
7042       </div>
7043       <div class="tags">
7044
7045
7046         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7047
7048
7049       </div>
7050     </div>
7051     <div class="padding"></div>
7052
7053     <div class="entry">
7054       <div class="title">
7055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/St_rre_PC_tetthet_i_skolen_med_Skolelinux_.html">Større PC-tetthet i skolen med Skolelinux?</a>
7056       </div>
7057       <div class="date">
7058         19th March 2012
7059       </div>
7060       <div class="body">
7061         <p>Den siste uka har det vært en del skriverier om hvor store
7062 forskjeller det er mellom skolene når det gjelder digital kompetanse.
7063 Et eksempel er
7064 <a href="http://www.digi.no/891660/bekymret-for-it-i-skolen">oppslaget
7065 i Digi</a>.  Diskusjonen fikk meg til å bli litt nysgjerrig på om
7066 Linux-skoler har større PC-tettet enn snittet i landet.  Grunnlaget
7067 for diskusjonen har vært undersøkelsen
7068 <a href="https://iktsenteret.no/ressurser/monitor-2011-skolens-digitale-tilstand">Monitor
7069 2011</a>, som bruker informasjon fra
7070 <a href="https://www.wis.no/gsi">Grunnskolens Informasjonssystem</a>
7071 (GSI).  GSI-data kan lastes ned fra web og jeg lastet ned en Excel-fil
7072 (intet åpen standard-valg tilgjengelig) med navn på alle skoler,
7073 hvilke kommune de befinner seg i og hvor mange elever pr. elev-PC de
7074 har rapportert inn.  For å få en ide om svaret trenger jeg deretter å
7075 vite hvilke skoler i landet som bruker Linux, slik at jeg kan slå dem
7076 opp i GSI og finne ut hvor stor PC-tetthet de har.</p>
7077
7078 <p>Jeg vet om skoler i Balsfjord, Flora, Harstad, Kongsvinger, Narvik,
7079 Nittedal, Nord-Odal, Randaberg og Sunndal som bruker Skolelinux eller
7080 andre Linux-varianter.  Jeg tror det er flere enn de 56 skolene jeg
7081 har klart å identifisere de siste dagene, men har ikke klart å få det
7082 bekreftet med offentlige kilder.</p>
7083
7084 <p>Monitor 2011-rapporteres side 95 forteller at det "ifølge GSI
7085 (20120-2011) er det 3,11 elever per datamaskin når vi tar med alle
7086 grunnskoler (1.-10.trinn)".  For de 56 Linux-skolene jeg har klart å
7087 koble mot informasjon i GSI er det 2,28 elever per elevdatamaskin,
7088 hvilket betyr at det er 36% høyere PC-tetthet på Linux-skoler enn
7089 landsgjennomsnittet.  Linux-skolen med høyest tettet blant de jeg har
7090 notert -skole er Flora ungdomsskule i Flora kommune med 0.82 elev
7091 pr. PC (482 elever, 588 elevdatamaskiner).</p>
7092
7093 <p>Skolelinux gir datamaskiner lengre levetid, og en kan dermed få
7094 flere operative datamaskiner for samme budsjett, i tillegg til en
7095 rekke andre fordeler.  Kan det være forklaringen på forskjellen?</p>
7096
7097 <p>Tallene må tas med en liten klype, da GSI ser ut til å ha endel
7098 feilføringer.  Jeg synes i hvert fall en skole med 423 elever og 9
7099 elevmaskiner ser mistenkelig ut.  Eller en skole med 346 elever, 0
7100 elevmaskiner, som er et annet ekstremt eksempel jeg fant.</p>
7101
7102 <p>Takk til Sturle Sunde, Klaus Ade Johnstad, Ole-Anders Andreassen og
7103 Trond Mæhlum for innspill om skoler med Linux.</p>
7104
7105       </div>
7106       <div class="tags">
7107
7108
7109         Tags: <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>.
7110
7111
7112       </div>
7113     </div>
7114     <div class="padding"></div>
7115
7116     <div class="entry">
7117       <div class="title">
7118         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
7119       </div>
7120       <div class="date">
7121         19th March 2012
7122       </div>
7123       <div class="body">
7124         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
7125 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
7126 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
7127 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
7128 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
7129
7130 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7131
7132 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
7133 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
7134 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
7135 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
7136 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
7137 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
7138 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
7139 installations.</p>
7140
7141 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7142 project?</strong></p>
7143
7144 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
7145 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
7146 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
7147 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
7148 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
7149 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
7150 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
7151 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
7152 these things we decided to try it.</p>
7153
7154 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7155 Edu?</strong></p>
7156
7157 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
7158 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
7159 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
7160 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
7161 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
7162 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
7163 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
7164 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
7165
7166 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7167 Edu?</strong></p>
7168
7169 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
7170 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
7171 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
7172 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
7173 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
7174
7175 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7176
7177 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
7178 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
7179 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
7180 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
7181 that counts...)</p>
7182
7183 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7184 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7185
7186 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
7187 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
7188 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
7189 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
7190 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
7191 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
7192 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
7193 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
7194 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
7195 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
7196 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
7197
7198 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
7199 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
7200 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
7201
7202       </div>
7203       <div class="tags">
7204
7205
7206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7207
7208
7209       </div>
7210     </div>
7211     <div class="padding"></div>
7212
7213     <div class="entry">
7214       <div class="title">
7215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
7216       </div>
7217       <div class="date">
7218         16th March 2012
7219       </div>
7220       <div class="body">
7221         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
7222 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
7223 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
7224 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
7225
7226 <ol>
7227
7228 <li>The documentation is written in a
7229 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
7230 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
7231 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
7232 docbook XML.</li>
7233
7234 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
7235 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
7236 with the translated text.</li>
7237
7238 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
7239 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
7240 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
7241 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
7242 images.</li>
7243
7244 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
7245 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
7246
7247 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
7248 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
7249
7250 </ol>
7251
7252 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
7253 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
7254 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
7255 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
7256 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
7257
7258 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
7259 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
7260 package</a>.</p>
7261
7262       </div>
7263       <div class="tags">
7264
7265
7266         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7267
7268
7269       </div>
7270     </div>
7271     <div class="padding"></div>
7272
7273     <div class="entry">
7274       <div class="title">
7275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_presentasjon__Skolelinux___ferdig_oppsatt_skolenettl_sning.html">NUUG-presentasjon: Skolelinux - ferdig oppsatt skolenettløsning</a>
7276       </div>
7277       <div class="date">
7278         13th March 2012
7279       </div>
7280       <div class="body">
7281         <p>I dag presenterte jeg ny versjon av Skolelinux for NUUGs medlemmer.
7282 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/mypapers/20120313-skolelinux-squeeze.html">Lysark</a>
7283 er tilgjengelige allerede og
7284 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">video-opptak</a>
7285 kommer så snart videogruppa til NUUG får publisert den.  Jeg kom på
7286 endel punkter om nye ting i Squeeze-utgaven under veis som jeg burde
7287 hatt med, og har sikkert skrevet noe tull på lysarkene som jeg ennå
7288 ikke har oppdaget.  Denne presentasjonen ble smurt ihop på veldig kort
7289 tid, og jeg rakk ikke finpusse den.  Håper den kan være lærerik
7290 likevel.</p>
7291
7292       </div>
7293       <div class="tags">
7294
7295
7296         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7297
7298
7299       </div>
7300     </div>
7301     <div class="padding"></div>
7302
7303     <div class="entry">
7304       <div class="title">
7305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__K_re_Nordby.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Kåre Nordby</a>
7306       </div>
7307       <div class="date">
7308         12th March 2012
7309       </div>
7310       <div class="body">
7311         <p>Første ut i serien med intervjuer av folk i
7312 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet etter at
7313 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">ny
7314 versjon av Skolelinux</a> ble lansert i helga, er nylig valgte
7315 styremedlem i foreningen
7316 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
7317 Skolen</a> (FRiSK) som organiserer
7318 Skolelinux-utviklingen og daglig leder i
7319 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, selskapet
7320 prosjektet opprettet som et tilbud til skoler som ønsket en
7321 kommersiell samarbeidsparter.  Det bør nevnes at jeg er styremedlem i
7322 Skolelinux Drift AS og styreleder i selskapets hovedeier stiftelsen
7323 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/">SLX Debian Labs</a>
7324 som beskytter verdiene til Skolelinux-prosjektet, og kjenner Kåre den
7325 veien.</p>
7326
7327 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
7328
7329 <p>Jeg har siden januar 2010 vært daglig leder i Skolelinux Drift AS,
7330 som leverer support, installasjon, tilpasning, drift, og opplæring på
7331 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. Fra 2012 er jeg valgt inn som styremedlem i
7332 FRiSK.  Min forrige jobb var som KAM i Redpill Linpro (som er en av
7333 eierne i Skolelinux Drift).  Før det var jeg daglig leder i et eget 7
7334 manns konsulent selskap som også startet med fri programvare mot
7335 slutten.</p>
7336
7337 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
7338
7339 <p>Jeg hørte om det først når jeg jobbet i Redpill Linpro.  Men jeg
7340 har også en datter som går på en friskole, som også bruker Skolelinux.
7341 Som kjent har ikke friskoler de samme økonomiske rammebetingelsene som
7342 offentlige skoler, så for dem var det det absolutt beste alternativet.
7343 De anser også Skolelinux som et stabilt system, som bare går og går (i
7344 motsetning til det lille Windows-baserte nettverket de har på
7345 admin-siden).</p>
7346
7347 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
7348
7349 <p>Sentralisert drift av tynne og diskløse arbeidsstasjoner. Således
7350 lydløse og raskere arbeidsstasjoner som er bedre i klasserommet.
7351 Lengre levetid på PC'er.  Store besparelser på maskinvare og drift. Og
7352 så klart fjerning av alle lisenskostnader. Personlig synes jeg også at
7353 mange av programmene er bedre enn alternativene. Men dette er ofte en
7354 smakssak og avhengig om man må ha det man er vant til fra før.</p>
7355
7356 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
7357
7358 <p>For lite kjentskap til løsningen.  Noen ganger for dårlig
7359 kompatibilitet med arbeidsstasjoners/bærbare maskiner sine
7360 nettverksdrivere eller skjermkort. Men dette løser vi i skolene ved
7361 standardisering. Ellers er det få, om nesten ingen, av de kjente
7362 maskinvare / infrastruktur leverandørene til fylkes- / kommuner som
7363 tilbyr denne plattformen.  Skal dette endre seg så må kommunene selv
7364 sette slike krav til leverandørene.</p>
7365
7366 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
7367
7368 <p>Har brukt OpenOffice.org siden starten (2001 ?), Kun Linux på
7369 desktop siden 2005. Bruker i dag Kubuntu, Libreoffice og ymse annet
7370 programvare til ulik kontorbruk som er lett å installere / teste via
7371 alle programarkivene som finnes.</p>
7372
7373 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
7374 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
7375
7376 <p>Fortsette å presentere flere av de gode eksemplene hvor Debian Edu
7377 / Skolelinux brukes i kommuner og enkeltskoler.  Vi må få bedre frem
7378 at det er mulig tilknytte både Windows og Mac klienter på denne
7379 plattformen (selv om det vil øke driftskostnadene).  Dette gjøres
7380 mange steder.  Spesielt er det mange lærere som ønsker å bruke
7381 Windows/Mac-bærbare, gjerne som sin private PC også. Det er også mulig
7382 for kommunen å integrere med Active Directory i stedet for OpenLDAP
7383 som kommer med ut av boksen (selv om også dette øker kostnadene).
7384 Dette vil muligens bidra til å fjerne noe motstand hos noen
7385 potensielle brukere / driftpersonell for å ta i bruk noe
7386 nytt. Fremveksten av mobile brukere og nettbrett går i vår favør.
7387 Brukerne blir kjent og vant til flere nye operativsystemer /
7388 brukergrensesnitt. Så utviklerfellesskapet bør jobbe videre med å
7389 integrere flere nye klienttyper, som ultra lav-kostklienter og
7390 nettbrett (blant annet fri programvare-alternativet
7391 <a href="http://makeplaylive.com/">Spark</a> med
7392 <a href="http://www.merproject.org/">Mer OS</a> og
7393 <a href="http://plasma-active.org/">KDE Active Plasma</a>).</p>
7394
7395       </div>
7396       <div class="tags">
7397
7398
7399         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
7400
7401
7402       </div>
7403     </div>
7404     <div class="padding"></div>
7405
7406     <div class="entry">
7407       <div class="title">
7408         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
7409       </div>
7410       <div class="date">
7411         11th March 2012
7412       </div>
7413       <div class="body">
7414         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
7415 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
7416 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
7417 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
7418 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
7419 you have not done so already.</p>
7420
7421 <p>I plan to present the new version at
7422 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
7423 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
7424 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
7425
7426       </div>
7427       <div class="tags">
7428
7429
7430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7431
7432
7433       </div>
7434     </div>
7435     <div class="padding"></div>
7436
7437     <div class="entry">
7438       <div class="title">
7439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
7440       </div>
7441       <div class="date">
7442          9th March 2012
7443       </div>
7444       <div class="body">
7445         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
7446 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
7447 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7448 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
7449 more international audience.</p>
7450
7451 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
7452 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
7453 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
7454 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
7455 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
7456 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
7457 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
7458
7459
7460 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7461
7462 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
7463 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
7464 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
7465 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
7466 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
7467 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
7468 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
7469 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
7470 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
7471 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
7472 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
7473
7474 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7475 project?</strong></p>
7476
7477 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
7478 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
7479 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
7480 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
7481 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
7482 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
7483 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
7484 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
7485 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
7486 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
7487 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
7488 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
7489 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
7490
7491 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7492 Edu?</strong></p>
7493
7494 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
7495 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
7496 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
7497 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
7498 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
7499 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
7500 Japan.</p>
7501
7502 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7503 Edu?</strong></p>
7504
7505 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
7506 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
7507 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
7508 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
7509 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
7510 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
7511 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
7512 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
7513 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
7514 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
7515 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
7516 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
7517 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
7518 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
7519 help.</p>
7520
7521 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7522
7523 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
7524 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
7525 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
7526 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
7527 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
7528 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
7529 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
7530 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
7531 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
7532 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
7533 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
7534
7535 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7536 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7537
7538 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
7539 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
7540 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
7541 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
7542 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
7543 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
7544 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
7545 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
7546 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
7547 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
7548 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
7549 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
7550
7551       </div>
7552       <div class="tags">
7553
7554
7555         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7556
7557
7558       </div>
7559     </div>
7560     <div class="padding"></div>
7561
7562     <div class="entry">
7563       <div class="title">
7564         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
7565       </div>
7566       <div class="date">
7567          7th March 2012
7568       </div>
7569       <div class="body">
7570         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
7571
7572 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
7573 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
7574 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
7575 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
7576 download as a
7577 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
7578 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
7579
7580 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
7581   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
7582     <p>Download video as
7583       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
7584 </video></p>
7585
7586       </div>
7587       <div class="tags">
7588
7589
7590         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7591
7592
7593       </div>
7594     </div>
7595     <div class="padding"></div>
7596
7597     <div class="entry">
7598       <div class="title">
7599         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
7600       </div>
7601       <div class="date">
7602          4th March 2012
7603       </div>
7604       <div class="body">
7605         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
7606 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7607 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
7608 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
7609 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
7610 need a software solution for your school.</p>
7611
7612       </div>
7613       <div class="tags">
7614
7615
7616         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7617
7618
7619       </div>
7620     </div>
7621     <div class="padding"></div>
7622
7623     <div class="entry">
7624       <div class="title">
7625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
7626       </div>
7627       <div class="date">
7628          3rd March 2012
7629       </div>
7630       <div class="body">
7631         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
7632 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
7633 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
7634 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
7635 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
7636 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
7637 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
7638 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
7639 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
7640 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
7641 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
7642 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
7643 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
7644 year...</p>
7645
7646 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
7647 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
7648 name,
7649 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
7650 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
7651 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
7652 mean). I've been following
7653 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
7654 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
7655 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
7656 Check it out. :)</p>
7657
7658       </div>
7659       <div class="tags">
7660
7661
7662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7663
7664
7665       </div>
7666     </div>
7667     <div class="padding"></div>
7668
7669     <div class="entry">
7670       <div class="title">
7671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Frode_Danielsen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Frode Danielsen</a>
7672       </div>
7673       <div class="date">
7674         27th February 2012
7675       </div>
7676       <div class="body">
7677         <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
7678 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet møter vi
7679 denne gangen Frode Danielsen, som er leder for en IT-virksomhet som
7680 passer på IT-løsningen til flere kommuner i Hedmark-området, der noen
7681 av dem bruker Skolelinux i dag.</p>
7682
7683 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
7684
7685 <p>Daglig leder i <a href="http://www.hedmarken-ikt.no/">Hedmark
7686 IKT</a>. En interkommunal IKT-virksomhet for Stange, Nord-Odal,
7687 Kongsvinger, Grue, Løten og Hamar kommuner. Vi er 32 ansatte</p>
7688
7689 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
7690
7691 <p>Vi har vært i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet i flere
7692 sammenhenger, blant annet gjennom et par piloter som ikke har ført til
7693 noe konkret resultat.  Nå sist gjennom satsingen på skolelinux i Grue,
7694 Kongsvinger og Nord-Odal.</p>
7695
7696 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong>
7697 <br><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
7698
7699 <p>Jeg tror alle løsninger har fordeler og ulemper, litt avhengig av
7700 hvilket ståsted du selv har, så jeg unnlater å svare på dette.</p>
7701
7702 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
7703
7704 <p>Ingen for min egen del, men vi har noe fri programvare i våre
7705 løsninger.</p>
7706
7707 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
7708 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
7709
7710 <p>Jeg tror ikke man skal ha en slik strategi.  Man bør ha en strategi
7711 basert på å løse fremtidige behov, og velge løsninger som støtter opp
7712 under dette.</p>
7713
7714       </div>
7715       <div class="tags">
7716
7717
7718         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
7719
7720
7721       </div>
7722     </div>
7723     <div class="padding"></div>
7724
7725     <div class="entry">
7726       <div class="title">
7727         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
7728       </div>
7729       <div class="date">
7730         27th February 2012
7731       </div>
7732       <div class="body">
7733         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
7734 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7735 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
7736 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
7737 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
7738 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
7739 need a software solution for your school.</p>
7740
7741       </div>
7742       <div class="tags">
7743
7744
7745         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7746
7747
7748       </div>
7749     </div>
7750     <div class="padding"></div>
7751
7752     <div class="entry">
7753       <div class="title">
7754         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Knut_Yrvin.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Knut Yrvin</a>
7755       </div>
7756       <div class="date">
7757         21st February 2012
7758       </div>
7759       <div class="body">
7760         <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
7761 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet, får vi nå
7762 høre fra nyvalgt leder i foreningen
7763 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
7764 Skolen</a> og en av stifterne av Skolelinux-prosjektet.</p>
7765
7766 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
7767
7768 <p>Knut Yrvin her. Jobber i Nokia med å fremme rammeverket Qt og QML
7769 med tilhørende utviklerverktøy. Rollen er som leder av
7770 friprog-samfunn. I fjor var jeg med å legge om utviklingen av Qt til
7771 åpen forvaltning.  På den måten kan alle som bidrar til Qt gjøre det
7772 på like vilkår.  Nå er det
7773 <a href="http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/12/22/qt-5-%E2%80%93-a-look-back-at-the-numbers/">over
7774 1000 utviklere</a> som bidrar til Qt. Med overgangen til åpen
7775 forvaltning er utviklingen av Qt mer åpen enn Linux-kjernen.</p>
7776
7777 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
7778
7779 <p>Jeg var en av initiativtagerne til Skolelinux i 2001. Skolene slet
7780 med både utstyr og Internett-tilgang. De klarte ikke å møte
7781 forventningene til data i skolen. Driften av PC-ene var uholdbar. Som
7782 regel hadde rektor pekt ut en ivrig lærer til å passe på PC-ene,
7783 gjerne naturfaglæreren. Mange lærere jobbet mye ubetalt overtid for å
7784 vedlikeholde 30-40 datamaskiner på hver sin skole. Med 300 elever og
7785 lærere som brukere, blir det fort mye mer arbeid enn de 4-8 timene de
7786 kunne bruke på PC-drift. Skolene hadde kun en femtedel av
7787 IT-budsjettet som ble brukt på PC-ene i rådhuset.</p>
7788
7789 <p>Vi erfarte at skolene hadde mye datautstyr som stod ubrukt. Skolene
7790 manglet penger til Microsoft-lisenser. Selv med solide skolerabatter,
7791 kostet Microsoft-lisensene gjerne like mye som PC-ene i seg selv over
7792 en periode på 5-6 år.</p>
7793
7794 <p>Viktigheten av språklig mangfold og pedagogiske programmer var også
7795 viktig for oss. Vi oversatte mange skoleaktuelle programmer til
7796 nynorsk, nordsamisk og bokmål. Dette lenge før andre tok denne
7797 oppgaven seriøst.  Allerede etter ett år hadde vi etablert et helt
7798 arsenal av skoleaktuelle programmer på nynorsk, bokmål og
7799 nordsamisk. Vi spredde vår ide om språklig mangfold til de andre frie
7800 prosjekter internasjonalt. Resultatene ser vi i mange land. Det er de
7801 frie programmene som kommer på brukernes morsmål. Det er en av flere
7802 gode grunner til at fri programvare som LibreOffice, VLC, KDE og
7803 Firefox konkurrerer ut godseid programvare mange steder i verden.</p>
7804
7805 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
7806
7807 <p>Fordelene er at Skolelinux tilbyr over 100 skoleaktuelle programmer
7808 på de norske språkene, uten ett øre i lisenskostnader. Systemet gir
7809 enormt lave driftskostnader med diskløse arbeidsstasjoner og bærbare
7810 med roaming.  Skolelinux krever også mindre av maskinvaren.</p>
7811
7812 <p>Man kan fint kjøre systemet med 512 MB RAM på en bærbar PC sammen
7813 med en nettvideo i nettleseren og en presentasjon med
7814 LibreOffice. Konkurrerende system krever fort 2 GB RAM for å få til
7815 noe tilsvarende uten at det går ufattelig tregt. Skal man gjøre noe
7816 nyttig, krever konkurrentene til Linux mye større harddisk. Skoler har
7817 rapportert at de fort har fått 50% flere nye maskiner om de velger
7818 Linux. Dette i tillegg til de årlige besparelsene ved å unngå
7819 lisensbetaling til godseid programvare.</p>
7820
7821 <p>De lave driftskostnadene gjør at delstater i Europa har titusener
7822 av datamaskiner med Skolelinux i skolen. F.eks. er det under ti
7823 personer som drifter 70.000 PC-systemer i skolene i Extremadura i
7824 Spania. Det er slett ikke uvanlig at norske kommuner har 1500-2000
7825 datamaskiner med Skolelinux.  Driften tar ett årsverk. Slår flere
7826 kommuner seg sammen, kan de få samme sentraliserte stordriftsfordeler
7827 som delstater i Tyskland og Spania.  Delstater som kjører Skolelinux
7828 på alle skolene. Bare noen få personer sentraldrifter titusenvis av
7829 PC-er.</p>
7830
7831 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
7832
7833 <p>Den største ulempen for Skolelinux er motstand mot Linux fra
7834 IT-sjefer i det offentlige. Dette er ledere som holder innlegg som
7835 snytt ut av evangelist-håndboka til Microsoft. Dette gjøres i ett
7836 arbeidsmarked med stor vekst i etterspørselen etter Linux-fagfolk i
7837 privat sektor.  Etterspørselen har økt mer enn noe annet tekniske yrke
7838 siste tiåret.  Åtte av ti ledere vil ansette Linux-fagfolk i 2012,
7839 rapporterer jobbnettstedet Dice.com på oppdrag av Linux
7840 Foundation.</p>
7841
7842 <p>Det mangler 16.000 ingeniører og IKT-fagfolk i Norge rapporterte
7843 arbeids- og velferdsetaten NAV. Linux-fagfolk kan velge svært
7844 interessante jobber med alt fra apps på ledende mobilsystem laget med
7845 Linux, sky- tjenester eller web-applikasjoner. De raskest voksende
7846 teknologiselskapene i verden er ute etter Linux-fagfolk. Det være seg
7847 Amazon, Google, Facebook og IBM for å nevne noen. Linux er kritisk
7848 for å sikre veksten i markedet. Det sier seg selv at lønningene og
7849 jobbmulighetene er bedre enn for andre tekniske yrker.</p>
7850
7851 <p>Skal man lage apps for mobilen, smart-TV-en eller
7852 underholdningssystemet i bilen eller på flyet, er det Linux som
7853 gjelder. Med en slik konkurranse om Linux-kompetansen, kombinert med
7854 motstanden mot Linux hos mange IT-sjefer i offentlig sektor, så
7855 hindrer kommunene rekruttering av flere Linux- fagfolk. Skolene blir
7856 tvunget til å velge dyrere og mindre komplette IT-system. De har
7857 blitt hengende igjen slik IT var på begynnelsen av 2000- tallet. Dette
7858 fordi IT-ledere ikke har tilpasset seg markedet det siste tiåret.</p>
7859
7860 <p>Når det er sagt, er Skolelinux svært enkelt å lære seg også for de
7861 som ikke kan. Det viser alle lærerne som drifter systemet for
7862 hundrevis og tusenvis av systemer. Det meste er på plass rett ut av
7863 boksen. I tillegg er det solid med dokumentasjon med god hjelp på
7864 nettet. Det er mange kommuner som har ansatt en lærer som først lærte
7865 Skolelinux på sin skole, for så å drifte alle PC-ene i kommunen med
7866 Skolelinux. Det kan fort være snakk om 1000-3000 datamaskiner på 10-15
7867 skoler som sentraldriftes med en stilling.  Står man ordentlig fast,
7868 kan man også kjøpe profesjonell hjelp fra selskap som støtter
7869 Skolelinux. Det er flere slike selskap i Norge og i utlandet.</p>
7870
7871 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
7872
7873 <p>Qt SDK, LibreOffice, Firefox, VLC og KDE-skrivebordet. Dette på et
7874 Debian-basert GNU/Linux-system. Jeg bruker også noen morsomme
7875 3D-spill. Idag kan jeg velge mellom over 30.000 Linux-programmer. Det
7876 finnes ikke tid i livet å undersøke alle valgmulighetene. Derfor er
7877 det bra med Skolelinux i skolen, da utvalget av programmer er
7878 begrenset til hva som er aktuelt i skolefagene.</p>
7879
7880 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
7881 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
7882
7883 <p>Vi må selge hele Skolelinux forhåndsinstallert på maskinvare i hele
7884 pakker med 50-100-1000 PC-klienter med servere. Dette kan selges til
7885 enkeltskoler eller hele kommuner. Pakken må inneholde tjenermaskiner,
7886 svært rimelige diskløse arbeidsstasjoner, nettbrett med Plasma Active,
7887 og bærbare med roaming. Alt er godt testet med Debian. I et slikt
7888 anbud er det mulig å legge til sentraliserte drifts- og
7889 støttetjenester.</p>
7890
7891 <p>Man bør også selge sky-tjenester som læreadministrative systemet
7892 Moodle og driftsovervåking. I tillegg så bør man slenge seg på med
7893 presentasjoner de gangene LibreOffice og andre friprog-produkter
7894 selges til kommuner.</p>
7895
7896       </div>
7897       <div class="tags">
7898
7899
7900         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
7901
7902
7903       </div>
7904     </div>
7905     <div class="padding"></div>
7906
7907     <div class="entry">
7908       <div class="title">
7909         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
7910       </div>
7911       <div class="date">
7912         19th February 2012
7913       </div>
7914       <div class="body">
7915         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
7916 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
7917 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
7918 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
7919 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
7920 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
7921 solution for your school.</p>
7922
7923       </div>
7924       <div class="tags">
7925
7926
7927         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7928
7929
7930       </div>
7931     </div>
7932     <div class="padding"></div>
7933
7934     <div class="entry">
7935       <div class="title">
7936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Olav_Dahlum.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Olav Dahlum</a>
7937       </div>
7938       <div class="date">
7939         18th February 2012
7940       </div>
7941       <div class="body">
7942         <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
7943 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet, får vi nå
7944 høre fra et nyvalgt medlem i foreningen
7945 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
7946 Skolen</a>.</p>
7947
7948 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
7949
7950 <p>Jeg heter Olav Dahlum, og er frilans oversetter, tester,
7951 prosjektleder og bruker av fri og åpen programvare som
7952 LibreOffice. Jeg er også et av styremedlemmene i FRISK.</p>
7953
7954 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
7955
7956 <p>Jeg kom i kontakt med prosjektet i 2009, da jeg ble ansatt i
7957 stiftelsen Åpne kontorprogram på norsk for å oversette og teste den
7958 norske utgaven av OpenOffice.org. Arbeidet har hele tiden vært
7959 koordinert sammen med Skolelinux, og mange av de samme menneskene er
7960 involvert, så på den måten ble jeg en del av den utvidede
7961 familien.</p>
7962
7963 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
7964
7965 <p>Skolelinux handler i likhet med utdanningssektoren om å dele
7966 kunnskap med andre, og det er dette som er hovedstyrken til
7967 prosjektet.  Selv om Skolelinux hovedsaklig er involvert i utvikling
7968 av programvare, er det også et sted der man kan utfolde seg uavhengig
7969 av bakgrunn og ferdigheter.</p>
7970
7971 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
7972
7973 <p>Liten utbredelse og manglende støtte fra leverandører som leverer
7974 pedagogisk programvare til skolebruk.  Kunne kanskje hatt flere
7975 verktøy som letter administrasjonen ytterligere, slik at også mindre
7976 erfarne databrukere kan utføre lett vedlikehold og rutinejobber.</p>
7977
7978 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
7979
7980 <p>Jeg er nesten forpliktet til å si at jeg bruker LibreOffice... Jeg
7981 bruker forøvrig frie og åpne operativsystemer basert på
7982 operativsystemkjernen Linux, for tiden openSUSE 12,1 med KDE4.  Men
7983 hvis jeg skal dra fram noen flere eksempler så er nok Mozilla Firefox
7984 og Thunderbird to av de jeg bruker mest. I tillegg er jeg en flittig
7985 bruker av OpenSSH, Irssi, Midnight Commander, Git, Subversion,
7986 Translation Toolkit og Super Maryo Chronicles (litt gøy skal man ha,
7987 og med to håndkontroller liggende er det ikke til å unngå).</p>
7988
7989 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
7990 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
7991
7992 <p>Vi må få leverandører av pedagogisk programvare med på laget, men
7993 også utvikle vår egen tilpasset det norske markedet.  Det er også
7994 mulig å involvere utdanningssektoren direkte i arbeidet, for eksempel
7995 gjennom studentprosjekter der elevene selv er med å utforme
7996 programvare direkte eller indirekte gjennom aktive bidrag.  Dette gjør
7997 ikke bare samarbeidet tettere, men fokuset på standarder og friheten
7998 til å velge sin egen løsning vil kanskje stimulere interessen for
7999 framtidig deltakelse i bransjen.  Vi som driver med fri og åpen
8000 programvare ønsker oss ikke rene konsumenter, men tenkende og
8001 selvstendige individer som kan være med å skape sin egen fremtid.</p>
8002
8003       </div>
8004       <div class="tags">
8005
8006
8007         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
8008
8009
8010       </div>
8011     </div>
8012     <div class="padding"></div>
8013
8014     <div class="entry">
8015       <div class="title">
8016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
8017       </div>
8018       <div class="date">
8019         13th February 2012
8020       </div>
8021       <div class="body">
8022         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
8023 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
8024 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
8025 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
8026 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
8027 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
8028 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
8029 change the global proxy setting by editing
8030 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
8031 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
8032
8033 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
8034 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
8035 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
8036
8037 <blockquote><pre>
8038 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
8039 {
8040    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
8041        isPlainHostName(host) ||
8042        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
8043       return "DIRECT";
8044    else
8045       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
8046 }
8047 </pre></blockquote>
8048
8049 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
8050
8051 <blockquote><pre>
8052 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
8053 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
8054 </pre></blockquote>
8055
8056 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
8057 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
8058 would be used for
8059 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
8060 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
8061 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
8062 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
8063 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
8064 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
8065 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
8066 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
8067 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
8068 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
8069
8070 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
8071 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
8072 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
8073 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
8074 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
8075 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
8076
8077 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
8078 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
8079 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
8080 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
8081 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
8082 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
8083 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
8084 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
8085 the network setup changes.</p>
8086
8087 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
8088 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
8089 draft</a> and a
8090 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
8091 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
8092
8093       </div>
8094       <div class="tags">
8095
8096
8097         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8098
8099
8100       </div>
8101     </div>
8102     <div class="padding"></div>
8103
8104     <div class="entry">
8105       <div class="title">
8106         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Axel_Bojer.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Axel Bojer</a>
8107       </div>
8108       <div class="date">
8109          7th February 2012
8110       </div>
8111       <div class="body">
8112         <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
8113 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet har jeg
8114 fått en av oversetterne som har vært med siden starten i tale.</p>
8115
8116 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
8117
8118 <p>Jeg heter Axel Bojer og er datalærer, tysklærer, oversetter med
8119 mere.</p>
8120
8121 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
8122
8123 <p>Tror jeg så en annonsering på nettet i slutten av 2001 og ville
8124 være med som oversetter.  Jeg kom med på en utviklersamling og
8125 prosjektet var da helt i starten.  Det var spennende å være med mens
8126 prosjektet vokste til og utviklet seg.</p>
8127
8128 <p>Jeg har «alltid» vært språkinteressert og hadde nettopp startet med
8129 Linux og tror jeg tenkte det passet å bidra.  Var også glad for å få
8130 en Debian-distribusjon, og ville gjerne bruke den selv.  Til å begynne
8131 med brukte jeg først Mandrake og så Debian. Og siden jeg oppdaget at
8132 det ikke var noen mulighet for å bruke den som enkeltstående i lang
8133 tid, så gikk jeg etterhvert over til Kubuntu</p>
8134
8135 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
8136
8137 <p>Løsningen er forholdsvis lett å sette opp, gratis, fri programvare
8138 og gjør det mulig å gjenbruke eldre maskiner.  Det fine med Debian er
8139 at det er stabilt og har en veldig stor mengde programmer. Jeg liker
8140 også apt.  :-) Jeg liker også friheten ved Linux og muligheten til å
8141 delta og forme sin egen datahverdag.</p>
8142
8143 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
8144
8145 <p>Skolelinux er for lite kjent og for sent ute med å gi ut nye
8146 versjoner.</p>
8147
8148 <p>Da jeg selv i hovedsak bruker Kubuntu, så kan jeg egentlig ikke
8149 svare så detaljert rundt ulempene med Skolelinux.  Hovedårsaken til at
8150 jeg bruker Kubuntu er nok at da vi begynte med det mener jeg det ikke
8151 var noen annen løsning.  «Vandrende arbeidsstasjon» mener jeg ikke
8152 fantes da.  Dessuten ville jeg ha siste versjon, da den KDE-versjonen
8153 som var i Skolelinux den gangen var en god del enklere (tror det var
8154 KDE 2) var dårligere i mine øyne enn versjon 3.</p>
8155
8156 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
8157
8158 <p>Jeg bruker blant annet Kubuntu, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox,
8159 Kate, <a href="http://comix.sourceforge.net/">Comix</a> og Konsole.  Og
8160 en hel haug andre ved behov :-)</p>
8161
8162 <p>Har oversatt Comix selv, men det er jo ikke skjedd noe med Comix
8163 siden 2009, så den er det nok bare jeg som har.  Om andre vil ha den
8164 gir jeg den gjerne videre.  Ser at noen har startet på
8165 <a href="http://mcomix.sourceforge.net/">MComix</a> siden jeg så på så
8166 på dette sist, så nå er jeg igang med å teste og oversette den
8167 også.</p>
8168
8169 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
8170 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
8171
8172 <p>Det viktigste er å forankre beslutningen i kollegiet og med de som
8173 er ansvarlige for å vedlikeholde og bruke datamaskinene.  Flest mulig
8174 bør være med på å holde det (sosialt) vedlike, kjenne og støtte
8175 prinsippene. Som enkeltmannsprosjekt blir det lett veldig sårbart,
8176 særlig når (Skole)linux ennå i stor grad er en motkultur og ikke noe
8177 en stor nok andel av beslutningstakere, brukere osv kjenner til og
8178 bruker.</p>
8179
8180 <p>Jeg tror det viktigste er å fortsette å holde fri programvare godt,
8181 oppdatert, minimere antall feil, ha en god kontakt med brukerne og
8182 attraktivt og spennende programmer. Beholde alt som er bra og ha det
8183 tilgjengelig samtidig som man tilbyr det nyeste og rareste for de som
8184 vil ha det.</p>
8185
8186       </div>
8187       <div class="tags">
8188
8189
8190         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
8191
8192
8193       </div>
8194     </div>
8195     <div class="padding"></div>
8196
8197     <div class="entry">
8198       <div class="title">
8199         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
8200       </div>
8201       <div class="date">
8202          5th February 2012
8203       </div>
8204       <div class="body">
8205         <p>Since the Lenny version of
8206 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
8207 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
8208 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
8209 in the morning.  This is done using the
8210 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
8211
8212 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
8213 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
8214 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
8215 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
8216 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
8217 the
8218 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
8219 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
8220 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
8221 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
8222 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
8223
8224 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
8225 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
8226 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
8227 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
8228 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
8229 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
8230 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
8231
8232 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
8233 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
8234 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
8235 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
8236 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
8237
8238       </div>
8239       <div class="tags">
8240
8241
8242         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8243
8244
8245       </div>
8246     </div>
8247     <div class="padding"></div>
8248
8249     <div class="entry">
8250       <div class="title">
8251         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
8252       </div>
8253       <div class="date">
8254          4th February 2012
8255       </div>
8256       <div class="body">
8257         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
8258 publish the third beta version of
8259 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
8260 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
8261 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
8262 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
8263 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
8264 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
8265 on the project announcement list.</p>
8266
8267 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
8268 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
8269
8270 <ul>
8271
8272 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
8273   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
8274   the installation.</li>
8275
8276 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
8277   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
8278
8279 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
8280   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
8281   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
8282
8283 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
8284   for the local system administrator is created during installation
8285   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
8286   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
8287   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
8288   up to date on the system.</li>
8289
8290 </ul>
8291
8292 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
8293 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
8294 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
8295 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
8296
8297 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
8298 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
8299 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
8300 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
8301 will see you there?</p>
8302
8303       </div>
8304       <div class="tags">
8305
8306
8307         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8308
8309
8310       </div>
8311     </div>
8312     <div class="padding"></div>
8313
8314     <div class="entry">
8315       <div class="title">
8316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
8317       </div>
8318       <div class="date">
8319         27th January 2012
8320       </div>
8321       <div class="body">
8322         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
8323 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
8324 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
8325 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
8326 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
8327 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
8328 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
8329
8330 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
8331 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
8332 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
8333 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
8334 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
8335 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
8336 not taken care of by this.</p>
8337
8338 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
8339 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
8340 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
8341 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
8342 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
8343 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
8344 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
8345 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
8346 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
8347 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
8348 firmware packages.</p>
8349
8350 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
8351 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
8352 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
8353 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
8354 initrd with extra firmware, the
8355 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
8356 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
8357 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
8358
8359 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
8360 network cards working.  For this,
8361 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
8362 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
8363 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
8364
8365 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
8366 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
8367 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
8368
8369 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
8370 try.</p>
8371
8372       </div>
8373       <div class="tags">
8374
8375
8376         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8377
8378
8379       </div>
8380     </div>
8381     <div class="padding"></div>
8382
8383     <div class="entry">
8384       <div class="title">
8385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skjermbilder_fra_nordsamisk_installasjon_av_Skolelinux_Squeeze.html">Skjermbilder fra nordsamisk installasjon av Skolelinux/Squeeze</a>
8386       </div>
8387       <div class="date">
8388         26th January 2012
8389       </div>
8390       <div class="body">
8391         <p>For morro skyld har jeg gjennomført en nordsamisk installasjon for
8392 neste utgave av <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
8393 (Squeeze) og knipset skjermbilder av resultatet.</p>
8394
8395 <p>Som en kan se der er det noen oversettelser som mangler.  Det hadde
8396 vært hyggelig hvis alle tekstene som vises i Skolelinux-installasjonen
8397 ble oversatt til nordsamisk, men for å få det til må noen som forstår
8398 språket melde seg til dyst.  Det er mangel på nordsamiske oversettere
8399 av fri programvare.  Hvis noen starter raskt, så bør en rekke å
8400 fullføre Wheezy-utgaven før den gis ut. :)</p>
8401
8402 <p>Se <a href="http://d-i.debian.org/l10n-stats/">oversetterstatistikk for
8403 debian installer</a> for detaljert status.  Jeg har tipset
8404 <a href="https://lister.ping.uio.no/mailman/listinfo/i18n-sme">epostlisten for samiskoversettelser</a>,
8405 men det har vært veldig liten aktivitet der de siste årene.</p>
8406
8407 <p><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/01-isomenu.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/01-isomenu.png" width="40%"></a>
8408 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/02-sme-lang.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/02-sme-lang.png" width="40%"></a>
8409 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/03-sme-place.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/03-sme-place.png" width="40%"></a>
8410 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/04-sme-keymap.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/04-sme-keymap.png" width="40%"></a>
8411 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/05-sme-profile.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/05-sme-profile.png" width="40%"></a>
8412 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/06-sme-autopart.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/06-sme-autopart.png" width="40%"></a>
8413 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/07-sme-popcon.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/07-sme-popcon.png" width="40%"></a>
8414 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/08-sme-rootpw1.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/08-sme-rootpw1.png" width="40%"></a>
8415 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/09-sme-rootpw2.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/09-sme-rootpw2.png" width="40%"></a>
8416 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/10-sme-firstuser.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/10-sme-firstuser.png" width="40%"></a>
8417 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/11-sme-firstusername.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/11-sme-firstusername.png" width="40%"></a>
8418 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/12-sme-firstuserpw1.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/12-sme-firstuserpw1.png" width="40%"></a>
8419 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/13-sme-firstuserpw2.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/13-sme-firstuserpw2.png" width="40%"></a>
8420 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/14-sme-part.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/14-sme-part.png" width="40%"></a>
8421 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/15-sme-debootstrap.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/15-sme-debootstrap.png" width="40%"></a>
8422 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/16-sme-tasksel.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/16-sme-tasksel.png" width="40%"></a>
8423 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/17-sme-wordlist.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/17-sme-wordlist.png" width="40%"></a>
8424 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/18-sme-tasksel.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/18-sme-tasksel.png" width="40%"></a>
8425 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/19-sme-ltsp.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/19-sme-ltsp.png" width="40%"></a>
8426 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/20-sme-grub.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/20-sme-grub.png" width="40%"></a>
8427 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/21-sme-finish-install.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/21-sme-finish-install.png" width="40%"></a>
8428 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/22-sme-finish-message.png"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/22-sme-finish-message.png" width="40%"></a></p>
8429
8430       </div>
8431       <div class="tags">
8432
8433
8434         Tags: <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>.
8435
8436
8437       </div>
8438     </div>
8439     <div class="padding"></div>
8440
8441     <div class="entry">
8442       <div class="title">
8443         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
8444       </div>
8445       <div class="date">
8446         25th January 2012
8447       </div>
8448       <div class="body">
8449         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
8450 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
8451 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
8452 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
8453 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
8454
8455 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
8456 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
8457 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
8458 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
8459 this is done, log on to the central server and run
8460 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
8461 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
8462 will look similar to this:</p>
8463
8464 <p><blockquote><pre>
8465 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
8466 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
8467 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
8468
8469 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
8470
8471 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8472 enter password: *******
8473 %
8474 </pre></blockquote></p>
8475
8476 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
8477 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
8478 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
8479 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
8480 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
8481 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
8482 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
8483 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
8484 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
8485 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
8486 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
8487 automatically.</p>
8488
8489 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
8490 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
8491
8492 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
8493 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
8494 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
8495
8496       </div>
8497       <div class="tags">
8498
8499
8500         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
8501
8502
8503       </div>
8504     </div>
8505     <div class="padding"></div>
8506
8507     <div class="entry">
8508       <div class="title">
8509         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Paul_Reidar_L_snesl_kken.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Paul Reidar Løsnesløkken</a>
8510       </div>
8511       <div class="date">
8512         18th January 2012
8513       </div>
8514       <div class="body">
8515         <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
8516 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet, har jeg nå
8517 lyktes med å få tak i en skolemann som ikke er aktiv med utviklingen,
8518 men likevel har vært med nesten siden starten av prosjektet.  Jeg
8519 ønsker derfor velkommen til Paul Reidar Løsnesløkken, en mann med
8520 mange års erfaring i bruk av Skolelinux.</p>
8521
8522 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
8523
8524 <p>Jeg driftet tidligere IKT løsningen for skolene i
8525 <a href="http://www.nord-odal.kommune.no/">Nord-Odal</a>.  I dag er jeg
8526 IKT-konsulent for hele kommunen og samarbeider med
8527 <a href="http://www.hedmarken-ikt.no/">Hedmark-IKT</a> for best mulig
8528 tjenester til kommunen. Jeg har bakgrunn som elektronikkreparatør og
8529 grunnskolelærer og har tatt en del fag innen IKT, i hovedsak
8530 driftsfag. IKT i Nord-Odal kommune blir i dag driftet av Hedmark IKT
8531 som er et samarbeid mellom Løten, Stange, Grue, Hamar, Kongsvinger og
8532 Nord-Odal. Jeg er fortsatt "IKT-personen" på skolene i kommunen og
8533 følger opp og gjør enkelte mindre endringer der.</p>
8534
8535 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
8536
8537 <p>Kommunen satset på Skolelinux i 2004.  Jeg var ikke med i
8538 beslutningsprosessen den gang, men ble likevel med fra starten når
8539 dette ble levert.</p>
8540
8541 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
8542
8543 <p>Fordelene med Skolelinux er rask oppstart, sentral drift av
8544 klientene, klienter som jobber raskt og effektivt, bedre
8545 funksjonalitet på eldre utstyr og en ganske god programpakke med fri
8546 programvare som følger med.  Løsningen med halvtykke klienter gjør at
8547 prosessering skjer lokalt med alltid ferske maskiner.</p>
8548
8549 <p>Skolelinux kan fungere godt på gammelt utstyr, men det er klart at
8550 utstyr også blir for gammelt selv for Skolelinux.  I forbindelese med
8551 at vi nylig fikk nye servere og ny installasjon kastet jeg ut ca 60
8552 klienter som fortsatt var i drift etter at de var kjøpt godt brukt i
8553 2004.  Noe var rundt 15 år gammelt, men var fortsatt i bruk. Noen
8554 klaget på at det nå gikk veldig tregt på en del pedagogiske nettsider
8555 med flash o.l. Det er fullt forståelig.</p>
8556
8557 <p>Jeg fikk nylig et spørsmål fra ungdomsskolens rektor om jeg kunne
8558 legge inn <a href="http://freemind.sourceforge.net/">FreeMind</a>, et
8559 tankekartprogram , på skolens elev-Windowsmaskiner. Lærerne hadde
8560 vært på kurs og ville ta dette i bruk. Skolen har ca halvparten av
8561 elevmaskinene på bærbare Windowsmaskiner. Da kunne jeg fortelle at
8562 dette programmet allerede lå inne på den nye Skolelinuxløsningen
8563 som nettopp var satt i drift, klart til bruk.</p>
8564
8565 <p>Vi har de bærbare maskinene på ungdomsskolen i domene med
8566 Skolelinux.  Dette fungerer også meget bra nå. Elevene får opp en
8567 midlertidig windowsprofil når de logger på.  Denne profilen slettes
8568 etter at de logger av, noe som medfører rene profiler hver gang de
8569 starter opp en maskin.  De må lagre i sin Skolelinprofil, noe som
8570 medfører at de får tak i sine filer uavhengig av om de starter en
8571 Windowsmaskin eller en Skolelinuxklient. Det er mye mindre trafikk i
8572 det trådløse nettet etter at ikke hele profiler blir lastet opp til de
8573 enkelte Windowsmaskinene og tilbake når man avslutter. Jeg vet ikke om
8574 dette er standardoppsett i Skolelinux, men slik er vårt oppsett
8575 nå.</p>
8576
8577 <p>Vi har i flere år satt opp vår løsning slik at skriverkøer slettes
8578 og skrivere startes hver natt.  Hyggelig å høre at dette nå skal bli
8579 en standard i Skolelinuxløsningen.  Dette har vært en god hjelp for
8580 oss.</p>
8581
8582 <p>Elevene er lite opptatt av om de jobber på en Skolelinux eller en
8583 Windowsmaskin bare de har de programmene de trenger og at det virker
8584 når det skal brukes. Vi kjører mest mulig de samme programmene på
8585 Windows som i Skolelinux, som f.eks Audacity og LibreOffice.</p>
8586
8587 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
8588
8589 <p>Lærere bruker hos oss Windows. Dette fordi de da selv har mer
8590 kontroll over sin maskin, kan bruke den overalt, og kan legge inn
8591 programmer selv når de trenger noe i forhold til kurs o.l de er
8592 på. Jeg tror lærernes selvstendighet her gjør dem tryggere på IKT-bruk
8593 generelt. Det at de av og til får opp advarsler og lignende gjør også
8594 at de må tenke igjennom og spørre om ting rundt datasikkerhet.</p>
8595
8596 <p>Det er en del programmer vi bruker som ikke finnes for Linux.  Mest
8597 brukt er nok Photostory3 som brukes i mange sammenhenger, særlig på
8598 ungdomsskolen, bl.a. til å lage herbarier (plantesamling) .  Dette
8599 finnes gratis for Windows, men er ikke fri programvare.  Vi er opptatt
8600 av at programmer elevene bruker på skolen også kan brukes gratis
8601 hjemme. Det er også en del programmer som brukes til spesielle elever
8602 som bare går i Windows. Det er viktig med fokus på funksjoner og ikke
8603 på hvilket OS man bruker.</p>
8604
8605 <p>For oss er det kombinasjonen mellom Skolelinux og Windows som gir
8606 oss en god og hel løsning. Skolelinux er best der de er gode.</p>
8607
8608 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
8609
8610 <p>Selv er det LibreOffice jeg bruker til daglig.  Jeg bruker selv en
8611 Windowsmaskin. Jeg har benyttet en del fri programvare i forbindelse
8612 med sjekking av trafikk i nettverk, slik som Wireshark, men dette er
8613 jo ikke aktuelt for skolene. Jeg er generelt glad i programmer som
8614 fungerer på både Linux og Windows og gjerne MAC.</p>
8615
8616 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
8617 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
8618
8619 <p>Det er viktig at det benyttes programmer som elevene også kan ta i
8620 bruk hjemme.  Det skal da være enkelt, lovlig og gratis for
8621 elevene. Da er jeg ikke lenger veldig opptatt av om det kalles "fri
8622 programvare".  For skolene tror jeg "gratis" og "funksjonelt" er bedre
8623 begreper enn "fri" i forhold til programmer.  De fleste skiller nok
8624 ikke mellom "fri" og "gratis". Det er nå svært mange elever som
8625 benytter OpenOffice eller LibreOffice som sin primære kontorpakke
8626 hjemme.</p>
8627
8628       </div>
8629       <div class="tags">
8630
8631
8632         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
8633
8634
8635       </div>
8636     </div>
8637     <div class="padding"></div>
8638
8639     <div class="entry">
8640       <div class="title">
8641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
8642       </div>
8643       <div class="date">
8644         10th January 2012
8645       </div>
8646       <div class="body">
8647         <p>In the Squeeze version of
8648 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
8649 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
8650 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
8651 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
8652 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
8653 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
8654 first time.</p>
8655
8656 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
8657 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
8658 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
8659 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
8660
8661 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
8662 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
8663 new setting.</p>
8664
8665 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
8666 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
8667 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
8668
8669       </div>
8670       <div class="tags">
8671
8672
8673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8674
8675
8676       </div>
8677     </div>
8678     <div class="padding"></div>
8679
8680     <div class="entry">
8681       <div class="title">
8682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
8683       </div>
8684       <div class="date">
8685          7th January 2012
8686       </div>
8687       <div class="body">
8688         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
8689 the second beta version of
8690 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
8691 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
8692 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
8693 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
8694 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
8695 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
8696 on the project announcement list.</p>
8697
8698       </div>
8699       <div class="tags">
8700
8701
8702         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8703
8704
8705       </div>
8706     </div>
8707     <div class="padding"></div>
8708
8709     <div class="entry">
8710       <div class="title">
8711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
8712       </div>
8713       <div class="date">
8714          3rd January 2012
8715       </div>
8716       <div class="body">
8717         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
8718 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
8719 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
8720 interesting.</p>
8721
8722 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
8723 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
8724 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
8725 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
8726 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
8727 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
8728 wrap up its tasks.</p>
8729
8730 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
8731 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
8732 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
8733 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
8734 because I was typing.</P>
8735
8736 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
8737 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
8738 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
8739 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
8740 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
8741 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
8742 generate entropy.</p>
8743
8744 <p>The fix is in
8745 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
8746 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
8747 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
8748 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
8749
8750       </div>
8751       <div class="tags">
8752
8753
8754         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8755
8756
8757       </div>
8758     </div>
8759     <div class="padding"></div>
8760
8761     <div class="entry">
8762       <div class="title">
8763         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Peter_Hansteen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Peter Hansteen</a>
8764       </div>
8765       <div class="date">
8766         11th December 2011
8767       </div>
8768       <div class="body">
8769         <p>Etter en lang pause er det klart for neste mann ut i min serie med
8770 intervjuer av
8771 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-relaterte personer.
8772
8773 Denne gangen har jeg besøk av et avtroppende styremedlem i
8774 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK</a>, og en mann
8775 som har vært aktiv i Linux-miljøet i Bergen siden 90-tallet.</p>
8776
8777 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
8778
8779 <p>Jeg heter Peter Hansteen, og jobber til daglig som seniorkonsulent
8780 i EDB ErgoGroup i Bergen.  I praksis betyr det systemadministrasjon på
8781 Unix (primært Solaris, men en viss komponent av Linux).  Men Solaris
8782 er for meg et relativt nytt bekjentskap, hovedplattformen min har
8783 generelt vært OpenBSD og til dels FreeBSD.</p>
8784
8785 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
8786
8787 <p>Jeg husker ikke helt alle detaljene mer ;) - men jeg tror det var
8788 gjennom news-gruppen no.it.os.unix.linux.diverse, efn-listen og
8789 etterhvert også BLUG-miljøet her i Bergen.  Vi hadde et par
8790 Skolelinux-sentrerte BLUG-møter for noen år siden, og det har vært et
8791 par Skolelinux-utviklersamlinger her.</p>
8792
8793 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
8794
8795 <p>Jeg bruker dessverre ikke Skolelinux daglig. Men slik jeg kjenner
8796 prosjektet har det vært i stand til å ta opp i seg det beste av fri
8797 programvare i mange kategorier, så fra et sysadmin-perspektiv ser det
8798 ut som en svært behagelig sak.  For brukerne er det vel både en fordel
8799 og en ulempe at det ikke er Windows. Men vi håper at fordelene med et
8800 fritt system etterhvert vil bli åpenbare for både elever, lærekrefter
8801 og foreldre.</p>
8802
8803 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
8804
8805 <p>Vel, ulempen er vel først og fremst at andre aktører med mer
8806 kapitalmuskel har klart å etablere seg som det både lærere og foreldre
8807 føler seg trygge på, selv om det etter mitt hode ikke er noen grunn
8808 til å være spesielt trygg på de kommersielle alternativene.</p>
8809
8810 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
8811
8812 <p>Når jeg får bestemme helt selv, bruker jeg kun fri programvare. Da
8813 helst med vekt på ting som kjører greit på OpenBSD.  Hjemme er det
8814 OpenBSD, Ubuntu eller FreeBSD vi bruker.  På skrivebordet er det en
8815 avveining mellom Gnome, KDE eller hva-det-nå-heter som er
8816 standardvalget i Ubuntu, ellers er det de kjente tingene som
8817 LibreOffice, Emacs, mplayer.  På server er det selvfølgelig Apache,
8818 for overvåking både OpenNMS og Nagios (det bare ble sånn, og
8819 forskjellige siter).  Jeg skriver til tider om slikt jeg holder på med
8820 på
8821 <a href="http://bsdly.blogspot.com">http://bsdly.blogspot.com</a>.</p>
8822
8823 <p>Men vi må nevne at selv vi har en Microsoft-ting som vi slår på når
8824 vi av en eller annen grunn må. Det betyr igjen vanligvis når en
8825 mobiltelefon eller en annen lukket elektronisk dings krever kontakt
8826 via en slik for å få oppdateringene sine.</p>
8827
8828 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
8829 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
8830
8831 <p>Hadde vi hatt det rette svaret på det spørsmålet, så hadde vi
8832 gjerne hatt Skolelinux som førstevalg på alle skoler ;)</p>
8833
8834 <p>Men jeg tror vi må legge vekt på flere forskjellige ting.  En helt
8835 sentral sak er å fokusere på fri programvare og åpne standarder som de
8836 demokratiske verdiene de faktisk er.  Det har kanskje kommet litt for
8837 mye i bakgrunnen i forhold til strevet etter å lage det mest mulig
8838 'brukervennlige' systemet.  Det er en tung vei å gå, så det er
8839 forståelig at freenix-aktivister heller velger å skrive kode og annet
8840 som er mer lystbetont. Mer praktisk tror jeg vi må gjøre i alle fall
8841 to ting: For det første sørge for å fortsette med å levere det best
8842 mulige frie produktet, slik at det er lett å både komme i gang og
8843 holde systemene i daglig drift, og for det andre 2) spore opp mulige
8844 aktivister der de finnes, via lokale brukergrupper, sosiale medier
8845 eller annet og sørge for at de fortsetter å være aktive.  Mer og
8846 mindre uformelle treff kan være nyttig i tillegg til de mer
8847 organiserte møtene med foredrag, konferanser og utviklersamlinger.</p>
8848
8849       </div>
8850       <div class="tags">
8851
8852
8853         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
8854
8855
8856       </div>
8857     </div>
8858     <div class="padding"></div>
8859
8860     <div class="entry">
8861       <div class="title">
8862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Frode_Jemtland.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Frode Jemtland</a>
8863       </div>
8864       <div class="date">
8865         27th July 2011
8866       </div>
8867       <div class="body">
8868         <p>Neste mann ut i min serie med intervjuer av Skolelinux-relaterte
8869 personer er en tidligere styreleder i
8870 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK</a> som var med
8871 fra starten av
8872 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-prosjektet.</p>
8873
8874 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
8875
8876 <p>Mitt navn er Frode Jemtland, og jeg jobber i Hedmark IKT, som er et
8877 driftsselskap for Grue, Hamar, Kongsvinger, Løten, Nord-Odal og Stange
8878 kommuner. Her er jeg leder for avdelingen Løsninger og Arkitektur. Vi
8879 har i hovedansvar for servere, infrastruktur og løsninger som
8880 helhet.</p>
8881
8882 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
8883
8884 <p>Jobbet i IBM fra 2000, og da spesielt med Linux. Dette var da et av
8885 de mest tydelige linux prosjektene i Norge, og her ønsket jeg å
8886 bidra. Var aktivt med i prosjektet i 4-5 år.</p>
8887
8888 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
8889
8890 <p>Fordelene slik jeg ser det er den sentraliserte driftmodellen, og
8891 alle de vel gjennomtenkte løsningene som er inkludert i denne
8892 løsningen. Samtidig er det basert på en stabil, og godt kjent
8893 plattform. Dette vil si at man har en løsning som skal være mye
8894 tilgjengelig, og hvor det er relativt enkelt å få tak i personer som
8895 kan mye om den grunnleggende plattformen.</p>
8896
8897 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
8898
8899 <p>De største utfordringene med en løsningen er at den er intensiv på f.eks
8900 nettverk. I seg selv ikke et problem for en enkelt skole, men skal løsningen
8901 kjøres i større skala, med sentraliserte servere, så gir dette noen
8902 utfordringer.</p>
8903
8904 <p>Utifra hva jeg har sett på større installasjoner så er det ikke så
8905 enkelt å skjønne, hva som bør gjøres for at den skal skaleres opp, og
8906 da ta godt vare på alle sider av dette, ikke bare mer server å fordele
8907 last/trykk, men hvordan også beholde robustheten og fleksibiliteten i
8908 løsningen.</p>
8909
8910 <p>En annen utfordring er at stadig flere produkter som skal brukes i
8911 skoleløsningen ikke er laget til å kunne brukes i en
8912 skolelinuxløsning. Det blir derfor fort mye skreddersøm i de
8913 forskjellige installasjonene, for å få diverse pedagogiske programmer,
8914 webløsninger, smartboards, m.m. til å fungere.  Man er også en for
8915 liten kundebase til at leverandørene ønsker å gjøre noe med
8916 utfordringen. Problemet overlates til oss.</p>
8917
8918 <p>Det er også en kontinuerlig utfordring rundt problemet med å holde
8919 programvare på stabile versjoner, kontra å få ny funksjonalitet. Dette
8920 er jo en konflikt mellom oss som ønsker å drifte en stabil, og
8921 kostnadseffektiv løsning, mot sluttbrukerne som ønsker seg funksjoner
8922 det er vant med fra andre løsninger, eller som de må ha for at et
8923 eller annet nytt produkt skal fungere i løsningen. Dette er en
8924 utfordring også for andre plattformer.</p>
8925
8926 <p>En siste utfordring som ikke har noe med løsningen å gjøre, men med
8927 det omkringliggende miljøet denne skal kjøre i, er at de enhetene som
8928 skal drifte dataløsninger for kommuner og fylkeskommuner begynner å
8929 profesjonaliseres, og er da avhengig av å ha standard løsninger for å
8930 drifte store brukermasser. MS er selvsagt klar over dette, og har jo
8931 nå flere områder de begynner å bli veldig dominerende på. Den største,
8932 og mest problematiske er katalogtjenesten.  Man får snart ikke tak i
8933 større løsninger som ikke krever en AD. Når man da har store enheter
8934 som drifter både kommunalt ansatte og skoler, så vil det være et
8935 stordriftargument å standardisere på en katalog tjeneste, og da har
8936 man ikke noe valg. Her er alle slike driftsenheter for små til å få
8937 gjort om på dette. Her burde konkurransemyndighetene kommet på
8938 banen. Men konkurransetilsynet i USA griper sjeldent (og ikke før det
8939 har gått veldig lang tid) inn i monopolsituasjoner så lenge
8940 monopolisten er et amerikansk firma, så da har vel ikke andre
8941 myndigheter så mye de skulle ha sagt....</p>
8942
8943 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
8944
8945 <p>Privat kjører jeg Debian på alle mine datamaskiner. Det gjør jeg
8946 også på min jobbmaskin. Vi har også 15-20 linux servere av typene
8947 SuSE, Debian, Redhat, CentOS m.m. Jeg bruker derfor mye fri
8948 programvare. Av enkelt programmer kan sikkert masse nevnes. Hvis vi
8949 skal begrense oss til daglig, så må jeg si: OpenOffice, Firefox,
8950 Kontact, Kopete, Amarok,
8951 <a href="http://gramps-project.org/">Gramps</a>, Kate, ssh, bash,
8952 rsync, backuppc m.m.</p>
8953
8954 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
8955 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
8956
8957 <p>Det er et godt spørsmål, som jeg har lurt på selv.</p>
8958
8959 <p>Argumentene som ofte har vært brukt om at ting koster mindre holder
8960 ikke mål når man ser på hva som faktisk koster penger. Det er de
8961 ansatte som er en kostnadsdriver. Det vil si at hvis man har et system
8962 som den ansatte kan, så vil en kostnad på dette systemet kunne
8963 forsvares ganske mye ved at den ansatte gjør dette raskere og
8964 effektivt. Også uten å måtte eventuelt leie inn folk.</p>
8965
8966 <p>Jeg syns det er viktigere å fokusere på prinsippet med å velge fri
8967 programvare, men det er også et felt hvor man fort møter lite
8968 forståelse blant de ansatte i skolen.</p>
8969
8970 <p>Her må nok strategien fortsette å være at de sentrale myndighetene
8971 må sende tydelige signaler for hva de ønsker at offentlige enheter
8972 skal gjøre. Det var mye positivt på gang ang. dette for et par år
8973 siden. Både med eNorge og eKommune planene, men dette syns jeg har
8974 stoppet opp. En del av dette kan jo kanskje være usikkerheten som
8975 etter hvert har blitt, når man har sett kompleksiteten i de
8976 prosjektene som har blitt igangsatt. Det har også blitt noe usikkerhet
8977 i markedet ref. Sun, Oracle, Novell, Microsoft m.m.  Samtidig har jo
8978 også de proprietære programleverandørene sørget for å endre sine
8979 lisenser slik at man uansett ikke slipper unna kostnaden til deres
8980 produkter, selv om man skulle velge alternativer. Da er det økonomiske
8981 argumentet, som jeg nevnte tidligere, spilt ganske godt ut over
8982 sidelinjen.</p>
8983
8984       </div>
8985       <div class="tags">
8986
8987
8988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
8989
8990
8991       </div>
8992     </div>
8993     <div class="padding"></div>
8994
8995     <div class="entry">
8996       <div class="title">
8997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Marius_Kotsbak.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Marius Kotsbak</a>
8998       </div>
8999       <div class="date">
9000         10th April 2011
9001       </div>
9002       <div class="body">
9003         <p>Neste mann ut er Marius Kotsbak, styremedlem i
9004 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK</a> og mangeårig
9005 bidragsyter i
9006 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-prosjektet.</p>
9007
9008 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
9009
9010 <p>Jeg er en systemutvikler/kybernetiker og jobber med dette til
9011 daglig. På fritiden tester jeg ut/bruker mye fri programvare, og
9012 bidrar med testing og utvikling når jeg ser stort nok behov for det og
9013 jeg har noe å bidra med.</p>
9014
9015 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9016
9017 <p>Hmm, det er lenge siden, så det er nesten så jeg ikke husker. Jeg
9018 hadde vel hørt om prosjektet i media før en gjeng i Trondheim startet
9019 opp SPIST, Skolelinux-prosjektet i Sør-Trøndelag, hvor vi hjalp noen
9020 skoler i nærområdet med å installere Skolelinux og finne brukt
9021 IT-utstyr til disse. Det var moro å gjøre noe praktisk for å spre
9022 Skolelinux, og å se hvor fort gjort det var å sette opp utrangerte
9023 klientmaskiner og få disse opp som tynnklienter på helt nye datasaler
9024 på skolene, kun med kostnaden til servere.</p>
9025
9026 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9027
9028 <p>Det er et system spesielt skreddersydd for drift av et stort antall
9029 klienter mot servere, og da spesielt i henhold til skolers behov.  Det
9030 er enkelt og billig å installere og drifte, og det trenger ikke ny
9031 maskinvare for god ytelse.</p>
9032
9033 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9034
9035 <p>Hardwarestøtten kunne vært bedre og i enda større grad
9036 installerbart rett ut av boksen.  Distribusjonen har til tider hatt
9037 litt gammel programvare pga. at den følger Debian sine utgivelser.
9038 Kanskje man skulle vurdert en versjon basert på Ubuntu eller andre
9039 distribusjoner i tillegg?</p>
9040
9041 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
9042
9043 <p>Oi, det er ikke lite. Her er det jeg kommer på i farta.  Jeg bruker
9044 Linux og Ubuntu, og på Ubuntu programene Firefox, Thunderbird,
9045 Chromium, Pidgin, Digikam, OpenOffice, Wireshark, git og irssi.
9046 Telefonen min er en Android, og der bruker jeg programmene K-9 Mail,
9047 OI Shopping list, Shuffle, ZXing, OI Notepad og ADW Desktop.  På jobb
9048 bruker jeg JBoss, Eclipse, uCLinux for Blackfin, RCF-CPP, Qt, Maven,
9049 og boost-bibliotekene for C++.</p>
9050
9051 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9052 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
9053
9054 <p>En bør fokusere på totalkostnader inkludert driftsbehov,
9055 fleksibilitet, åpenhet og ikke låsing til en leverandør framfor sparte
9056 lisenskostnader, samt programvarens kvalitet og fortrinn, og at den
9057 fritt kan brukes på et ubegrenset antall PC-er, også hjemme hos
9058 elevene.  En bør også forbedre den fri programvaren ved testing,
9059 bugrapportering og kodebidrag om man kan, og ikke anbefale programvare
9060 uten at man har forsikret seg at den har tilstrekkelig kvalitet,
9061 ellers kan man lett oppnå det motsatte.  Tror en bør selge inn
9062 konseptet til fylkes-/statsnivå, kanskje med bidrag til
9063 utviklingsarbeid fra disse som alle landets skoler kan få glede
9064 av.</p>
9065
9066       </div>
9067       <div class="tags">
9068
9069
9070         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9071
9072
9073       </div>
9074     </div>
9075     <div class="padding"></div>
9076
9077     <div class="entry">
9078       <div class="title">
9079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Odin_Hetland_N_sen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Odin Hetland Nøsen</a>
9080       </div>
9081       <div class="date">
9082         28th March 2011
9083       </div>
9084       <div class="body">
9085         <p>Mine bloggposter om Linux i skolene i Norge førte til at inspektør
9086 og ildsjel på Harestad skole tok kontakt og fortalte at de bruker
9087 Linux på sin skole, og lurte på om de kunne bidra til å gjøre
9088 fordelene kjent.  Riktig nok bruker de ikke
9089 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> på denne skolen,
9090 men jeg synes dette er en god anledning til å gjøre flere fasetter
9091 rundt Linux-økosystemet kjent, og tok et lite intervju.</p>
9092
9093 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
9094
9095 <p>Mitt navn er Odin Hetland Nøsen og er en 70-modell. Jeg er bosatt i
9096 Stavanger og jobber nå på 9. året som undervisninginspektør på
9097 Harestad skole i Randaberg kommune (nabokommune til Stavanger).</p>
9098
9099 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9100
9101 <p>I 2002 begynte daværende IKT-ansvarlige og jeg et arbeid på skolen
9102 med å gå over fra Win98 til... noe annet. Vi testet en rekke
9103 forskjellige løsninger, deriblant Skolelinux, men endte opp med
9104 RedHat. Skolelinux var den gang ikke modent for det vi ville ha.  Jeg
9105 har siden fulgt jevnlig med på hva skolelinux holder på med, men har
9106 hele tiden vært bedre fornøyd med vår egen "standardiserte" løsning på
9107 RedHat/CentOS og Fedora. Vi snuser for tiden på Ubuntu som løsning på
9108 klientsiden.</p>
9109
9110 <p>I dag har vi på skolen vår en større linux-løsning med 400 klienter
9111 som kjører en blanding av LTSP (tynnklient) og DRBL (tykk klient uten
9112 harddisk) med en masse tjenere på serverrommet. Vi drifter hele
9113 sulamitten selv med webtjener, eposttjener, webmail, filtjenere,
9114 virtuelle tjenere osv.  Og IT-ansvarlig har en 80% stilling som
9115 IT-ansvarlig - og så er han KoH-lærer i de resterende 20% :-)</p>
9116
9117 <p>Du kan få en ide om hva vi holder på med om du går inn på
9118 <a href="http://www.gnuskole.no/">http://www.gnuskole.no/</a>.</p>
9119
9120 <p>For å ta brodden av frykten for at ildsjeler gjør skolen sårbar om
9121 ildsjelene falle fra, har jeg forsikret kommunen og skolesjefen i
9122 Randaberg om at det finnes godt kommersielle tjenester vi kan benytte
9123 oss av - om det skulle bli nødvendig. Vi er tre stykker i kommunen som
9124 nå har <strong>god</strong> linux-kompetanse ift. å drifte et større
9125 system.  IT-avdelingen i kommunen vil ikke ta på oss med ildtang -
9126 selv om vi nok har større IT-kompetanse mot linux enn det de selv har
9127 mot windows (de kjøper en <strong>masse</strong> konsulenttjenester
9128 fra ErgoGroup).</p>
9129
9130 <p>I kvantitet er Harestad og Grødem skole tilsammen et større
9131 IT-system enn resten av Randaberg kommune + Kvitsøy og Rennesøy, som
9132 kommunen også har driftsansvar for.  Vi har som sagt rundt 800
9133 maskiner, mens kommunen med sitt driftsansvar har ansvar for rundt 500
9134 maskiner. Det er selvfølgelig litt forskjell i hvor kritiske
9135 tjenestene våre er, men det gir allikevel et litt rart bilde når
9136 IT-avdelingen overhode ikke er interessert i å snakke med oss om
9137 hvordan vi gjør ting :-)</p>
9138
9139 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9140
9141 <p>Fra linux-perspektivet (ikke bare Skolelinux) er det en fordel av
9142 systemet er basert på fri programvare - og dermed fritt i ordets mange
9143 betydninger. Det er alt vi trenger: stabilt, relativt enkelt å drifte
9144 (tross alt - et større windowssystem er ikke enkelt å holde live det
9145 heller), rimelig i innkjøp og drift, og sist, men ikke minst, det er
9146 moderne for sluttbruker! Linux, i sine mange varianter,
9147 <strong>ser</strong> nytt ut, fordi det hele tiden blir
9148 oppdatert. Derfor lever systemet opp til hvordan elever forventer at
9149 et moderne GUI skal være (i motsetning til WinXP :-).</p>
9150
9151 <p>Vi var veldig pragmatiske da vi begynte med linux i skolen. Det var
9152 billig, det fungerte og kunne bruke alle de gamle windows-maskinene
9153 som "nye" tynne klienter.  I dag er vi mer bevisste fri
9154 programvare-tilhengere.  Vi har oppdaget hva det er - og vi liker
9155 det!</p>
9156
9157 <p>En av de <strong>store</strong> fordelene med fri programvare er at
9158 vi kan installere tjenester vi ønsker å tilby brukerne våre - uten å
9159 måtte tenke på om vi har råd til lisensene (fordi det er ingen). Alt
9160 vi setter i produksjon er ut i fra brukernes behov og vår kapasitet
9161 til å drifte dem. Vi skreddersyr tjenestene etter behovet og dermed
9162 trenger vi ikke ende opp med å kjøpe en pakke der vi egentlig bare var
9163 interessert i en liten del av den.</p>
9164
9165 <p>Bruk av linux frigjør ikke økonomiske midler, fordi midlene til IKT
9166 i skole er for få i utgangspunktet - men vi får så
9167 <strong>mye</strong> mer igjen for dem når vi bruker en linux-løsning
9168 fremfor en windows-løsning. I praksis ser vi at vi måtte ut med det
9169 dobbelte på budsjettet vårt om vi skulle hatt en tilsvarende
9170 windows-løsning, som det vi i dag drifter med linux.</p>
9171
9172 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9173
9174 <p>Ikke all pedagogisk programvare er tilgjengelig. Det er en del
9175 programvare i skolen som er laget med utviklerverktøy som bare virker
9176 i windows, f.eks. Drillpro, LingDys/LingWrite. Det er også
9177 "programmer" som bare virker om du har tilgang til Microsoft Office,
9178 f.eks. AskiRaski.</p>
9179
9180 <p>Vi sliter også litt med at video-codecer ikke alltid er like lett å
9181 få opp å gå på klientene. Det er alltid en eller annen videosnutt fra
9182 nrk.no som ikke er så samarbeidsvillig, uansett mediaplayer.</p>
9183
9184 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
9185
9186 <p>Alt :-) På skolen bruker vi det som finnes og som er nyttig. Det vi
9187 bruker mest er Firefox (jobber med Chrome, fordi det er
9188 <strong>mye</strong> raskere med Flash enn Firefox), OpenOffice (skal
9189 over til LibreOffice), GIMP osv. Standardpakken av
9190 sluttbrukerprogrammer.</p>
9191
9192 <p>På tjenernivå bruker vi OpenWebMail (skal over til Zimbra), Exim
9193 osv.</p>
9194
9195 <p>Personlig bruker jeg de fleste programmer over flere plattformer,
9196 men jeg har lagt meg til en vane å prioritere bruken av fri
9197 programvare også i Windows 7 og OSX.</p>
9198
9199 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9200 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
9201
9202 <p>Jeg er langt i fra sikker. For det første handler det mye om at
9203 IKT-avdelingen i kommunen ofte er de som styrer hva som er IKT på
9204 skolene - og de liker å bruke avtalene med Microsoft, som de garantert
9205 har fra før.  Dessuten - Select 6-avtalen til skolene gjør Microsoft
9206 skvettbillig.</p>
9207
9208 <p>Vi la vekt på effektiv drift av systemet - og at vi kunne øke
9209 antall maskiner uten å måtte øke budsjett for utstyr eller personell
9210 særlig mye, enn om vi hadde gått for en Microsoft-løsning. I praksis
9211 ser vi at en ren linux-installasjon driftes til halve prisen av en
9212 Microsoft-løsning.</p>
9213
9214 <p>Vi har i praksis også sett at det lærerne (og elevene) liker er at
9215 vi tilbyr <strong>veldig</strong> mange tjenester som ikke er så
9216 vanlige i en Microsoft-løsning. Det er ikke så vanlig at
9217 <strong>elevene</strong> også har epost, hjemmekontor osv. Det har vi
9218 også brukt som et vellykket argument mot Microsoft.</p>
9219
9220 <p>Den beste måten er selvfølgelig at noen bare bestemmer
9221 det. Problemet er å få dem som har makt til å bestemme det til faktisk
9222 å gjøre det ;-)</p>
9223
9224       </div>
9225       <div class="tags">
9226
9227
9228         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9229
9230
9231       </div>
9232     </div>
9233     <div class="padding"></div>
9234
9235     <div class="entry">
9236       <div class="title">
9237         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Astri_Sletteng.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Astri Sletteng</a>
9238       </div>
9239       <div class="date">
9240         27th February 2011
9241       </div>
9242       <div class="body">
9243         <p>En dame som har bidratt lenge til fri programvare i skoleverket og
9244 i foreningen som organiserer skolelinux-utviklersamlinger,
9245 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK</a>, er neste
9246 intervjuoffer.  Det er en glede å her presentere en lærer fra Håkvik.</p>
9247
9248 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
9249
9250 <p>Jeg heter Astri Sletteng. Jeg er lærer og IKT veileder ved Håkvik
9251 skole i Narvik kommune.  Min bakgrunn når det gjelder IKT: Av formell
9252 utdannelse har jeg lærerutdanning, Master i skoleledelse og IKT for
9253 lærere. Har jobba som IKT veileder siden 2002.</p>
9254
9255 <p>Det viktigste for meg som IKT veileder er å få fundamentert den
9256 5. basisferdigheten, digital kompetanse ved skolen min på en god måte
9257 slik at hele skolesamfunnet tar i bruk IKT i alle fag. Dette arbeidet
9258 gjøres i nært samarbeid med skolens ledelse.</p>
9259
9260 <p>Min viktigste jobb som IKT veileder er å være motivator og pådriver
9261 i IKT arbeidet ved skolen.</p>
9262
9263 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9264
9265 <p>Jobber i en kommune hvor vi satser på Fri programvare. I 2004 ble
9266 det gjort et politisk vedtak om at vi skulle innføre Skolelinux ved
9267 alle skolene i kommunen. Jeg har dermed en god del erfaring med
9268 Skolelinux, samt annen fri programvare som Open Office, Joomla, Moodle
9269 etc.</p>
9270
9271 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9272
9273 <p>Siden vi jobber med åpen kildekode kan vi få programmene og
9274 produktene tilpasset vår bruk. Det er jo heller ikke en ulempe at
9275 skolen kommer bedre ut økonomisk, men først og fremst er det viktig
9276 for oss at vi har digitale systemer som gjør at vi kan følge
9277 læreplanen i alle fag. Det syns jeg at vi kan gjøre gjennom
9278 Skolelinux.</p>
9279
9280 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9281
9282 <p>Skolen er avhengige av å ha folk på IT avdelinga i kommunen som kan
9283 drive support, og være tilgjengelige når vi trenger hjelp. Det er en
9284 ulempe at ikke alle på denne avdelingen nødvendigvis er god på
9285 Linux.</p>
9286
9287 <p>Vi har også noen utfordringer når det kommer til spesielle
9288 programmer som enkelte elever er avhengige av ? og som ikke er
9289 plattform uavhengige. Her har vi i Friprog-verden, men også
9290 departement en jobb å gjøre.</p>
9291
9292 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
9293
9294 <p>Skolen vår bruker Skolelinux, Open Office, Iceweazel (Mozilla),
9295 VLC, Tux paint, Scribus, FreeMind, GIMP, digiKam, Ksnapshot, GeoGebra,
9296 Moodle (innført på alle klassetrinn + som et administrativt verktøy)
9297 og Joomla som hjemmeside.<p>
9298
9299 <p>Det er de jeg kommer på i farten. I tillegg har vi Smartboard
9300 installert på server, men det regnes vel ikke som fri programvare?</p>
9301
9302 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9303 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
9304
9305 <p>Først og fremst trenger skolen oppetider på sine datasystemer. Syns
9306 også at det at vi kan få tilpasset plattform og systemer til vår bruk
9307 er en god strategi å bruke.</p>
9308
9309       </div>
9310       <div class="tags">
9311
9312
9313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9314
9315
9316       </div>
9317     </div>
9318     <div class="padding"></div>
9319
9320     <div class="entry">
9321       <div class="title">
9322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Rub_n_Romero_y_Cordero.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Rubén Romero y Cordero</a>
9323       </div>
9324       <div class="date">
9325         16th February 2011
9326       </div>
9327       <div class="body">
9328         <p>Styret i foreningen som organiserer skolelinux-utviklersamlinger,
9329 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK</a>, er fullt av
9330 flinke folk.  Denne gangen har jeg fått et ferskt styremedlem som
9331 kommer fra Ubuntu-miljøet i tale.</p>
9332
9333 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
9334
9335 <p>Rubén Romero y Cordero, 81-modell, deltidspappa (50%) for en jente
9336 på 6 år. Jobber i Oslo som Global Sales Executive hos Varnish Software
9337 og til daglig har jeg kontakt med kunder fra hele verden. Min
9338 forkjærlighet for fri programvare har gjort at jeg har nå flere års
9339 erfaring med salg av slike løsninger (bl.a. fra Redpill Linpro og
9340 Freecode) og mye innsikt og kunnskap om det globale IT-markedet.
9341 Ellers er jeg involvert i flere prosjekter bl.a. er jeg Ubuntu
9342 Community medlem, kontaktpersonen for Ubuntu Norge og driveren av
9343 SpreadUbuntu marketing prosjektet og nå fersk styremedlem i FRISK. Jeg
9344 har brukt GNU/Linux siden 1997.</p>
9345
9346 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9347
9348 <p>Som Debian bruker siden slutten av 90-tallet var det uunngåelig å
9349 ikke komme bort i Skolelinux. Dette var vel i slutten av 2001 når jeg
9350 var student ved UiO. Flere år senere fikk jeg lastet og testet Venus
9351 (Skolelinux 1.0) på release dagen.</p>
9352
9353 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9354
9355 <p>Fri programvare bygges sten for sten i det åpne, slik at koden og
9356 prosessen den lages på kan gjennomskues av andre enn de som har laget
9357 det. Det er et vitenskapelig og gjennomsiktig måte å lage programvare
9358 på.</p>
9359
9360 <p>Skoler i vårt samfunn skal være steder hvor vitenskapelig kunnskap
9361 deles til alle.  I dag har vi ikke et vitenskapelig tilnærming til
9362 hvordan programvaren som brukes på skolen lages. Skolelinux bringer
9363 inn at slik tilnærming i skoleverkets klasserom, siden
9364 operativsystemet er en åpent platform som gir skolene muligheten til å
9365 dra nytte av programvare som er laget av tusenvis av mennesker verden
9366 rundt og som gir elevene så vel som lærerne muligheten til å bruke,
9367 dele, forandre og forbedre OSet sitt uten begrensninger. I den
9368 forbindelsen representerer Skolelinux også konkrete resultater utfra
9369 samhandling på tvers av grenser.</p>
9370
9371 <p>Når det gjelder de tekniske fordelene av Skolelinux er jeg sikker
9372 på at andre enn meg har allerede beskrevet disse bedre enn det jeg
9373 kan.  Men jeg kan likevel tilføye noe: Skolelinux som sådan er en
9374 community-drevet operativsystemplatform. Som i ethvert
9375 community-prosjekt har alle Skolelinux brukere muligheten til å
9376 påvirke retning av prosjektet og resultatet som gjenspeiles i
9377 programvaren. Dette kommer sjeldent frem og jeg mener at det er noe
9378 som burde fokuseres mer på.</p>
9379
9380 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9381
9382 <p>De største ulempene er:</p>
9383
9384 <ul>
9385 <li>Mangel på kompetanse</li>
9386 <li>Mangel av administrative verktøy som kunne hjelpe lokale IT
9387   avdelinger å bruke Skolelinux til mer enn bare en tjener for
9388   terminalklienter. Et eksempel: Zentyal sin web-dashboard.</li>
9389 </ul>
9390
9391 <p>Bedre og mer intuitive administrative verktøy kunne løst deler av
9392 problemet, men det er unektelig at ved bruk av Skolelinux må
9393 IT-personalet vite hva de gjør for å få ting gjort riktig, eller i det
9394 hele tatt. Med andre platformer er kompetansen enklere tilgjengelig og
9395 løsningene kan fungere på en tilfredstillende, om ikke riktig
9396 måte.</p>
9397
9398 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
9399
9400 <p>Har brukt GNU/Linux utelukkende sommitt skrivebord OS siden 2000. I
9401 dag bruker jeg Ubuntu og gjør det meste med friprogramvare verktøyene
9402 som er tilgjengelige der. Med over 20.000 programmer å velge mellom er
9403 dette mer enn nok for de fleste brukerne.</p>
9404
9405 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9406 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
9407
9408 <p>Opplysning og pragmatikk.  Vi prøver å løse problemer med bruk av
9409 programvare. De fleste utfordringene skolene har på IKT-siden kan
9410 løses ved hjelp av friprogramvareverktøy i dag. Det som trenges er
9411 opplysning, kunnskap og kompetanse.</p>
9412
9413       </div>
9414       <div class="tags">
9415
9416
9417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9418
9419
9420       </div>
9421     </div>
9422     <div class="padding"></div>
9423
9424     <div class="entry">
9425       <div class="title">
9426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Morten_Amundsen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Morten Amundsen</a>
9427       </div>
9428       <div class="date">
9429         23rd January 2011
9430       </div>
9431       <div class="body">
9432         <p>Denne gangen er det Tromsøkontoret til Friprog-senteret, og nyvalgt
9433 styremedlem i <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">foreningen
9434 FRISK</a> jeg har fått i tale i min intervjuserie med
9435 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-folk.</p>
9436
9437 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
9438
9439 <p>Jeg heter Morten Amundsen og jobber i
9440 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">Friprog.no</a>, men er for tiden leid
9441 ut til <a href="http://www.bredbandsfylket.no/">Bredbåndsfylket
9442 Troms</a> der jeg jobber med ett prosjekt som heter
9443 "<a href="http://www.bredbandsfylket.no/skolefjoela.157417.no.html">Skolefjøla</a>"
9444 Vi ser på en åpen løsning som integrerer eksisterende lukkete
9445 løsninger sammen med fri programvare. Målet er å gi elever og lærere
9446 en plattform som de kan tilpasse utfra behov.</p>
9447
9448 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9449
9450 <p>Skolelinux har jeg møtt ved flere anledninger opp gjennom åra, både gjennom
9451 entusiastiske skolelinuxbrukere og skeptiske "forståsegpåere" :-)</p>
9452
9453 <p>Jeg husker en leverandør av et stort OS for noen år siden mente at
9454 Skolelinux var kun for hackere og nerder og at ingen seriøse skoler
9455 kunne ta dette i bruk.  Heldigvis er kunnskapen større nå og
9456 skikkelige "IT-folk" søker alltid å utvide sin kunnskap.
9457
9458 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9459
9460 <p>Ja det er mange fordeler. Uavhengighet, stabilitet, åpenhet, standarder
9461 osv. Tror det er viktig at man ikke begrenser mulighetene på den plattformen
9462 elevene skal jobbe.</p>
9463
9464 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9465
9466 <p>Det største hinderet er det vi opplever på andre områder rundt
9467 fri programvare, nemlig kunnskap. For mange er det trygt å velge det vi
9468 alltid har valgt. Fordi leverandørene rundt oss sitter på den kunnskapen og
9469 de vi støtter oss på har den samme.  Hvis vi klarer å riste løs litt og
9470 glemme gamle kriger mellom operativsystemer og  leverandører, men sette ned
9471 hva som er viktig og velge ut fra det, så hadde man kanskje kommet ut med
9472 litt andre resultat. Jeg tror IT-folk er konservative og velger tradisjonelt
9473 og det er synd.</p>
9474
9475 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
9476
9477 <p>Jeg bruker Ubuntu, Android, Jolicloud, Open Office, Zimbra, Picasa
9478 og Firefox samt en bråte med tjenester som er webbasert. Det eneste
9479 som er betalingslisens for er OSX.  Ser at jeg jobber mer og mer i
9480 skyen og setter pris på alt jeg slipper egen klient til.  Derfor er
9481 jeg veldig sjarmert av små kjappe operativsystemer som krever minimalt
9482 av maskinvaren.</p>
9483
9484 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9485 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
9486
9487 <p>Tror en blanding av krav og informasjon er veien å gå. Krav om
9488 sikkerhet, oppetid og åpne standarder.  Informasjon om muligheter og
9489 alternativer. Her har leverandører, IT-avdelinger og pedagoger en vei
9490 å gå sammen. Det er til slutt LÆRING det dreier seg om, og da må man
9491 få mest mulig læring for pengene man har.</p>
9492
9493       </div>
9494       <div class="tags">
9495
9496
9497         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9498
9499
9500       </div>
9501     </div>
9502     <div class="padding"></div>
9503
9504     <div class="entry">
9505       <div class="title">
9506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Sturle_Sunde.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Sturle Sunde</a>
9507       </div>
9508       <div class="date">
9509         19th January 2011
9510       </div>
9511       <div class="body">
9512         <p>Denne gang har jeg fått tak i en mangeårig unix-mann som etter
9513 mange år ved Universitetet i Oslo, der jeg først traff ham, har
9514 flyttet tilbake til vestlandet, og der bidratt til å revitalisere
9515 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-oppsettet i
9516 Florø.</p>
9517
9518 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
9519
9520 <p>Sturle Sunde, ansvarleg for skulenettet i Flora kommune.  Eg driv,
9521 vidareutviklar og er andrelinje brukarstøtte for datanettet ved
9522 skulane i Flora kommune.  10 skular og meir enn 700 maskiner med
9523 Linux, medrekna tynnklientar.  Tidlegare jobba eg i mange år med
9524 unix-drift ved Universitetets senter for informasjonsteknologi ved
9525 Universitetet i Oslo.</p>
9526
9527 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9528
9529 <p>Det er vanskeleg å svare konkret på.  Eg har drive med Unix og Linux i
9530 alle år, og Skulelinux er eit godt kjent prosjekt i miljøet.  Det var
9531 først i 2008, då eg tok til i min noverande jobb, at eg fekk bruk for
9532 Skulelinux for alvor.</p>
9533
9534 <p>Jobben min skulle vere drift av eit nytt skulenett i Flora kommune,
9535 levert av eit firma eg ikkje vil reklamere for.  Systemet skulle vere
9536 ferdig levert i september året før.  Dette viste seg å ta mykje lenger
9537 tid, og i haustferien 2008 hadde dei endå ikkje klart å få opp ei
9538 fungerande løysing.  Situasjonen var prekær for den største skulen i
9539 kommunen med meir enn 500 elevar på ungdomssteget.  Skulen hadde brukt
9540 Skulelinux før, og var tilfredse med det.  No hadde dei vore utan
9541 fungerande datasystem i nesten eit år.  Difor fekk eg opp ein ny tenar
9542 utanfor prosjektet og installerte Skulelinux på den.  Etter litt
9543 justering av konfigurasjonen med god hjelp av #skolelinux på IRC, var
9544 den nye tenaren oppe og gjekk med både tynne og halv-tjukke klientar.
9545 Autentisering gjekk mot det nye systemet, slik at elevar og lærarar
9546 framleis har same brukarnamn og passord over alt.  Dette berre
9547 fungerte, og vi bestemte oss for å erstatte delar av løysinga vi
9548 skulle få levert med Skulelinux.</p>
9549
9550 <p>Det høyrer med til historia at det nye systemet eg skulle drive frå
9551 januar 2008 endå ikkje er ferdig levert.  Dei jobbar med saka, seier
9552 dei, og har von om å fullføre leveransen i løpet av 2011.</p>
9553
9554 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9555
9556 <p>Det er veldig mange.  Eg skal ta nokre få.</p>
9557
9558 <p>Den viktigaste fordelen er at det igrunn berre er ei maskin å passe
9559 på, og det er tenaren.  Med andre løysingar har ein gjerne programvare
9560 og anna som skal vedlikehaldast på kvar enkelt maskin.  Med Skulelinux
9561 kan alle feil rettast og alle program oppgraderast på alle maskiner
9562 samstundes ved å gjere endringa som må til på tenaren.  Eg kan sitje
9563 på kontoret og passe på alle tenarane i kommunen derifrå.</p>
9564
9565 <ul>
9566
9567 <li>Tynne klientar gjer det mogleg å bruke eldre utstyr lenge, so lenge
9568 tenaren er sterk nok.  Ein liten tenar med eit par halv-moderne CPUar
9569 og 2 GiB RAM held lenge for eit typisk klasserom med 30 tynnklientar,
9570 og det er lett å utvide med fleire.
9571
9572 <li>Halvtjukke klientar gjer det mogleg å utnytte kapasiteten i litt
9573 nyare maskiner betre, og avlaste tenaren.  Ingenting vert installert
9574 lokalt på desse heller, og harddisken kan gjerne koblast frå.  Gode
9575 halvtjukke klientar kan kjøpast brukt for under 1000-lappen, og det er
9576 heile kostnaden.  Ingen lisensar eller anna på toppen, og det er ikkje
9577 krav til kraftigare tenar heller.
9578
9579 <li>Det er Linux.  Vi har ikkje noko kluss med drivarar, dei berre er
9580 der.  Heller ikkje med virus, dei finst i realiteten ikkje.  Eller med
9581 elevar som klussar med installert programvare, for dei klarar ikkje å
9582 øydeleggje for nokon andre enn seg sjølve.
9583
9584 </ul>
9585
9586 <p>Skulelinux er lagt opp til å vere veldig lett å installere rett ut
9587 av boksen på ein heil skule av ein interessert lærar.  Det er ofte ei
9588 god løysing for skulen.  Å ha nokon til stades som kjenner systemet og
9589 kan forklare enkle ting eller løyse problem der og då, er uvurderleg
9590 viktig for ein stressa lærar fem minutt før det ringer inn.</p>
9591
9592 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9593
9594 <p>All den ferdige konfigurasjonen gjer det tungvint å tilpasse
9595 Skulelinux til eit system som skal fungere saman med mange andre
9596 installasjonar i eit felles datanett for skulane i ein kommune.  Det
9597 heile er prekonfigurert for ein skule, og utviding til mange skular
9598 med eigne tenarar er ikkje berre enkelt.</p>
9599
9600 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
9601
9602 <p>Eg brukar mest alle små hjelpeprogram som føl med operativsystemet,
9603 samt scriptspråket perl.  Elles er Firefox/Iceweasel, Gnome-terminal
9604 og ssh i kontinuerleg bruk.  Av Linux-distribusjonar brukar eg både
9605 Debian, Ubuntu, SuSE og RedHat dagleg.  Eg prøvar å finne det verktyet
9606 som passar best til kvar del av jobben.</p>
9607
9608 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9609 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
9610
9611 <p>Det er to målgrupper ein må sikte mot.  Det eine er alle skulane som
9612 manglar eller har eit lite tilfredsstillande opplegg i dag, og ikkje
9613 har råd til å kjøpe noko nytt og blankpussa opplegg.  Der er det om å
9614 gjere å gjere det enkelt for skulane å finne Skulelinux, og gjere det
9615 enkelt for dei å få hjelp til installasjon på skulen.  Gjerne med
9616 lokale kontaktpersonar.  Her er det dugnadsinnsats som må til, for
9617 desse skulane har ikkje råd til å betale for dette.</p>
9618
9619 <p>Den andre og kanskje viktigare målgruppa er dei meir eller mindre
9620 profesjonelle kundane.  Alle store offentlege innkjøp, inkludert
9621 innkjøp av nytt datasystem for skular, må ut på offentleg anbod.
9622 Offentlege anbod er mykje meir lukka enn dei gjev inntrykk av, og både
9623 regelboka og boka med triks for å sminke tilbodet er tjukk.  Det er
9624 vanskeleg å komme inn utan eit solid salsapparat i ryggen.  Kanskje
9625 Skulelinux skulle prøve aktivt å få seg eit partnarskap med eit av dei
9626 store som gjerne vil sterkare inn på den offentlege IT-marknaden?
9627 Nokon som kjenner triksa og har krefter til å ta opp kampen mot både
9628 dårlege anbod og Rudolf Blostrupmoen IT AS.  Leveranse til skulane i
9629 ein kommune er ein god måte å få ein fot inn døra som leverandør til
9630 ein lukrativ kommunemarknad som kjøper alle tenester.  Ta kontakt med
9631 nokon som er passeleg store og ikkje er Microsoft-partnar, og fortell:
9632 «Vi har eit ferdig produkt som du kan selje.  Nei vi skal ikkje ha for
9633 det.  Du kan gjerne gjere kva du vil med det, berre vi får lov til å
9634 hjelpe deg.  Målgruppa er alle kommunar, og det er noko dei vil ha.
9635 Det er eit godt produkt, brukt av mange og godt likt.»</p>
9636
9637       </div>
9638       <div class="tags">
9639
9640
9641         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9642
9643
9644       </div>
9645     </div>
9646     <div class="padding"></div>
9647
9648     <div class="entry">
9649       <div class="title">
9650         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Embrik_Kaslegard.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Embrik Kaslegard</a>
9651       </div>
9652       <div class="date">
9653         16th January 2011
9654       </div>
9655       <div class="body">
9656         <p>Neste ut i min intervjuserie med folk i
9657 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinuxprosjektet</a> er
9658 lærer, mangeårig bidragsyter på epostlistene og tidligere
9659 Skolelinux-administrator på en skole i Hemsedal.</p>
9660
9661 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
9662
9663 <p>Embrik Kaslegard, 1964-modell, fire barn (7-20 år). Begynte som
9664 lærer i 1989 - har hatt IKT-ansvar siden første året i jobb. Har
9665 jobbet som lærer/IKT-ansvarlig uavbrutt siden 1989. Jobbet med
9666 Skolelinux fra 2004 til 2010. Nå har jeg fått ny arbeidsplass og er
9667 40% lærer og 60% IKT med Windows XP, Win2003 server og et regionalt
9668 IKT-regime som legger premissene og begrensingene for hva vi kan gjøre
9669 på skolen.</p>
9670
9671 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9672
9673 <p>Jeg leste en artikkel om en dugnadsinstallasjon av Skolelinux på en
9674 skole på Jæren et sted. Tanken om dugnad og frihet appellerte til
9675 meg. Da vi skulle bygge ny skole var det en del vi måtte spare på,
9676 fordi vi beveget oss mot en kostnadssprekk. Kabling og investering i
9677 PC-er var en av tingene vi sparte på. Derfor kjøpe vi 72 pc-er for 390
9678 pr stk. En filtjener og en applikasjonsserver.</p>
9679
9680 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9681
9682 <p>Fordelen er at så mye er satt opp fra starten. I tillegg er det
9683 tydelig at pakka er laga for skoleverket. Brukerne har egne
9684 skrivebord, tilgang på mange gode verktøyprogrammer. Vi slipper å
9685 tenke på virus. Brukerne har ikke mulighet til å ødelegge
9686 klientoppsett, men har gode muligheter til å endre eget oppsett. Dette
9687 tror jeg er inspirerende og kjekt for mange brukere.  Mappestrukturen
9688 er ferdig og det er "enkelt" å designe lokale mappestrukturer via
9689 skeleton.  Noen av oss i skoleverket mener skolen skal være en
9690 "mot-kultur". Da er Skolelinux et av valgene man kan ta. Et annet er å
9691 spise på indisk restaurant i stedet for Mc Donald's når vi er på bytur
9692 osv.. Ordene deling, frihet, dugnad osv er positive ord i
9693 skoleverket. Det er viktig at elevene blir bevisst dette.</p>
9694
9695 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9696
9697 <p>Kompabiliteten er selvsagt et problem, selv om det er mindre nå enn
9698 før.  For IKT-personer på skolene som skal drifte dette er det
9699 problematisk med kommandoer i terminalen.  I tillegg er det alt for
9700 mange programmer i Skolelinux som ikke blir brukt.  Jeg tror
9701 Skolelinux er tjent med å tone ned begrepet pedagogisk programvare.
9702 Slik jeg ser det finnes ikke denne kategorien programmer lengre slik
9703 de gjorde før, som frittsående programmer som installeres på en
9704 datamaskin eller på serveren.  Det finnes en del spesialpedagogiske
9705 programmer, som Textpilot, LingDys, LingRight, AskiRaski, Ny i Norge
9706 osv.  Men dette er programmer for enkelt-elever eller små grupper av
9707 elever.  Det som bør være fokus er at alle undervisningsressurser som
9708 lages for nettet skal være nettleseruavhengig.</p>
9709
9710 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
9711
9712 <p>OpenOffice bruker jeg til vanlig kontorarbeide.  VLC bruker jeg som
9713 videoavspiller og av og til streaming av film.  Gimp bruker jeg i
9714 undervisningen til bildemanipulering. Firefox og Chrome er mine
9715 favoritt-nettlesere.  Firefox har lenge vært førstevalget mitt, nå
9716 bruker jeg mest Chrome.  Opplever den som raskere og smidigere enn
9717 Firefox.  Ubuntu bruker jeg som dualboot på jobb-maskinen min i
9718 tillegg til at alle PCer hjemme har en eller annen Ubuntu-distribusjon
9719 installert.  Jeg bruker Clonezilla på Ubuntu 10.04 til kloning av
9720 datamaskiner på jobb.  Det er selvsagt en haug andre frie programmer
9721 jeg bruker men jeg bruker dem ikke daglig.  Jeg kan ramse opp:
9722 recordmydesktop, cinelerra, acidrip, soundjuicer, audacity, NX
9723 (no-machine), Kino, Rythmbox...</p>
9724
9725 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9726 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
9727
9728 <p>Jeg tror oppsøkende virksomhet er den rette strategien.
9729 Ressurspersoner gjør avtaler med rådmenn, skolesjefer, rektorer.  Det
9730 er slik konkurrentene gjør det.  Fokuset i slike samtaler bør være
9731 kost-nytte.  Dersom personer med økonomisk ansvar ser at de kan få
9732 like godt tilbud til mindre utgifter, tror jeg det er mulighet til å
9733 få innpass.  Dersom de også kan få konkrete tilbud på drift i slike
9734 samtaler, vil de kanskje bli litt mer interesserte i hvor mye penger
9735 som faktisk går til IKT i skolene.  Det er også viktig at vi ikke
9736 firer for mye på krav til datamaskiner.  Det er flott at Skolelinux
9737 går på "utrangert" utstyr, men dette bør bare presenteres som et
9738 alternativ.  Skolelinux-installasjoner med utrangert utstyr er ikke å
9739 foretrekke dersom man kan unngå det. Det skaper ikke entusiasme hos
9740 brukerne (elever og lærere) når de bruker gamle datamaskiner som går
9741 tregt.  Det er kjempefint med skoler som har kommet seg frem til
9742 Skolelinux og fri programvare av seg selv, men de lever på nåde.
9743 Slike valg må fundamenteres hos skoleeier.</p>
9744
9745 <p>Oppdatering 2011-01-16 22:40: Oppdatert svarene for de tre siste
9746 spørsmålene litt mer tekst fra Embrik.</p>
9747
9748       </div>
9749       <div class="tags">
9750
9751
9752         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9753
9754
9755       </div>
9756     </div>
9757     <div class="padding"></div>
9758
9759     <div class="entry">
9760       <div class="title">
9761         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Viggo_Fedreheim.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Viggo Fedreheim</a>
9762       </div>
9763       <div class="date">
9764         12th January 2011
9765       </div>
9766       <div class="body">
9767         <p>Jeg fortsetter min intervjuserie med folk i
9768 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinuxprosjektet</a>.  Denne
9769 gang er det en av folkene som har vært med lenge og som har tatt i
9770 bruk Skolelinux på alle skolene i Narvik kommune som skal i ilden.
9771 Han er styremedlem i
9772 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">foreningen
9773 FRISK</a>.</p>
9774
9775 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
9776
9777 <p>Mitt navn er Viggo Fedreheim, og jeg er pedagogisk og teknisk
9778 IKT-veileder for alle skoler i Narvik kommune.  Jeg drifter totalt 17
9779 servere basert på Skolelinux og Debian. Jeg holder i tillegg noen kurs
9780 mellom all driftingen. For tiden arbeider jeg med en sentral
9781 LDAP-tjener for alle skoleservere samt våre Moodle- og
9782 Joomla-installasjoner.</p>
9783
9784 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9785
9786 <p>Gjennom en eller annen nettavis i 2001 der var det skrevet om
9787 Skolelinux.  Artikkelen ga meg lyst til å prøve ut systemet.</p>
9788
9789 <p>Det startet i 2002 ved at jeg installerte en av de første utgavene
9790 av Skolelinux på en standard pc på Solneset skole i Tromsø.  Denne var
9791 oppe fram til desember 2003 da jeg sluttet på den skolen og begynte i
9792 ny jobb i Narvik kommune.</p>
9793
9794 <p> I Narvik kommune var det i 2004 kun 2 servere på da totalt 15
9795 skoler. Disse var Windows NT baserte. På disse to skolene var det lite
9796 med maskiner.  Jobben med å få Narvik Kommune opp på akseptabelt nivå
9797 virket å være formidabel.  Men med hjelp av gode kollegaer og leder
9798 skrev jeg en IKT plan for Narvik kommune som ble vedtatt av politikere
9799 i august 2004. I denne planen ble det bestemt at Narvik kommune skulle
9800 bruke Skolelinux.  Her ble det også satt av midler til kabling av god
9801 infrastruktur på alle skoler samt innkjøp av nye datamaskiner.  Så i
9802 dag har vi 17 servere hvorav 13 er på Skolelinux, med ca 1500 klienter
9803 basert på tynne, "halvtykke" og et stort antall bærbare pcer basert på
9804 Kubuntu.</p>
9805
9806 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9807
9808 <p>Lisenskostnader, driftkostnader og hardwarekrav som er mye lavere
9809 enn for andre systemer.</p>
9810
9811 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9812
9813 <p>Pedagogiske programvare som ikke fungerer mot Linux. En Stoooor
9814 flaskehals og som gjør at Linux kanskje ikke blir valgt andre
9815 plasser.</p>
9816
9817 <p>Eksempler er Relemo, Lindys (lingit sine programmer), 5plus
9818 (matematikk).  Disse er programmer som ikke lar seg kjøre i Linux.</p>
9819
9820 <p> Men det ser ut for at mange leverandører går over til mer
9821 nettbaserte programmer istedet for å installere lokalt.  Dette med
9822 enkelte leverandører som ikke kan levere programmer til Linux er et
9823 lite problem og over tid tror jeg at denne barrieren er borte.</p>
9824
9825 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
9826
9827 <p>Kjører Kubuntu på laptoper, Debian squeeze på stasjonær
9828 kontorpc. Ut over dette arbeder jeg svært mye via konsoll mot andre
9829 servere.</p>
9830
9831       </div>
9832       <div class="tags">
9833
9834
9835         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9836
9837
9838       </div>
9839     </div>
9840     <div class="padding"></div>
9841
9842     <div class="entry">
9843       <div class="title">
9844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Arnt_Ove_Gregersen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Arnt Ove Gregersen</a>
9845       </div>
9846       <div class="date">
9847          9th January 2011
9848       </div>
9849       <div class="body">
9850         <p>Inspirert av
9851 <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">intervjurunden</a>
9852 som Raphael Hertzog har startet med folk i Debianprosjektet, fikk jeg
9853 lyst til å gjøre det samme med folk i
9854 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinuxprosjektet</a>.  Håpet
9855 er at de som til daglig bidrar til å fremme fri programvare i
9856 skoleverket og utvikler en linux-distribusjon spesiallaget for
9857 skolebruk kan bli bedre kjent og kanskje inspirere flere til å bidra
9858 til Skolelinux-prosjektet.</p>
9859
9860 <p>Først ut er nyvalgt leder i
9861 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">foreningen FRISK</a> som
9862 organiserer utviklingen av Skolelinux-distribusjonen.  FRISK trenger
9863 alltid flere medlemmer, så
9864 <a href="http://medlem.friprogramvareiskolen.no/index.php?page=signup">meld
9865 deg gjerne inn</a> hvis du vil støtte oss.</p>
9866
9867 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
9868
9869 <p><!-- Mitt navn er Arnt Ove Gregersen, jeg er en småbarnfar på 32 år som
9870 for tiden bor Trondheim. -->
9871 Mitt navn er Arnt Ove Gregersen, jeg er 32 år og bor for tiden i Trondheim.
9872
9873 Her jobber jeg som systemutvikler i et firma
9874 som heter <a href="http://www.geomatikk-ikt.no/">Geomatikk IKT AS</a>,
9875 hvor jeg er på et Vegmeldings-prosjekt for Statens Vegvesen. På
9876 fritiden er jeg styreleder i FRISK (Fri programvare i skolen) og
9877 bidrar til bl.a. Skolelinux-prosjektet når jeg får tid til det. Det er
9878 primært hjemmesiden til Skolelinux-prosjektet og
9879 <a href="http://linuxveiviseren.no/">Linux-veiviseren</a> jeg har
9880 jobbet med her, men jeg har også gjort en del arbeid i forhold til
9881 FRISK sin hjemmeside.</p>
9882
9883 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9884
9885 <p>Jeg var på en presentasjon av prosjektet i regi av Knut Yrvin på
9886 Gløshaugen i Trondheim, hvor jeg fattet stor interesse for prosjektet
9887 og ville hjelpe til så godt jeg kunne.  Dette var vel i 2002 eller
9888 2003.</p>
9889
9890 <p>Jeg hadde fra før hørt om prosjektet fra før og syntes tanken bak var
9891 ganske fin, men hadde ikke noen interesse av bruke min egen fritid på
9892 det selv.</p>
9893
9894 <p>I etterkant av presentasjonen startet jeg og noen andre fra
9895 Trondheim "Skolelinux-prosjektet i Sør-Trøndelag" . Hvor vi var med å
9896 bidra til at Trondheim kommune satte igang Selsbakk ungdomskole som et
9897 pilotprosjekt med Skolelinux, som egentlig var og er en stor suksess,
9898 men det virker ut som det ikke skjer noe mer på. I tillegg var vi med
9899 på dugnad på Brundalen videregående skole hvor vi installerte
9900 Skolelinux som såvidt jeg vet fortsatt kjører på Skolelinux.</p>
9901
9902 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9903
9904 <p>Det bygger på fri programvare og har lav kostnad i forhold til
9905 nytteverdien. Dette fordi det har forholdsvis lav inngangsum og bruker
9906 en arkitektur med sentral-drift som gir mange driftfordeler.  I
9907 tillegg vil det kunne frigjøre kostnader for skolene slik at de kan
9908 bruke dem til å ansette f,eks flere lærere om det er ønskelig.</p>
9909
9910 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
9911
9912 <P>Ikke all pedagogisk programvare er tilgjengelig der, som f.eks
9913 Drillpro om jeg ikke husker feil.</p>
9914
9915 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
9916
9917 <p>Til utvikling av Java-applikasjoner og Android bruker jeg Eclipse og
9918 Quanta til web-utvikling via php. For all bildebehandling bruker jeg
9919 GIMP og Blender til 3d-modellering . Dessverre har Blender en bratt
9920 læringskurve i starten, men det er absolutt verdt det.
9921
9922 <p>Til musikk bruker jeg stort Rhytmbox. Firefox til surfing på nettet og
9923 Thunderbird og Evolution til e-post,
9924
9925 <p>På database-siden bruker jeg PostgreSQL, Postgis og av og til Mysql.
9926
9927 <p>Når jeg får tid til å spille bruker jeg som regel et strategi-spill
9928 som er basert på TA Spring-motoren (springrts.com), her er det et
9929 veldig bra utvalg av gratis spill som er av høy kvalitet. Veldig lett
9930 å bli hektet :)</p>
9931
9932       </div>
9933       <div class="tags">
9934
9935
9936         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9937
9938
9939       </div>
9940     </div>
9941     <div class="padding"></div>
9942
9943     <div class="entry">
9944       <div class="title">
9945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Inspirerende_fra_en_ukjent_Skolelinux_skole.html">Inspirerende fra en ukjent Skolelinux-skole</a>
9946       </div>
9947       <div class="date">
9948          4th January 2011
9949       </div>
9950       <div class="body">
9951         <p>Følgende inspirerende historie fant jeg i
9952 <a href="http://www.digi.no/php/ny_debatt.php?id=858869#innlegg_770926">kommentarfeltet
9953 hos digi.no</a> i forbindelse med en trist sak om hvordan
9954 <a href="http://www.digi.no/858869/datakaos-etter-linux-satsing">skolen
9955 i Hemsedal har fått ødelagt</a> sin Skolelinux-installasjon.  Jeg har
9956 fikset endel åpenbare skrivefeil for lesbarhetens skyld.</p>
9957
9958 <blockquote>
9959 <p><strong>Lignende situasjon i annen kommune, se bare her:</strong>
9960 <br>av Inspektør Siri (gjest)
9961
9962 <p>Kommunen min har to omtrent jevnstore tettsteder, og en
9963 ungdomsskole i hvert av tettstedene. Den minste av disse har ca 300
9964 elever og til denne sogner det 3 barneskoler. Den største har ca 350
9965 elever og til denne sogner det 4 barneskoler.</p>
9966
9967 <ul>
9968
9969 <li>Kommunen har i veldig lang tid forsømt IKT i skolen, og det har
9970 bare blitt gitt smuler i ny og ne. Det er kun den største av
9971 ungdomsskolene som har hatt en skikkelig datapark, og dette takket
9972 være en naturfaglærer som ble lei av å vente på kommunen. Det gjorde
9973 at vi bestemte oss for å ta ting i egne hender, og da vha
9974 skolelinux. En testinstallasjon med 10 gamle PCer ble gjort, og vi så
9975 raskt at dette var veldig lovende. Neste etappe var å gi alle lærere
9976 egen PC på arbeidsplassene sine (2004), og så sette opp 16 PCer på to
9977 datarom. Vi har kun basert oss på å kjøpe inn brukte maskiner, og
9978 aldri dyrere enn 1000 kr pr klient. For to år siden så hadde vi
9979 klienter i alle klasserom, og totalt hadde vi da rundt 250 stk. Rundt
9980 40 klienter brukes av lærerne og kjører på en egen server. Elvene har
9981 resten, og kjører også en egen server. Servere har vi også kjøpt
9982 brukt, 2 år gamle servere koster 6-7000 kroner.</li>
9983
9984 <li>Skolen vår er et relativt gammelt bygg, men en meget dyktig
9985 vaktmester har sammen med IKT-ansvarlig/Naturfaglærer lagt kabler til alle
9986 rom. Gradvis har vi byttet ut billige svitsjer med mer solide saker
9987 som er mulig å fjernstyre.</li>
9988
9989 <li>Vi har i all hovedsak greid å få dette til over eget budsjett, men
9990 vi har også passet på å få penger når de andre skolene har fått
9991 bærbare PCer til lærere osv.</li>
9992
9993 <li>Vår IKT-ansvarlig har gjort (og gjør) en fenomenal jobb, og vi har
9994 en maskinpark som de andre av kommunens skoler bare kan drømme
9995 om.</li>
9996
9997 </ul>
9998
9999 <p>Så skjer det som ofte skjer. Det kommer en eller annen
10000 selger/blåruss og skal fikse ALT. I vårt tilfelle betyr dette også
10001 sentralisering av drift. Den ny-ansatte på kommunens IT-avdelingen
10002 skal også ha jobb, og ser for seg å ta over skoledriften. Kommunen
10003 kjøper inn eksterne driftstjenester, og nekter i samme slengen å ta
10004 hensyn til skolen vår. Dette til tross for at vi alene har like mange
10005 datamaskiner som de andre til sammen. </p>
10006
10007 <ul>
10008
10009 <li>Det blir krevd at vi skal innlemmes i de kommunale systemet, og
10010 det er VI som får ansvar for at dette kommer på plass. Og det er her
10011 de horrible tingene begynner å skje. </li>
10012
10013 <li>Det settes opp en lukket Exchange server som gjør av vi ikke kan
10014 hente epost for våre ansatte. Og det kreves at vi finner løsning på
10015 dette.</li>
10016
10017 <li>Det velges sak arkivsystem som vi pålegges å bruke, noe som gjør
10018 at vi må bruke en terminalløsning mot kommunal server. Ikke i seg selv
10019 et problem i følge IKT-ansvarlig hos oss. Men kommunens IT-avd nektet
10020 faktisk å åpne de porter OSV som vi måtte bruke.</li>
10021
10022 <li>Vi blir pålagt å flytte på innsiden av det kommunale
10023 nettverket. Dette gjorde at vi mistet hjemmekontor for lærere og
10024 elever. Å få åpnet porter i kommunal brannmur var ikke
10025 aktuelt. Mulighet for fjerndrift ble også vekk i samme slengen. </li>
10026
10027 <li>Vår LMS Moodle er ikke mulig å nå for elevene og lærerne.
10028
10029 </ul>
10030
10031 <p>Den andre ungdomsskolen i kommunen begynner så å kreve at de skal
10032 få bedre datatetthet, og komme opp på et nivå som ligner det vi
10033 har. De ser at vi kan avholde eksamen hvor alle 10. klassingene får
10034 sitte ved hver sin PC. Og de har fått tilbakemelding (klager) fra VGS
10035 om manglende datakompetanse på elevene som kommer fra dem. Dette fører
10036 videre til at kommunen endelig innser at de må ta grep. </p>
10037
10038 <p>Grepet betyr sentralisering, og farvel til vår plattform får vi
10039 høre. Det blir gjort en rekke bestemmelser og vedtak som vi ikke får
10040 være en del av. Det blir helt klart at vi må redusere antall maskiner,
10041 og det skal satses på bærbare maskiner. Siden vi ikke har fått tatt
10042 del i prosessene som angår oss, så bruker vi fagforening. Vi har ikke
10043 blitt hørt i forbindelse med endringer som er betydelig for vår
10044 hverdag, og greier å stoppe omlegging. I tillegg så har vi et politisk
10045 vedtak i kommunen på at vi skal kjøre Linux på elevnett, og dette
10046 vedtaket kan ikke administrasjonen i kommunene helt uten videre
10047 tilsidesette. </p>
10048
10049 <p>I sum har dette gjort at vi har fått jobbe videre i fred. Og en del
10050 runder i kommunens kontrollutvalg har gjort det tydelig at vi har blitt
10051 systematisk motarbeidet. </p>
10052
10053 <p>I dag har de andre skolene fått sine bærbare maskiner til elever og
10054 lærere, men etter 2 år med innkjøring er det fremdeles problemer
10055 her. </p>
10056
10057 <ul>
10058
10059 <li>Ungdomsskolen med windows kan ikke kjøre eksamen med sine bærbare,
10060 det er for mye arbeid å renske disse for innhold slik at juks ikke er
10061 mulig.</li>
10062
10063 <li>Utskrift er et mareritt, etter sigende pga at utskrift først
10064 sendes til sentral server, og så sendes ut til rett skriver. I snitt
10065 så tar det 7-8 minutter før utskrift starter på enkelte av
10066 skolene.</li>
10067
10068 <li>Trådløst skaper store problemer, og det er i perioder helt umulig
10069 å komme seg på nett. Og lagring på felles server er bare å glemme i
10070 perioder.</li>
10071
10072 </ul>
10073
10074 <p>Vi har slitt mye, kranglet og sloss. Ikke med tekniske problemer,
10075 men med omgivelsene rundt som vil oss til livs. Men det har vært verdt
10076 hver dråpe med svette, og timer med irritasjon. Men vi har begynt å få
10077 rutine her nå. </p>
10078
10079 <ul>
10080
10081 <li>Vi har fremdeles et system som vi styrer helt selv. </li>
10082 <li>Vi har vist at argumentet med at vår IKT-ansvarlig kan finne seg annen jobb ikke holder mål. Vi har kjøpt driftskonto hos et firma i tilfelle krise, og vi har kjørt opplæring på flere av de yngre lærerne. </li>
10083 <li>Vi har til enhver tid en lærling IKT driftsfag, og velger selvsagt ut dem som satser på Linux. Vi har nå begynt å få tilbake av våre tidligere elever som vil til oss nettopp fordi vi har Linux.</li>
10084 <li>Vi har vist at vi greier å opprettholde en dobbelt så stor datapark som naboskolen, og det til en billigere penge. </li>
10085 <li>Vi har datastøtte og support på huset, ALLTID tilgjengelig. De andre skolene må vente flere dager hvis det ikke er noe kritisk. </li>
10086 <li>Vår IKT-ansvarlig har 50% stilling som lærer og 50% som IKT-ansvarlig. </li>
10087 <li>Vi har en lærer på hvert trinn som har 3 timer i uka til å drive support/støtte til de andre lærerne. </li>
10088 <li>Vi opplever at de yngste lærerne ved den andre ungdomsskolen ønsker seg over til oss. </li>
10089
10090 </ul>
10091
10092 <p>Vi skal i løpet av året starte prosess med å planlegge ny skole, og vi har fått gjennomslag for at jeg (inspektør) og IKT-ansvarlig skal ha det fulle og hele ansvar for IKT/Infrastruktur. Begrunnelsen vår som ble avgjørende her, var at IT-avd i kommunen ikke kan noe om data i skolen. </p>
10093
10094 <p>Beklager hvis dette ble litt usammenhengende, men det ble tastet i
10095 fei, og jeg har ikke lest gjennom</p>
10096 </blockquote>
10097
10098 <p>Det kom raskt et lite svar:</p>
10099
10100 <blockquote>
10101 <p><strong>SV: Lignende situasjon i annen kommune, se bare her:</strong>
10102 <br>av captain_obvious</p>
10103
10104 <p>Inspirerende å lese. Har dere gjort noe for å fortelle denne
10105 historien videre?</p>
10106
10107 <p>Hadde vært svært interessant om dere tok kontakt med dokument 2 eller
10108 lignende for å fortelle hvordan det egentlig står til med
10109 IT-satsningen i kommune-Norge. Om ikke annet kan du begynner med å
10110 raffinere innlegget ditt og få en gjesteartikkel på digi.no</p>
10111 </blockquote>
10112
10113 <p>Og deretter en lengre oppfølging.</p>
10114
10115 <blockquote>
10116 <p><strong>SV: Lignende situasjon i annen kommune, se bare her:</strong>
10117 <br>av Inspektør Siri (gjest)
10118
10119 <p>Joda, vi har lekt med tanken, og vi har t.o.m skrevet flere lengre
10120 leserinnlegg myntet på aviser. Disse er ikke sendt til aviser, men
10121 brukt internt i forbindelse med møter med kommune. Vår IKT-ansvarlig
10122 har også truet med å si opp jobben sin hvis det ikke ble tatt hensyn i
10123 større grad enn hva som har vært tilfelle. VI kan også dokumentere
10124 flere brudd på anbudsregler, og vi kjenner til at relativt store
10125 IT-leverandører som ikke har fått tatt del i disse anbudene, rett og
10126 slett ikke tør melde fra av redsel for å få et dårlig rykte. </p>
10127
10128 <p>Alt ser ut til å roe seg ned, og vi har fått opp øynene på
10129 politikerne. I sum gjør dette at vi ikke ønsker for mye publisitet nå,
10130 det vil bare rote til igjen. </p>
10131
10132 <p>Jeg glemte å nevne at vi nå nesten ikke bruker tid på å drifte
10133 systemet vårt, noe som gjør at det aller meste av tid blir brukt til å
10134 støtte lærerne og elevene. F.eks så bruker vår IKT-ansvarlig den
10135 første timen på jobb, 0730-0830 kun til å gå ute på arbeidsplassene
10136 til læreren. Dette for å kunne svare på små og store problem, gi tips
10137 og råd, eller bare for å plukke opp hva som er behovet ute i
10138 undervisningsarealene. Det er dessverre ikke slik at alle lærerne har
10139 nok digital kompetanse til å kunne formulere alle spørsmålene de har,
10140 men ved å kunne få vise eller lufte tanker med IKT-ansvarlig så er det
10141 utrolig hva som kommer fram. </p>
10142
10143 <ul>
10144
10145 <li>Jeg ser at mange bruker økonomi som argument i forhold til å bruke
10146 SkoleLinux, og jeg skal ikke legge skjul på at det var dette som i
10147 utgangspunktet var årsaken til vårt valg. Men diskusjonene og kampen
10148 med kommunens IT-avdeling har gjort at vi har fått et noe annet
10149 fokus. Fordelene med drift og stabilitet, gjør at vi ville ha valgt
10150 samme løsning selv om den var dyrere. At vi slipper langt billigere
10151 unna, som følge av 0,- lisenskostnader og lave maskinvarekostnader, er
10152 bare en bonus. </li>
10153
10154 <li>Etter å ha kranglet oss til å få skikkelig oversikt over hva de
10155 andre skolene i kommunen bruker på IT, så har vi fått gehør for å få
10156 samme midler til innkjøp. Dette har gjort at vi nå kan kjøpe inn
10157 utstyr som de andre skolene bare kan se langt etter. Vi har nettopp
10158 kjøpt inn 3 videokamera i semiproff-klassen for å kunne lage film,
10159 samt sende live fra skoleteater/konserter. Vi har kjøpt inn digitale
10160 kompaktkamera til alle klassene. Vi har et team av lærere som skal i
10161 gang med å teste ut tablets på svake elever. Håpet et at teknologien
10162 kan være med på å gi noen av elevene litt mer motivasjon. Vi har kjøpt
10163 inn et halvt klassesett med pulsklokker, noe som har vist seg å være
10164 overraskende inspirerende for en del av elevene. Vi har også oss på
10165 fag på en høyskole litt lengre sør for oss, slik at 3 av oss nå skal
10166 ta faget "Linux tjenestedrift". Som inspektør og en del av skolens
10167 administrasjon er det veldig praktisk å kunne trå til hvis det
10168 kniper. Men IKT-ansvarlig har vært UTROLIG flink til å lage rene
10169 smørbrødlister for hvordan de mest vanlige driftsproblem løses, så det
10170 er lett for flere av oss å ta del i den daglige driften. Vi har svært
10171 stor nytte av lærling (som også hjelper to av naboskolene), men det er
10172 nesten blitt slik at det er om å gjøre å komme til først for å få løse
10173 problem. Det å få fingrene på problem og utfordringer er den aller
10174 beste læremester. </li>
10175
10176 </ul>
10177
10178 <p>Når vi nå tar til med planlegging av ny skole, så vil det være med
10179 tanke på at det skal være mulig med datautstyr på alle plasser. Vi
10180 kommer i all hovedsak til å legge kabel til alle tenkelige og
10181 utenkelige plasser. WiFi koster tilnærmet NULL å sette opp i
10182 ettertid.</p>
10183
10184 <p>Vi har ikke vært noe flink til å bidra til SkoleLinux-prosjektet,
10185 vi har rett og slett vært for opptatt med vår egen kamp. Vi har hentet
10186 mye inspirasjon fra diskusjoner som har gått i det miljøet, og vi
10187 håper at vi nå framover kan få tid til å bidra. Vi er i ferd med å
10188 bytte ut en av serverne våre, og da vil denne trolig bli satt opp som
10189 testserver for neste versjon av Skolelinux. På den måten vil vi i alle
10190 fall kunne gi tilbakemeldinger og rapportere feil. I tillegg så vil
10191 det kanskje gi oss noen nye utfordringer, for som lærlingen vår sier:
10192 "Skolelinux er noe herk, det skjer jo ikke noe galt og hvordan skal
10193 jeg da lære?"</p>
10194
10195 </blockquote>
10196
10197 <p>Det er veldig hyggelig å høre at
10198 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> fungerer så bra i
10199 skoleverdagen etter å ha jobbet med det i 10 år.</p>
10200
10201       </div>
10202       <div class="tags">
10203
10204
10205         Tags: <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>.
10206
10207
10208       </div>
10209     </div>
10210     <div class="padding"></div>
10211
10212     <div class="entry">
10213       <div class="title">
10214         <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>
10215       </div>
10216       <div class="date">
10217         22nd December 2010
10218       </div>
10219       <div class="body">
10220         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
10221 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
10222 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
10223 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
10224 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
10225 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
10226 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
10227 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
10228 university.</p>
10229
10230 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
10231 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
10232 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
10233 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
10234 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
10235 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
10236 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
10237 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
10238
10239 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
10240 I perform on a new model.</p>
10241
10242 <ul>
10243
10244 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
10245 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
10246 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
10247
10248 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
10249 installation, X.org is working.</li>
10250
10251 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
10252 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
10253 reported by the program.</li>
10254
10255 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
10256 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
10257 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
10258 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
10259 normally test this by playing
10260 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
10261 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
10262
10263 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
10264 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
10265
10266 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
10267 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
10268
10269 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
10270 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
10271
10272 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
10273 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
10274 few.</li>
10275
10276 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
10277 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
10278 notice this.</li>
10279
10280 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
10281 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
10282 resume.</li>
10283
10284 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
10285 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
10286 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
10287 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
10288 not.</li>
10289
10290 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
10291 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
10292 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
10293 existence.</li>
10294
10295 </ul>
10296
10297 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
10298 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
10299 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
10300 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
10301 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
10302 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
10303 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
10304 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
10305
10306       </div>
10307       <div class="tags">
10308
10309
10310         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>.
10311
10312
10313       </div>
10314     </div>
10315     <div class="padding"></div>
10316
10317     <div class="entry">
10318       <div class="title">
10319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
10320       </div>
10321       <div class="date">
10322         29th November 2010
10323       </div>
10324       <div class="body">
10325         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10326 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
10327 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
10328 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
10329 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
10330 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
10331
10332 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
10333 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
10334 will hold its
10335 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
10336 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
10337 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
10338 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
10339 vote this year.</p>
10340
10341       </div>
10342       <div class="tags">
10343
10344
10345         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10346
10347
10348       </div>
10349     </div>
10350     <div class="padding"></div>
10351
10352     <div class="entry">
10353       <div class="title">
10354         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
10355       </div>
10356       <div class="date">
10357         27th November 2010
10358       </div>
10359       <div class="body">
10360         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
10361 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
10362 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
10363 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
10364 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
10365 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
10366 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
10367 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
10368
10369 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
10370 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
10371 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
10372 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
10373 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
10374 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
10375 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
10376 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
10377 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
10378 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
10379 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
10380
10381 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
10382 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
10383 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
10384 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
10385 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
10386 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
10387 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
10388 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
10389 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
10390 what is going on.</p>
10391
10392       </div>
10393       <div class="tags">
10394
10395
10396         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>.
10397
10398
10399       </div>
10400     </div>
10401     <div class="padding"></div>
10402
10403     <div class="entry">
10404       <div class="title">
10405         <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>
10406       </div>
10407       <div class="date">
10408         22nd November 2010
10409       </div>
10410       <div class="body">
10411         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
10412 upgrade testing of the
10413 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
10414 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
10415 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
10416 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
10417
10418 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
10419
10420 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10421
10422 <blockquote><p>
10423   apache2.2-bin
10424   aptdaemon
10425   baobab
10426   binfmt-support
10427   browser-plugin-gnash
10428   cheese-common
10429   cli-common
10430   cups-pk-helper
10431   dmz-cursor-theme
10432   empathy
10433   empathy-common
10434   freedesktop-sound-theme
10435   freeglut3
10436   gconf-defaults-service
10437   gdm-themes
10438   gedit-plugins
10439   geoclue
10440   geoclue-hostip
10441   geoclue-localnet
10442   geoclue-manual
10443   geoclue-yahoo
10444   gnash
10445   gnash-common
10446   gnome
10447   gnome-backgrounds
10448   gnome-cards-data
10449   gnome-codec-install
10450   gnome-core
10451   gnome-desktop-environment
10452   gnome-disk-utility
10453   gnome-screenshot
10454   gnome-search-tool
10455   gnome-session-canberra
10456   gnome-system-log
10457   gnome-themes-extras
10458   gnome-themes-more
10459   gnome-user-share
10460   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10461   gstreamer0.10-tools
10462   gtk2-engines
10463   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10464   gtk2-engines-smooth
10465   hamster-applet
10466   libapache2-mod-dnssd
10467   libapr1
10468   libaprutil1
10469   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
10470   libaprutil1-ldap
10471   libart2.0-cil
10472   libboost-date-time1.42.0
10473   libboost-python1.42.0
10474   libboost-thread1.42.0
10475   libchamplain-0.4-0
10476   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
10477   libcheese-gtk18
10478   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10479   libcryptui0
10480   libdiscid0
10481   libelf1
10482   libepc-1.0-2
10483   libepc-common
10484   libepc-ui-1.0-2
10485   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10486   libfreerdp0
10487   libgconf2.0-cil
10488   libgdata-common
10489   libgdata7
10490   libgdu-gtk0
10491   libgee2
10492   libgeoclue0
10493   libgexiv2-0
10494   libgif4
10495   libglade2.0-cil
10496   libglib2.0-cil
10497   libgmime2.4-cil
10498   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10499   libgnome2.24-cil
10500   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
10501   libgpod-common
10502   libgpod4
10503   libgtk2.0-cil
10504   libgtkglext1
10505   libgtksourceview2.0-common
10506   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10507   libmono-addins0.2-cil
10508   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
10509   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10510   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
10511   libmono-posix2.0-cil
10512   libmono-security2.0-cil
10513   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10514   libmono-system2.0-cil
10515   libmtp8
10516   libmusicbrainz3-6
10517   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
10518   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
10519   libopal3.6.8
10520   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
10521   libpt2.6.7
10522   libpython2.6
10523   librpm1
10524   librpmio1
10525   libsdl1.2debian
10526   libsrtp0
10527   libssh-4
10528   libtelepathy-farsight0
10529   libtelepathy-glib0
10530   libtidy-0.99-0
10531   media-player-info
10532   mesa-utils
10533   mono-2.0-gac
10534   mono-gac
10535   mono-runtime
10536   nautilus-sendto
10537   nautilus-sendto-empathy
10538   p7zip-full
10539   pkg-config
10540   python-aptdaemon
10541   python-aptdaemon-gtk
10542   python-axiom
10543   python-beautifulsoup
10544   python-bugbuddy
10545   python-clientform
10546   python-coherence
10547   python-configobj
10548   python-crypto
10549   python-cupshelpers
10550   python-elementtree
10551   python-epsilon
10552   python-evolution
10553   python-feedparser
10554   python-gdata
10555   python-gdbm
10556   python-gst0.10
10557   python-gtkglext1
10558   python-gtksourceview2
10559   python-httplib2
10560   python-louie
10561   python-mako
10562   python-markupsafe
10563   python-mechanize
10564   python-nevow
10565   python-notify
10566   python-opengl
10567   python-openssl
10568   python-pam
10569   python-pkg-resources
10570   python-pyasn1
10571   python-pysqlite2
10572   python-rdflib
10573   python-serial
10574   python-tagpy
10575   python-twisted-bin
10576   python-twisted-conch
10577   python-twisted-core
10578   python-twisted-web
10579   python-utidylib
10580   python-webkit
10581   python-xdg
10582   python-zope.interface
10583   remmina
10584   remmina-plugin-data
10585   remmina-plugin-rdp
10586   remmina-plugin-vnc
10587   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10588   rhythmbox-plugins
10589   rpm-common
10590   rpm2cpio
10591   seahorse-plugins
10592   shotwell
10593   software-center
10594   system-config-printer-udev
10595   telepathy-gabble
10596   telepathy-mission-control-5
10597   telepathy-salut
10598   tomboy
10599   totem
10600   totem-coherence
10601   totem-mozilla
10602   totem-plugins
10603   transmission-common
10604   xdg-user-dirs
10605   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
10606   xserver-xephyr
10607 </p></blockquote>
10608
10609 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10610
10611 <blockquote><p>
10612   cheese
10613   ekiga
10614   eog
10615   epiphany-extensions
10616   evolution-exchange
10617   fast-user-switch-applet
10618   file-roller
10619   gcalctool
10620   gconf-editor
10621   gdm
10622   gedit
10623   gedit-common
10624   gnome-games
10625   gnome-games-data
10626   gnome-nettool
10627   gnome-system-tools
10628   gnome-themes
10629   gnuchess
10630   gucharmap
10631   guile-1.8-libs
10632   libavahi-ui0
10633   libdmx1
10634   libgalago3
10635   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10636   libgtksourceview2.0-0
10637   liblircclient0
10638   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
10639   libspeexdsp1
10640   libsvga1
10641   rhythmbox
10642   seahorse
10643   sound-juicer
10644   system-config-printer
10645   totem-common
10646   transmission-gtk
10647   vinagre
10648   vino
10649 </p></blockquote>
10650
10651 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10652
10653 <blockquote><p>
10654   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10655 </p></blockquote>
10656
10657 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10658
10659 <blockquote><p>
10660 [nothing]
10661 </p></blockquote>
10662
10663 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
10664
10665 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10666
10667 <blockquote><p>
10668   ksmserver
10669 </p></blockquote>
10670
10671 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10672
10673 <blockquote><p>
10674   kwin
10675   network-manager-kde
10676 </p></blockquote>
10677
10678 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10679
10680 <blockquote><p>
10681   arts
10682   dolphin
10683   freespacenotifier
10684   google-gadgets-gst
10685   google-gadgets-xul
10686   kappfinder
10687   kcalc
10688   kcharselect
10689   kde-core
10690   kde-plasma-desktop
10691   kde-standard
10692   kde-window-manager
10693   kdeartwork
10694   kdeartwork-emoticons
10695   kdeartwork-style
10696   kdeartwork-theme-icon
10697   kdebase
10698   kdebase-apps
10699   kdebase-workspace
10700   kdebase-workspace-bin
10701   kdebase-workspace-data
10702   kdeeject
10703   kdelibs
10704   kdeplasma-addons
10705   kdeutils
10706   kdewallpapers
10707   kdf
10708   kfloppy
10709   kgpg
10710   khelpcenter4
10711   kinfocenter
10712   konq-plugins-l10n
10713   konqueror-nsplugins
10714   kscreensaver
10715   kscreensaver-xsavers
10716   ktimer
10717   kwrite
10718   libgle3
10719   libkde4-ruby1.8
10720   libkonq5
10721   libkonq5-templates
10722   libnetpbm10
10723   libplasma-ruby
10724   libplasma-ruby1.8
10725   libqt4-ruby1.8
10726   marble-data
10727   marble-plugins
10728   netpbm
10729   nuvola-icon-theme
10730   plasma-dataengines-workspace
10731   plasma-desktop
10732   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
10733   plasma-runners-addons
10734   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
10735   plasma-scriptengine-python
10736   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
10737   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
10738   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
10739   plasma-scriptengines
10740   plasma-wallpapers-addons
10741   plasma-widget-folderview
10742   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10743   ruby
10744   sweeper
10745   update-notifier-kde
10746   xscreensaver-data-extra
10747   xscreensaver-gl
10748   xscreensaver-gl-extra
10749   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10750 </p></blockquote>
10751
10752 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10753
10754 <blockquote><p>
10755   ark
10756   google-gadgets-common
10757   google-gadgets-qt
10758   htdig
10759   kate
10760   kdebase-bin
10761   kdebase-data
10762   kdepasswd
10763   kfind
10764   klipper
10765   konq-plugins
10766   konqueror
10767   ksysguard
10768   ksysguardd
10769   libarchive1
10770   libcln6
10771   libeet1
10772   libeina-svn-06
10773   libggadget-1.0-0b
10774   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
10775   libgps19
10776   libkdecorations4
10777   libkephal4
10778   libkonq4
10779   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
10780   libkscreensaver5
10781   libksgrd4
10782   libksignalplotter4
10783   libkunitconversion4
10784   libkwineffects1a
10785   libmarblewidget4
10786   libntrack-qt4-1
10787   libntrack0
10788   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
10789   libplasmaclock4a
10790   libplasmagenericshell4
10791   libprocesscore4a
10792   libprocessui4a
10793   libqalculate5
10794   libqedje0a
10795   libqtruby4shared2
10796   libqzion0a
10797   libruby1.8
10798   libscim8c2a
10799   libsmokekdecore4-3
10800   libsmokekdeui4-3
10801   libsmokekfile3
10802   libsmokekhtml3
10803   libsmokekio3
10804   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
10805   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
10806   libsmokekparts3
10807   libsmokektexteditor3
10808   libsmokekutils3
10809   libsmokenepomuk3
10810   libsmokephonon3
10811   libsmokeplasma3
10812   libsmokeqtcore4-3
10813   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
10814   libsmokeqtgui4-3
10815   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
10816   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
10817   libsmokeqtscript4-3
10818   libsmokeqtsql4-3
10819   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
10820   libsmokeqttest4-3
10821   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
10822   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
10823   libsmokeqtxml4-3
10824   libsmokesolid3
10825   libsmokesoprano3
10826   libtaskmanager4a
10827   libtidy-0.99-0
10828   libweather-ion4a
10829   libxklavier16
10830   libxxf86misc1
10831   okteta
10832   oxygencursors
10833   plasma-dataengines-addons
10834   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
10835   plasma-widget-lancelot
10836   plasma-widgets-addons
10837   plasma-widgets-workspace
10838   polkit-kde-1
10839   ruby1.8
10840   systemsettings
10841   update-notifier-common
10842 </p></blockquote>
10843
10844 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
10845 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
10846 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
10847 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
10848
10849       </div>
10850       <div class="tags">
10851
10852
10853         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>.
10854
10855
10856       </div>
10857     </div>
10858     <div class="padding"></div>
10859
10860     <div class="entry">
10861       <div class="title">
10862         <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>
10863       </div>
10864       <div class="date">
10865         22nd November 2010
10866       </div>
10867       <div class="body">
10868         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
10869 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
10870 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
10871 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
10872 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
10873 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
10874 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
10875 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
10876 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
10877
10878 <p>I found
10879 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
10880 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
10881 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
10882 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
10883 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
10884 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
10885
10886 <pre>
10887 #!/bin/sh
10888
10889 # Based on
10890 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
10891
10892 set -e
10893 set -x
10894
10895 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
10896     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
10897     exit 1
10898 else
10899     host="$1"
10900 fi
10901
10902 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
10903     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
10904     exit 1
10905 fi
10906
10907 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
10908 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
10909 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
10910 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
10911
10912 img=$host.img
10913 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
10914 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
10915
10916 parted $img mklabel msdos
10917 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
10918 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
10919 parted $img set 1 boot on
10920
10921 modprobe dm-mod
10922 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
10923 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
10924
10925 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
10926 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
10927 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
10928
10929 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
10930 losetup -d /dev/loop0
10931 </pre>
10932
10933 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
10934 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
10935
10936 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
10937 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
10938 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
10939 seem to work just fine.</p>
10940
10941       </div>
10942       <div class="tags">
10943
10944
10945         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>.
10946
10947
10948       </div>
10949     </div>
10950     <div class="padding"></div>
10951
10952     <div class="entry">
10953       <div class="title">
10954         <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>
10955       </div>
10956       <div class="date">
10957         20th November 2010
10958       </div>
10959       <div class="body">
10960         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
10961 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
10962 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
10963 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
10964
10965 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
10966 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
10967 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
10968
10969 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
10970
10971 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10972
10973 <blockquote><p>
10974   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
10975   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
10976   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
10977   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
10978   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
10979   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
10980   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
10981   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
10982   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
10983   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
10984   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10985   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10986   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
10987   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
10988   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
10989   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
10990   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10991   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
10992   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10993   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
10994   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
10995   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10996   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
10997   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
10998   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
10999   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
11000   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
11001   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
11002   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
11003   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
11004   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
11005   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
11006   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
11007   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
11008   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
11009   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
11010   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
11011   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
11012   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
11013   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
11014   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
11015   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
11016   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
11017   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
11018   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
11019   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
11020   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
11021   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
11022   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
11023   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
11024   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
11025   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
11026   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
11027   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
11028   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
11029   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
11030   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
11031   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
11032   zip
11033 </p></blockquote>
11034
11035 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
11036
11037 <blockquote><p>
11038   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
11039   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
11040   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
11041   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
11042   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
11043   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
11044   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
11045   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
11046   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
11047   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
11048   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
11049   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
11050   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
11051   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11052   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
11053   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
11054   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
11055   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
11056   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
11057   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
11058   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
11059   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
11060   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
11061   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
11062   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
11063   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
11064   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
11065   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
11066   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
11067 </p></blockquote>
11068
11069 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11070
11071 <blockquote><p>
11072   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11073 </p></blockquote>
11074
11075 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11076
11077 <blockquote><p>
11078 [nothing]
11079 </p></blockquote>
11080
11081 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
11082
11083 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11084
11085 <blockquote><p>
11086   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
11087   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11088   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
11089   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
11090   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
11091   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
11092   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11093   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
11094   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
11095   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11096   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
11097   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
11098   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
11099   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
11100   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
11101   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
11102   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
11103   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
11104   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
11105   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
11106   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
11107   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
11108   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
11109   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
11110   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
11111   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
11112   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
11113   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
11114   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
11115   ttf-sazanami-gothic
11116 </p></blockquote>
11117
11118 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11119
11120 <blockquote><p>
11121   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
11122   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
11123   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
11124   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
11125   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
11126   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
11127   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
11128   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
11129   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
11130   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
11131   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
11132   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
11133   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
11134   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
11135   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11136   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11137   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
11138   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
11139   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11140   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
11141   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
11142   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
11143   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11144   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11145   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
11146   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
11147   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
11148   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
11149   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
11150   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
11151   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
11152   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
11153   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
11154 </p></blockquote>
11155
11156 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11157
11158 <blockquote><p>
11159   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
11160   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
11161   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
11162   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
11163   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
11164   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
11165   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
11166 </p></blockquote>
11167
11168 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11169
11170 <blockquote><p>
11171   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
11172 </p></blockquote>
11173
11174       </div>
11175       <div class="tags">
11176
11177
11178         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>.
11179
11180
11181       </div>
11182     </div>
11183     <div class="padding"></div>
11184
11185     <div class="entry">
11186       <div class="title">
11187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
11188       </div>
11189       <div class="date">
11190         20th November 2010
11191       </div>
11192       <div class="body">
11193         <p>Answering
11194 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
11195 call from the Gnash project</a> for
11196 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
11197 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
11198 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
11199 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
11200 releases out more often.</p>
11201
11202 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
11203 I have considered setting up a <a
11204 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
11205 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
11206 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
11207 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
11208 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
11209 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
11210 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
11211 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
11212 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
11213 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
11214 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
11215 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
11216
11217       </div>
11218       <div class="tags">
11219
11220
11221         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>.
11222
11223
11224       </div>
11225     </div>
11226     <div class="padding"></div>
11227
11228     <div class="entry">
11229       <div class="title">
11230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
11231       </div>
11232       <div class="date">
11233          7th November 2010
11234       </div>
11235       <div class="body">
11236         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
11237 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
11238 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
11239 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
11240 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
11241 working using this DVD.</p>
11242
11243 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
11244 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
11245 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
11246 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
11247 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
11248 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
11249 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
11250
11251 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
11252 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
11253 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
11254 Debian archive.</p>
11255
11256 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
11257 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
11258 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
11259 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
11260 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
11261 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
11262 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
11263 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
11264 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
11265 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
11266 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
11267 free X driver should work.</p>
11268
11269 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
11270 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
11271 DVD more useful again.</p>
11272
11273       </div>
11274       <div class="tags">
11275
11276
11277         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11278
11279
11280       </div>
11281     </div>
11282     <div class="padding"></div>
11283
11284     <div class="entry">
11285       <div class="title">
11286         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
11287       </div>
11288       <div class="date">
11289         24th October 2010
11290       </div>
11291       <div class="body">
11292         <p>Some updates.</p>
11293
11294 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
11295 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
11296 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
11297 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
11298 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
11299 :)</p>
11300
11301 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
11302 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
11303 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
11304 It is called
11305 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
11306 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
11307 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
11308 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
11309 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
11310 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
11311
11312 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
11313 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
11314 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
11315 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
11316 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
11317 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
11318 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
11319 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
11320 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
11321 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
11322
11323       </div>
11324       <div class="tags">
11325
11326
11327         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>.
11328
11329
11330       </div>
11331     </div>
11332     <div class="padding"></div>
11333
11334     <div class="entry">
11335       <div class="title">
11336         <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>
11337       </div>
11338       <div class="date">
11339          4th September 2010
11340       </div>
11341       <div class="body">
11342         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
11343 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
11344 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
11345 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
11346 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
11347 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
11348 installed.</p>
11349
11350 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
11351 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
11352 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
11353 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
11354 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
11355 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
11356 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
11357 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
11358 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
11359
11360 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
11361 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
11362 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
11363 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
11364 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
11365 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
11366 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
11367 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
11368 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
11369 pages they want to visit.</p>
11370
11371 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
11372 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
11373 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
11374 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
11375 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
11376 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
11377 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
11378 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
11379 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
11380 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
11381 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
11382
11383       </div>
11384       <div class="tags">
11385
11386
11387         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>.
11388
11389
11390       </div>
11391     </div>
11392     <div class="padding"></div>
11393
11394     <div class="entry">
11395       <div class="title">
11396         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
11397       </div>
11398       <div class="date">
11399         30th August 2010
11400       </div>
11401       <div class="body">
11402         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
11403 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
11404 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
11405 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
11406 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
11407 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
11408 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
11409
11410 <pre>
11411 % ln foo bar
11412 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
11413 %
11414 </pre>
11415
11416 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
11417 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
11418 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
11419 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
11420 nevertheless. :)</p>
11421
11422 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
11423 git from
11424 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
11425
11426       </div>
11427       <div class="tags">
11428
11429
11430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11431
11432
11433       </div>
11434     </div>
11435     <div class="padding"></div>
11436
11437     <div class="entry">
11438       <div class="title">
11439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_i_Osloskolen.html">Skolelinux i Osloskolen</a>
11440       </div>
11441       <div class="date">
11442         26th August 2010
11443       </div>
11444       <div class="body">
11445         <p>Denne høsten skal endelig alle Osloskolene få mulighet til å bruke
11446 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  Ny IT-løsning
11447 har vært rullet ut i noen måneder nå, og så vidt jeg fikk vite før
11448 sommeren skulle alle skoler ha nytt opplegg på plass før oppstart nå i
11449 høst.  På alle skolene skal en kunne velge ved installasjon om en skal
11450 ha Windows eller Skolelinux på maskinene, og en kan i tillegg
11451 PXE-boote maskinene over nett som tynne klienter eller diskløse
11452 arbeidsstasjoner. Jeg er spent på hvor mange skoler som velger å ta i
11453 bruk Skolelinux, og gleder meg til å se hvordan dette utvikler seg.
11454 Løsningen leveres av
11455 <a href="http://www.logica.no/">Logica</a> med
11456 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> som
11457 underleverandør, og jeg har vært involvert i utviklingen av løsningen
11458 via Skolelinux Drift AS siden prosjektet starter.  Jeg synes det er
11459 fantastisk at Skolelinux er kommet så langt siden vi startet i 2001 at
11460 alle elevene i Osloskolene nå skal få mulighet til å bruke
11461 løsningen.  Jeg håper de vil sette pris på alle de
11462 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.no/linux-signpost/">fantastiske
11463 brukerprogrammene</a> som er tilgjengelig i Skolelinux.</p>
11464
11465       </div>
11466       <div class="tags">
11467
11468
11469         Tags: <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>.
11470
11471
11472       </div>
11473     </div>
11474     <div class="padding"></div>
11475
11476     <div class="entry">
11477       <div class="title">
11478         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
11479       </div>
11480       <div class="date">
11481         26th August 2010
11482       </div>
11483       <div class="body">
11484         <p>My file system sematics program
11485 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
11486 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
11487 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
11488 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
11489 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
11490 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
11491 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
11492 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
11493 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
11494 script:</p>
11495
11496 <pre>
11497 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
11498   mode_t retval = 0;
11499   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
11500   if (-1 != fd) {
11501     unlink(name);
11502     struct stat statbuf;
11503     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
11504       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
11505     }
11506     close(fd);
11507   }
11508   return retval;
11509 }
11510
11511 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
11512 int test_umask(void) {
11513   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
11514
11515   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
11516   mode_t newmode;
11517   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
11518     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
11519            newmode);
11520   }
11521   umask(007);
11522   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
11523     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
11524            newmode);
11525   }
11526
11527   umask (orig_umask);
11528   return 0;
11529 }
11530
11531 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
11532   [...]
11533   test_umask();
11534   return 0;
11535 }
11536 </pre>
11537
11538 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
11539
11540 <pre>
11541 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11542 info: testing symlink creation
11543 info: testing subdirectory creation
11544 info: testing fcntl locking
11545   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11546   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11547   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
11548   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11549   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11550   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
11551 info: testing umask effect on file creation
11552 </pre>
11553
11554 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
11555 result:</p>
11556
11557 <pre>
11558 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11559 info: testing symlink creation
11560 info: testing subdirectory creation
11561 info: testing fcntl locking
11562   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11563   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11564   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
11565   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11566   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11567   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
11568 info: testing umask effect on file creation
11569   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
11570   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
11571 </pre>
11572
11573 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
11574 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
11575 directory.</p>
11576
11577 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
11578 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
11579
11580 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
11581 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
11582 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
11583
11584       </div>
11585       <div class="tags">
11586
11587
11588         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11589
11590
11591       </div>
11592     </div>
11593     <div class="padding"></div>
11594
11595     <div class="entry">
11596       <div class="title">
11597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
11598       </div>
11599       <div class="date">
11600          9th August 2010
11601       </div>
11602       <div class="body">
11603         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
11604 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
11605 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
11606 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
11607 generated configuration.</p>
11608
11609 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
11610 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
11611 without any manual configuration.</p>
11612
11613 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
11614 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
11615 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
11616 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
11617 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
11618 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
11619 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
11620 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
11621 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
11622 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
11623 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
11624 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
11625 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
11626 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
11627 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
11628 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
11629 use.</p>
11630
11631 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
11632 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
11633 working properly out of the box:</p>
11634
11635 <ul>
11636 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
11637 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
11638 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
11639 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
11640 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
11641 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
11642 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
11643 </ul>
11644
11645 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
11646
11647 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
11648 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
11649 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
11650 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
11651 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
11652
11653 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
11654 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
11655 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
11656 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
11657 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
11658 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
11659 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
11660 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
11661
11662 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
11663 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
11664 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
11665 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
11666 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
11667 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
11668 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
11669 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
11670 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
11671 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
11672 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
11673 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
11674 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
11675 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
11676 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
11677 current DNS domain is used.</p>
11678
11679 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
11680 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
11681 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
11682 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
11683 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
11684 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
11685 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
11686 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
11687 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
11688 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
11689 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
11690 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
11691 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
11692
11693 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
11694 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
11695 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
11696 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
11697 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
11698 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
11699 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
11700 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
11701 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
11702 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
11703 do for now. :)</p>
11704
11705 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
11706 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
11707 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
11708 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
11709 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
11710 yet.</p>
11711
11712 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
11713 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11714
11715 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
11716 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
11717 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
11718 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
11719
11720       </div>
11721       <div class="tags">
11722
11723
11724         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11725
11726
11727       </div>
11728     </div>
11729     <div class="padding"></div>
11730
11731     <div class="entry">
11732       <div class="title">
11733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
11734       </div>
11735       <div class="date">
11736          8th August 2010
11737       </div>
11738       <div class="body">
11739         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
11740 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
11741 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
11742 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
11743 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
11744 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
11745 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
11746
11747 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
11748 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
11749 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
11750 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
11751 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
11752 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
11753 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
11754
11755 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
11756 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
11757 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
11758 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
11759 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
11760
11761 <pre>
11762 /*
11763  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
11764  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
11765  * directory.
11766  * License: GPL v2 or later
11767  *
11768  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
11769  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
11770 */
11771
11772 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
11773 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
11774 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
11775
11776 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
11777
11778 #include &lt;errno.h>
11779 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
11780 #include &lt;stdio.h>
11781 #include &lt;string.h>
11782 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
11783 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
11784 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
11785 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
11786 #include &lt;unistd.h>
11787
11788 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
11789 /*
11790  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
11791  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
11792  * below.
11793  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
11794  */
11795 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
11796 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
11797   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
11798 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
11799   char *zErrMsg;
11800   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
11801   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
11802   unlink(name);
11803   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
11804   if( rc ){
11805     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
11806     sqlite3_close(db);
11807     return -1;
11808   }
11809
11810   /* create tables */
11811   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
11812   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
11813     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
11814     sqlite3_close(db);
11815     return -1;
11816   }
11817   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
11818   sqlite3_close(db);
11819   return 0;
11820 }
11821 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
11822
11823 /*
11824  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
11825  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
11826  * done in the sqlite3 library.
11827  * See also
11828  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
11829  * POSIX specification
11830  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
11831  */
11832 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
11833   struct flock fl;
11834   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
11835   unlink(name);
11836   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
11837   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
11838
11839   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
11840   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
11841   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
11842   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
11843   fl.l_len    = 1;
11844   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
11845   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11846
11847   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
11848   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
11849   fl.l_len    = 510;
11850   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
11851   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11852
11853   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
11854   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
11855   fl.l_len    = 1;
11856   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
11857   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11858
11859   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
11860   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
11861   fl.l_len    = 1;
11862   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
11863   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11864
11865   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
11866   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
11867   fl.l_len    = 510;
11868   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11869
11870   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
11871   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
11872   fl.l_len    = 2;
11873   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
11874   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11875
11876   close(fd);
11877   return 0;
11878 }
11879
11880 /*
11881  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
11882  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
11883  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
11884  * slowing down file operations.
11885  */
11886 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
11887 #define LEVELS 5
11888   char *path = strdup("test");
11889   char *dirs[LEVELS];
11890   int level;
11891   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
11892   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
11893     char *newpath = NULL;
11894     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
11895       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
11896              path, strerror(errno));
11897       break;
11898     }
11899     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
11900     free(path);
11901     path = newpath;
11902   }
11903   return 0;
11904 }
11905
11906 /*
11907  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
11908  * KDE.
11909  */
11910 int test_symlinks(void) {
11911   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
11912   unlink("symlink");
11913   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
11914     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
11915   return 0;
11916 }
11917
11918 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
11919   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
11920   test_symlinks();
11921   test_subdirectory_creation();
11922 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
11923   test_sqlite_open();
11924 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
11925   test_gcompris_locking();
11926   return 0;
11927 }
11928 </pre>
11929
11930 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
11931 this:</p>
11932
11933 <pre>
11934 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11935 info: testing symlink creation
11936 info: testing subdirectory creation
11937 info: sqlite worked
11938 info: testing fcntl locking
11939   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11940   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11941   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
11942   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11943   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11944   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
11945 </pre>
11946
11947 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
11948 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
11949 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
11950 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
11951 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
11952 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
11953 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
11954 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
11955
11956 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
11957 it. :)</p>
11958
11959 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
11960 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
11961 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
11962
11963       </div>
11964       <div class="tags">
11965
11966
11967         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11968
11969
11970       </div>
11971     </div>
11972     <div class="padding"></div>
11973
11974     <div class="entry">
11975       <div class="title">
11976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
11977       </div>
11978       <div class="date">
11979          7th August 2010
11980       </div>
11981       <div class="body">
11982         <p>A few days ago, I
11983 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
11984 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
11985 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
11986 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
11987 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
11988 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
11989 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
11990 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
11991 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
11992
11993 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
11994 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
11995 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
11996 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
11997 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
11998 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
11999 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
12000 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
12001 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
12002 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
12003 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
12004 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
12005 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
12006 gave it a IP address.</p>
12007
12008 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
12009 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
12010 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
12011 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
12012 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
12013 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
12014 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
12015 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
12016
12017 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
12018 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
12019 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
12020 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
12021 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
12022 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
12023
12024 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
12025 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
12026 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
12027 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
12028 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
12029 with UID and GID values.</p>
12030
12031 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
12032 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12033
12034       </div>
12035       <div class="tags">
12036
12037
12038         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12039
12040
12041       </div>
12042     </div>
12043     <div class="padding"></div>
12044
12045     <div class="entry">
12046       <div class="title">
12047         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
12048       </div>
12049       <div class="date">
12050          3rd August 2010
12051       </div>
12052       <div class="body">
12053         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
12054 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
12055 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
12056 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
12057 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
12058 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
12059 servers.</p>
12060
12061 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
12062 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
12063 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
12064 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
12065 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
12066 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
12067 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
12068 .uio.no.</p>
12069
12070 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
12071 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
12072 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
12073 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
12074 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
12075 university servers.</p>
12076
12077 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
12078 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
12079 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
12080 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
12081 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
12082 uses.</p>
12083
12084       </div>
12085       <div class="tags">
12086
12087
12088         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12089
12090
12091       </div>
12092     </div>
12093     <div class="padding"></div>
12094
12095     <div class="entry">
12096       <div class="title">
12097         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
12098       </div>
12099       <div class="date">
12100         27th July 2010
12101       </div>
12102       <div class="body">
12103         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
12104 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
12105 completed.</p>
12106
12107 <blockquote>
12108 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
12109 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
12110 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
12111 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
12112 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
12113 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
12114 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
12115 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
12116
12117 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
12118 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
12119 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
12120
12121 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
12122 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
12123 much.</p>
12124
12125 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
12126
12127 <ul>
12128 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
12129 <ul>
12130   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
12131          combination with some new artwork
12132   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
12133   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
12134   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
12135   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
12136   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
12137   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
12138   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
12139   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
12140   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
12141 </ul></li>
12142 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
12143     Enabled for:
12144 <ul>
12145   <li>PAM
12146   <li>LDAP
12147   <li>IMAP
12148   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
12149 </ul>
12150 </li>
12151 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
12152 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
12153     fetched from LDAP.</li>
12154 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
12155 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
12156 </ul>
12157 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
12158
12159 <ul>
12160 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
12161     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
12162     for testing.</li>
12163 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
12164     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
12165     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
12166 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
12167 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
12168 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
12169 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
12170     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
12171 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
12172     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
12173     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
12174 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
12175     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
12176     and help out with translations.</li>
12177 </ul>
12178
12179 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
12180
12181 <ul>
12182 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
12183 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
12184 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
12185 </ul>
12186 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
12187
12188 <ul>
12189 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
12190 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
12191 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
12192 </ul>
12193
12194 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
12195 get closer to the final release.</p>
12196
12197 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
12198
12199 <ul>
12200 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
12201 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
12202 </ul>
12203
12204 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
12205 <ul>
12206 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
12207 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
12208 </ul>
12209 <p>How to report bugs:
12210 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
12211
12212 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
12213 </blockquote>
12214
12215       </div>
12216       <div class="tags">
12217
12218
12219         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12220
12221
12222       </div>
12223     </div>
12224     <div class="padding"></div>
12225
12226     <div class="entry">
12227       <div class="title">
12228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
12229       </div>
12230       <div class="date">
12231         25th July 2010
12232       </div>
12233       <div class="body">
12234         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
12235 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
12236 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
12237 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
12238 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
12239
12240 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
12241 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
12242 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
12243 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
12244 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
12245 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
12246 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
12247
12248 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
12249 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
12250 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
12251 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
12252 up. :)</p>
12253
12254 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
12255 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
12256 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
12257
12258 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
12259 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
12260 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
12261 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
12262 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
12263 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
12264 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
12265 release another day.</p>
12266
12267 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
12268 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12269
12270       </div>
12271       <div class="tags">
12272
12273
12274         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
12275
12276
12277       </div>
12278     </div>
12279     <div class="padding"></div>
12280
12281     <div class="entry">
12282       <div class="title">
12283         <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>
12284       </div>
12285       <div class="date">
12286         17th July 2010
12287       </div>
12288       <div class="body">
12289         <p>This is a
12290 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
12291 on my
12292 <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
12293 work</a> on
12294 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
12295 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
12296
12297 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
12298 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
12299 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
12300 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
12301
12302 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
12303 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
12304 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
12305
12306 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
12307
12308 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
12309 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
12310 the web.
12311
12312 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
12313 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
12314 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
12315 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
12316 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
12317 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
12318
12319 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
12320 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
12321 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
12322 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
12323 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
12324 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
12325 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
12326 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
12327 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
12328 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
12329 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
12330 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
12331 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
12332 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
12333 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
12334 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
12335
12336 <blockquote><pre>
12337 ldapsearch -h ldap \
12338   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
12339   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
12340   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
12341   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
12342   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
12343   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
12344
12345 ldapsearch -h ldap \
12346   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
12347   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
12348   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
12349   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
12350   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
12351 </pre></blockquote>
12352
12353 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
12354 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
12355 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
12356 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12357 also exist.</p>
12358
12359 <blockquote><pre>
12360 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12361 objectclass: top
12362 objectclass: dnsdomain
12363 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12364 dc: tjener
12365 arecord: 10.0.2.2
12366 associateddomain: tjener.intern
12367
12368 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12369 objectclass: top
12370 objectclass: dnsdomain2
12371 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12372 dc: 2
12373 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
12374 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
12375 </pre></blockquote>
12376
12377 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
12378 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
12379 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
12380 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
12381 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
12382 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
12383 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
12384 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
12385 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
12386 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
12387 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
12388 instead.</p>
12389
12390 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
12391 like this:</p>
12392
12393 <blockquote><pre>
12394 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
12395   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
12396   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
12397   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
12398   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
12399   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
12400
12401 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
12402   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
12403 </pre></blockquote>
12404
12405 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
12406 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
12407 reverse lookups.</p>
12408
12409 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
12410 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
12411 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
12412 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
12413
12414 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
12415 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
12416 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
12417
12418 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
12419 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
12420 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
12421 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
12422 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
12423
12424 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
12425 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
12426 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
12427 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
12428 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
12429
12430 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
12431 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
12432 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
12433 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
12434 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
12435 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
12436
12437 <blockquote><pre>
12438 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
12439     SUP top
12440     AUXILIARY
12441     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
12442           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
12443           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
12444           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
12445           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
12446     ))
12447 </pre></blockquote>
12448
12449 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
12450 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
12451 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
12452 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
12453 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
12454 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
12455
12456 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
12457
12458 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
12459 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
12460 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
12461 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
12462 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
12463
12464 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
12465 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
12466 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
12467 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
12468
12469 <blockquote><pre>
12470 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
12471 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
12472 </pre></blockquote>
12473
12474 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
12475 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
12476 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
12477 search result is this entry:</p>
12478
12479 <blockquote><pre>
12480 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12481 cn: dhcp
12482 objectClass: top
12483 objectClass: dhcpServer
12484 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12485 </pre></blockquote>
12486
12487 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
12488 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
12489 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
12490 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
12491 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
12492 The search result is this entry:</p>
12493
12494 <blockquote><pre>
12495 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12496 cn: DHCP Config
12497 objectClass: top
12498 objectClass: dhcpService
12499 objectClass: dhcpOptions
12500 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12501 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
12502 dhcpStatements: authoritative
12503 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
12504 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
12505 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
12506 </pre></blockquote>
12507
12508 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
12509 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
12510 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
12511 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
12512 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
12513 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
12514 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
12515 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
12516 related computer objects.</p>
12517
12518 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
12519 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
12520 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
12521 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
12522 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
12523 like:</p>
12524
12525 <blockquote><pre>
12526 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12527 cn: hostname
12528 objectClass: top
12529 objectClass: dhcpHost
12530 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12531 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
12532 </pre></blockquote>
12533
12534 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
12535 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
12536 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
12537 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
12538 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
12539 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
12540 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
12541 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
12542 structural object class.
12543
12544 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
12545
12546 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
12547 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
12548 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
12549 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
12550 in the configuration.</p>
12551
12552 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
12553 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
12554 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
12555 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
12556 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
12557 structure.</p>
12558
12559 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
12560 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
12561
12562 <blockquote><pre>
12563 ou=services
12564   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
12565     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
12566     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
12567       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
12568         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
12569     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
12570       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
12571         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
12572     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
12573       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
12574 </pre></blockquote>
12575
12576 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
12577 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
12578 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
12579 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
12580
12581 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
12582 like this:</p>
12583
12584 <blockquote><pre>
12585 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12586 dc: hostname
12587 objectClass: top
12588 objectClass: dhcpHost
12589 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12590 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
12591 associateddomain: hostname.intern
12592 arecord: 10.11.12.13
12593 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12594 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
12595 </pre></blockquote>
12596
12597 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
12598 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
12599 auxiliary object class.</p>
12600
12601       </div>
12602       <div class="tags">
12603
12604
12605         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>.
12606
12607
12608       </div>
12609     </div>
12610     <div class="padding"></div>
12611
12612     <div class="entry">
12613       <div class="title">
12614         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
12615       </div>
12616       <div class="date">
12617         14th July 2010
12618       </div>
12619       <div class="body">
12620         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
12621 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
12622 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
12623 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
12624 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
12625
12626 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
12627 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
12628
12629 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
12630 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
12631 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
12632 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
12633 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
12634 to a slave DNS server.</p>
12635
12636 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
12637 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
12638 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
12639 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
12640 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
12641 seem to work.</p>
12642
12643 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
12644 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
12645 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
12646 this:</p>
12647
12648 <blockquote><pre>
12649   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12650   cn: hostname
12651   objectClass: dhcphost
12652   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12653   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
12654   associateddomain: hostname.intern
12655   arecord: 10.11.12.13
12656   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12657   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
12658   ldapconfigsound: Y
12659 </pre></blockquote>
12660
12661 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
12662 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
12663 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
12664 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
12665
12666 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
12667 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
12668 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
12669 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
12670 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
12671 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
12672 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
12673 might be a good place to put it.</p>
12674
12675 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12676 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12677
12678       </div>
12679       <div class="tags">
12680
12681
12682         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>.
12683
12684
12685       </div>
12686     </div>
12687     <div class="padding"></div>
12688
12689     <div class="entry">
12690       <div class="title">
12691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
12692       </div>
12693       <div class="date">
12694         11th July 2010
12695       </div>
12696       <div class="body">
12697         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
12698 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
12699 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
12700 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
12701
12702 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
12703 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
12704 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
12705 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
12706 LTSP clients.</p>
12707
12708 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
12709 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
12710 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
12711
12712 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
12713 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
12714 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
12715
12716 <blockquote><pre>
12717 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
12718 #
12719 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
12720 #
12721 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
12722 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
12723 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
12724 #
12725 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
12726 # existence of attribute names.
12727 #
12728 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
12729 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
12730 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
12731 #
12732 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
12733 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
12734 #
12735 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
12736 #     SUP top
12737 #     AUXILIARY
12738 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
12739
12740 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
12741 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
12742     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
12743     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
12744         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
12745         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
12746             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
12747             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
12748             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
12749             # bass value on to clients
12750             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
12751         done
12752     done
12753 fi
12754 </pre></blockquote>
12755
12756 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
12757 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
12758 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
12759 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
12760 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
12761
12762 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12763 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12764
12765 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
12766 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
12767 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
12768 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
12769 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
12770 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
12771
12772       </div>
12773       <div class="tags">
12774
12775
12776         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>.
12777
12778
12779       </div>
12780     </div>
12781     <div class="padding"></div>
12782
12783     <div class="entry">
12784       <div class="title">
12785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
12786       </div>
12787       <div class="date">
12788          9th July 2010
12789       </div>
12790       <div class="body">
12791         <p>Since
12792 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
12793 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
12794 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
12795 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
12796 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
12797 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
12798 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
12799 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
12800 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
12801 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
12802 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
12803 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
12804 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
12805
12806       </div>
12807       <div class="tags">
12808
12809
12810         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>.
12811
12812
12813       </div>
12814     </div>
12815     <div class="padding"></div>
12816
12817     <div class="entry">
12818       <div class="title">
12819         <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>
12820       </div>
12821       <div class="date">
12822          3rd July 2010
12823       </div>
12824       <div class="body">
12825         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
12826 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
12827 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
12828 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
12829 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
12830 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
12831 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
12832 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
12833
12834 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
12835 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
12836 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
12837 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
12838 publish the difference.</p>
12839
12840 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12841
12842 <blockquote><p>
12843   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12844   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
12845   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
12846   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
12847   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
12848   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12849   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
12850   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
12851 </p></blockquote>
12852
12853 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12854
12855 <blockquote><p>
12856   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
12857   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
12858   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
12859   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
12860   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
12861   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
12862   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
12863   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
12864   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12865   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12866   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
12867   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
12868   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
12869   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
12870   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
12871   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
12872   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
12873   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
12874   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
12875   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
12876 </p></blockquote>
12877
12878 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12879
12880 <blockquote><p>
12881   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
12882   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
12883   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12884   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12885   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
12886   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
12887   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
12888   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12889   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12890   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12891   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12892   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
12893   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
12894   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
12895   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
12896   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
12897   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
12898   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
12899   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
12900   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
12901   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
12902 </p></blockquote>
12903
12904 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12905
12906 <blockquote><p>
12907   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
12908   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
12909   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
12910 </p></blockquote>
12911
12912 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
12913 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
12914 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
12915 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
12916 the difference somewhat.
12917
12918       </div>
12919       <div class="tags">
12920
12921
12922         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>.
12923
12924
12925       </div>
12926     </div>
12927     <div class="padding"></div>
12928
12929     <div class="entry">
12930       <div class="title">
12931         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
12932       </div>
12933       <div class="date">
12934          1st July 2010
12935       </div>
12936       <div class="body">
12937         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
12938 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
12939 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
12940 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
12941 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
12942 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
12943 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
12944 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
12945 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
12946
12947 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
12948
12949 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
12950 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
12951 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
12952 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
12953 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
12954 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
12955 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
12956 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
12957 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
12958 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
12959 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
12960 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
12961 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
12962 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
12963 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
12964
12965 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
12966
12967 <blockquote><pre>
12968 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
12969 </pre></blockquote>
12970
12971 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
12972 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
12973 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
12974 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
12975 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
12976 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
12977 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
12978 on how to get this working.</p>
12979
12980 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
12981 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
12982 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
12983 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
12984 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
12985 instructions I found in the
12986 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
12987 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
12988
12989 <blockquote><pre>
12990         debug-level             0
12991         reload-count            unlimited
12992         paranoia                no
12993
12994         enable-cache            passwd          yes
12995         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
12996         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
12997         suggested-size          passwd          211
12998         check-files             passwd          yes
12999         persistent              passwd          yes
13000         shared                  passwd          yes
13001         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
13002         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
13003
13004         enable-cache            group           yes
13005         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
13006         negative-time-to-live   group           20
13007         suggested-size          group           211
13008         check-files             group           yes
13009         persistent              group           yes
13010         shared                  group           yes
13011         max-db-size             group           33554432
13012         auto-propagate          group           yes
13013
13014         enable-cache            hosts           no
13015         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
13016         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
13017         suggested-size          hosts           211
13018         check-files             hosts           yes
13019         persistent              hosts           yes
13020         shared                  hosts           yes
13021         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
13022
13023         enable-cache            services        yes
13024         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
13025         negative-time-to-live   services        20
13026         suggested-size          services        211
13027         check-files             services        yes
13028         persistent              services        yes
13029         shared                  services        yes
13030         max-db-size             services        33554432
13031 </pre></blockquote>
13032
13033 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
13034 automatically like the one provided in
13035 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
13036 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
13037 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
13038 look like this:</p>
13039
13040 <blockquote><pre>
13041 passwd:         files ldap
13042 group:          files ldap
13043 shadow:         files ldap
13044 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
13045 networks:       files
13046 protocols:      files
13047 services:       files
13048 ethers:         files
13049 rpc:            files
13050 netgroup:       files ldap
13051 </pre></blockquote>
13052
13053 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
13054 shadow and netgroup.</p>
13055
13056 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
13057 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
13058 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
13059 attributes cached.
13060
13061 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
13062   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
13063
13064 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
13065 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
13066 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
13067 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
13068 discovered sssd.</p>
13069
13070 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
13071
13072 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
13073 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
13074 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
13075 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
13076 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
13077 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
13078 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
13079 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
13080 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
13081 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
13082 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
13083 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
13084 version 1.2 is now in testing.
13085
13086 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
13087 roaming setup I want</p>
13088
13089 <blockquote><pre>
13090 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
13091 </pre></blockquote>
13092
13093 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
13094 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
13095
13096 <blockquote><pre>
13097 [sssd]
13098 config_file_version = 2
13099 reconnection_retries = 3
13100 sbus_timeout = 30
13101 services = nss, pam
13102 domains = INTERN
13103
13104 [nss]
13105 filter_groups = root
13106 filter_users = root
13107 reconnection_retries = 3
13108
13109 [pam]
13110 reconnection_retries = 3
13111
13112 [domain/INTERN]
13113 enumerate = false
13114 cache_credentials = true
13115
13116 id_provider = ldap
13117 auth_provider = ldap
13118 chpass_provider = ldap
13119
13120 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
13121 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13122 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
13123 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
13124 </pre></blockquote>
13125
13126 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
13127 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
13128
13129 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
13130 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
13131 modify it manually.</p>
13132
13133 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13134 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13135
13136       </div>
13137       <div class="tags">
13138
13139
13140         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13141
13142
13143       </div>
13144     </div>
13145     <div class="padding"></div>
13146
13147     <div class="entry">
13148       <div class="title">
13149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
13150       </div>
13151       <div class="date">
13152         28th June 2010
13153       </div>
13154       <div class="body">
13155         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
13156 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
13157 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
13158 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
13159 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
13160 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
13161 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
13162 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
13163 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
13164 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
13165
13166 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
13167 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
13168 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
13169 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
13170 released.</p>
13171
13172 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
13173 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
13174 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
13175 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
13176
13177 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
13178 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13179
13180 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
13181 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
13182 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
13183 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
13184 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
13185
13186       </div>
13187       <div class="tags">
13188
13189
13190         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>.
13191
13192
13193       </div>
13194     </div>
13195     <div class="padding"></div>
13196
13197     <div class="entry">
13198       <div class="title">
13199         <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>
13200       </div>
13201       <div class="date">
13202         24th June 2010
13203       </div>
13204       <div class="body">
13205         <p>A while back, I
13206 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
13207 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
13208 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
13209 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
13210
13211 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
13212 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
13213 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
13214 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
13215
13216 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
13217 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
13218 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
13219 Debian Edu.</p>
13220
13221 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
13222 the
13223 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
13224 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
13225 available today from IETF.</p>
13226
13227 <pre>
13228 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
13229 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
13230 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
13231  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
13232         NAME 'dhcpHost'
13233         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
13234 -       SUP top
13235 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
13236         MUST cn
13237         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
13238         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
13239 </pre>
13240
13241 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
13242 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
13243 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
13244
13245 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13246 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13247
13248       </div>
13249       <div class="tags">
13250
13251
13252         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>.
13253
13254
13255       </div>
13256     </div>
13257     <div class="padding"></div>
13258
13259     <div class="entry">
13260       <div class="title">
13261         <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>
13262       </div>
13263       <div class="date">
13264         13th June 2010
13265       </div>
13266       <div class="body">
13267         <p>My
13268 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
13269 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
13270 finally made the upgrade logs available from
13271 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
13272 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
13273 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
13274 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
13275
13276 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
13277 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
13278 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
13279 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
13280 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
13281 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
13282 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
13283 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
13284
13285 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
13286 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
13287 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
13288 too surprising.</p>
13289
13290 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
13291 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
13292 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
13293 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
13294 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
13295 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
13296 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
13297 continue.</p>
13298
13299 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
13300 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
13301   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
13302   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
13303   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
13304   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
13305   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
13306   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13307   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13308   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
13309   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
13310   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
13311   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
13312   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13313   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13314   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13315   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13316   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13317   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
13318   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
13319   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
13320   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
13321   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
13322   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
13323   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
13324   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
13325   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
13326   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
13327   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
13328   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
13329
13330 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
13331
13332 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
13333   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
13334   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
13335   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
13336   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
13337   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
13338   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
13339   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
13340   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
13341   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
13342   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
13343   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
13344   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
13345   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
13346   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
13347   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
13348   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
13349   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
13350   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
13351   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
13352   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
13353   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
13354   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
13355   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
13356   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
13357   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
13358   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
13359   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
13360   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
13361   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13362   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13363   zip</p>
13364
13365 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
13366
13367 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
13368   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
13369   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
13370   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
13371   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
13372   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
13373   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13374   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13375   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
13376   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
13377   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
13378   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
13379   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13380   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13381   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13382   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13383   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13384   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
13385   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
13386   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
13387   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
13388   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
13389   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
13390   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
13391   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
13392   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
13393   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
13394   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
13395
13396 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
13397 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
13398   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
13399   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
13400   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
13401   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
13402   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
13403   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
13404   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
13405   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
13406   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
13407   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
13408   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
13409   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
13410   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
13411   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
13412   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
13413   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
13414   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
13415   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
13416   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
13417   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
13418   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
13419   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
13420   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
13421   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
13422   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
13423   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
13424   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
13425   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
13426   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
13427   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
13428   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
13429   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
13430   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
13431   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13432   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13433   xulrunner-1.9</p>
13434
13435
13436       </div>
13437       <div class="tags">
13438
13439
13440         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>.
13441
13442
13443       </div>
13444     </div>
13445     <div class="padding"></div>
13446
13447     <div class="entry">
13448       <div class="title">
13449         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
13450       </div>
13451       <div class="date">
13452         11th June 2010
13453       </div>
13454       <div class="body">
13455         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
13456 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
13457 have been discovered and reported in the process
13458 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
13459 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
13460 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
13461 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
13462 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
13463
13464 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
13465 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
13466 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
13467 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
13468 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
13469 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
13470
13471 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
13472 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
13473 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13474 is created.  The bug report
13475 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
13476 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
13477 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
13478 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
13479 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
13480 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
13481 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
13482 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
13483 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
13484 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
13485 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
13486 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
13487 Debian Squeeze.</p>
13488
13489 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
13490 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
13491 trick:</p>
13492
13493 <blockquote><pre>
13494 #!/bin/sh
13495 set -ex
13496
13497 if [ "$1" ] ; then
13498     desktop=$1
13499 else
13500     desktop=gnome
13501 fi
13502
13503 from=lenny
13504 to=squeeze
13505
13506 exec &lt; /dev/null
13507 unset LANG
13508 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
13509 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
13510 fuser -mv .
13511 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
13512 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13513 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
13514 #!/bin/sh
13515 exit 101
13516 EOF
13517 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
13518 exit_cleanup() {
13519     umount $tmpdir/proc
13520 }
13521 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
13522 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
13523 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
13524
13525 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
13526
13527 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
13528 # to return the correct answers.
13529 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
13530     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
13531
13532 # Include the desktop and laptop task
13533 for test in desktop laptop ; do
13534     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
13535 #!/bin/sh
13536 exit 2
13537 EOF
13538     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
13539 done
13540
13541 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
13542 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
13543 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
13544 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
13545
13546 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
13547 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13548 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13549 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
13550 fuser -mv
13551 </pre></blockquote>
13552
13553 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
13554 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
13555 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
13556 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
13557 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
13558 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
13559
13560 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
13561 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
13562 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
13563 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
13564 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
13565 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
13566 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
13567
13568 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
13569 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
13570 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
13571 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
13572 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
13573 packages.</p>
13574
13575       </div>
13576       <div class="tags">
13577
13578
13579         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>.
13580
13581
13582       </div>
13583     </div>
13584     <div class="padding"></div>
13585
13586     <div class="entry">
13587       <div class="title">
13588         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html">Skolelinux er laget for sentraldrifting, naturligvis</a>
13589       </div>
13590       <div class="date">
13591          9th June 2010
13592       </div>
13593       <div class="body">
13594         <p>Det er merkelig hvordan myter om Skolelinux overlever.  En slik
13595 myte er at Skolelinux ikke kan sentraldriftes og ha sentralt plasserte
13596 tjenermaskiner.  I siste Computerworld Norge er
13597 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article169432.ece">IT-sjef
13598 Viggo Billdal i Steinkjer intervjuet</a>, og forteller uten
13599 blygsel:</p>
13600
13601 <blockquote><p>Vi hadde Skolelinux, men det har vi sluttet med. Vi testet
13602 om det lønte seg med Microsoft eller en åpen plattform. Vi fant ut at
13603 Microsoft egentlig var totalt sett bedre egnet. Det var store
13604 driftskostnader med Skolelinux, blant annet på grunn av
13605 desentraliserte servere. Det var komplisert, så vi gikk vekk fra det
13606 og bruker nå bare Windows.</p></blockquote>
13607
13608 <p>En <a
13609 href="https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/bruker/2010-June/009101.html">rask
13610 sjekk</a> mot den norske brukerlista i Skolelinuxprosjektet forteller
13611 at Steinkjers forsøk foregikk fram til 2004/2005, og at Røysing skole
13612 i Steinkjer skal ha vært svært fornøyd med Skolelinux men at kommunen
13613 overkjørte skolen og krevde at de gikk over til Windows.  Et søk på
13614 nettet sendte meg til
13615 <a href="http://www.dn.no/multimedia/archive/00090/Dagens_it_nr__18_90826a.pdf">Dagens
13616 IT nr. 18 2005</a> hvor en kan lese på side 18:</p>
13617
13618 <blockquote><p>Inge Tømmerås ved Røysing skole i Steinkjer kjører ennå
13619 Microsoft, men forteller at kompetanseutfordringen med Skolelinux ikke
13620 var så stor.   Jeg syntes Skolelinux var utrolig lett å drifte uten
13621 forkunnskaper. Men man må jo selvsagt ha tilgang på ekstern kompetanse
13622 til installasjoner og maskinvarefeil, sier Tømmerås.</p></blockquote>
13623
13624 <p>Som systemarkitekten bak Skolelinux, kan jeg bare riste på hodet
13625 over påstanden om at Skolelinux krever desentraliserte tjenere.
13626 Skolelinux-arkitekturen er laget for sentralisert drift og plassering
13627 av tjenerne lokalt eller sentralt alt etter behov og nettkapasitet.
13628 Den er modellert på nettverks- og tjenerløsningen som brukes på
13629 Universitetet i Tromsø og Oslo, der jeg jobber med utvikling av
13630 driftstjenester.  Dette er det heldigvis noen som har fått med seg, og
13631 jeg er glad for å kunne sitere fra en kommentar på den overnevnte
13632 artikkelen.  Min venn og gamle kollega Sturle Sunde forteller der:
13633
13634 <blockquote>
13635 <p>I Flora kommune køyrer vi Skulelinux på skular med alt frå 15 til
13636 meir enn 500 elevar. Dei store skulane har eigen tenar, for det er
13637 mest praktisk. Eg, som er driftsansvarleg for heile nettet, ser
13638 sjeldan dei tenarane fysisk, men at dei står der gjer skulane mindre
13639 avhengige av eksterne linjer som er trege eller dyre. Dei minste
13640 skulane har ikkje eigen tenar. Å bruke sentral tenar er heller ikkje
13641 noko problem. Småskulane klarar seg fint med 1 mbit-linje til ein
13642 sentral tenar eller tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
13643
13644 <p>Det beste med Skulelinux er halvtjukke klientar. Dei treng ikkje
13645 harddisk og brukar minimalt med ressursar på tenaren fordi dei køyrer
13646 programma lokalt. Eit klasserom med 30 sju-åtte år gamle maskiner har
13647 mykje meir CPU og RAM totalt enn nokon moderne tenar til under
13648 millionen. Det trengst to kommandoar på den sentrale tenaren for å
13649 oppdatere alle klientane, både tynne og halvtjukke. Vi har ingen
13650 problem med diskar som ryk heller, som var eit problem før fordi
13651 elevane sat og sparka i maskinene. Og dei krev lite bandbreidde i
13652 nettet, so det er fullt mogleg å køyre slike på småskular med trege
13653 linjer mot tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
13654
13655 <p>Flora kommune har nesten 800 Linux-maskiner i sitt skulenett, og
13656 ein person som tek seg av drift av heile nettet, inkludert tenarar,
13657 klientar, operativsystem, programvare, heimekontorløysing og
13658 administrasjon av brukarar.</p>
13659
13660 <p>No skal det seiast at vi ikkje køyrer rein Skulelinux ut av
13661 boksen. Vi har gjort ein del tilpassingar mot noko Novell-greier som
13662 var der frå før, og som har komplisert installasjonen vår. Etter at
13663 oppsettet var gjort har løysinga vore stabil og kravd minimalt med
13664 arbeid.</p>
13665 </blockquote>
13666
13667 <p>Jeg vet at Narvik, Harstad og Oslo er kommuner der Skolelinux
13668 sentraldriftes med sentrale tjenere.  Det forteller meg at Steinkjers
13669 IT-sjef neppe bør skylde på Skolelinux-løsningen for sine 5 år gamle
13670 minner.</p>
13671
13672       </div>
13673       <div class="tags">
13674
13675
13676         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13677
13678
13679       </div>
13680     </div>
13681     <div class="padding"></div>
13682
13683     <div class="entry">
13684       <div class="title">
13685         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
13686       </div>
13687       <div class="date">
13688          6th June 2010
13689       </div>
13690       <div class="body">
13691         <p>Via the
13692 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
13693 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
13694 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
13695 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
13696 following the standards wars of today.</p>
13697
13698       </div>
13699       <div class="tags">
13700
13701
13702         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>.
13703
13704
13705       </div>
13706     </div>
13707     <div class="padding"></div>
13708
13709     <div class="entry">
13710       <div class="title">
13711         <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>
13712       </div>
13713       <div class="date">
13714          3rd June 2010
13715       </div>
13716       <div class="body">
13717         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
13718 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
13719 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
13720 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
13721 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
13722
13723 <blockquote><pre>
13724 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
13725   vendor                    count
13726   Dell Computer Corporation     1
13727     PowerEdge 1750              1
13728   IBM                           1
13729     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
13730   Intel                         2
13731   [no-dmi-info]                 3
13732 maintainer:~#
13733 </pre></blockquote>
13734
13735 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
13736 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
13737 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
13738 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
13739 option to list the individual machines.</p>
13740
13741 <p>A larger list is
13742 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
13743 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
13744 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
13745 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
13746 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
13747 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
13748 collector.</p>
13749
13750       </div>
13751       <div class="tags">
13752
13753
13754         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>.
13755
13756
13757       </div>
13758     </div>
13759     <div class="padding"></div>
13760
13761     <div class="entry">
13762       <div class="title">
13763         <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>
13764       </div>
13765       <div class="date">
13766          1st June 2010
13767       </div>
13768       <div class="body">
13769         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
13770 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
13771 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
13772 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
13773 wait.</p>
13774
13775 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
13776 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
13777 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
13778 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
13779 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
13780 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
13781
13782 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
13783 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
13784 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
13785 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
13786 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
13787 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
13788 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
13789 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
13790
13791 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
13792
13793       </div>
13794       <div class="tags">
13795
13796
13797         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>.
13798
13799
13800       </div>
13801     </div>
13802     <div class="padding"></div>
13803
13804     <div class="entry">
13805       <div class="title">
13806         <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>
13807       </div>
13808       <div class="date">
13809         27th May 2010
13810       </div>
13811       <div class="body">
13812         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
13813 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
13814 issues are known and should be solved:
13815
13816 <p><ul>
13817
13818 <li>The wicd package seen to
13819 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
13820 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
13821 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
13822 seem to be on the case.</li>
13823
13824 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
13825 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
13826 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
13827 maintainer is on the case.</li>
13828
13829 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
13830 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
13831 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
13832 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
13833 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
13834 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
13835 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
13836 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
13837
13838 </ul></p>
13839
13840 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
13841 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
13842 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
13843 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
13844
13845 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13846 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13847 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13848 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13849
13850 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
13851
13852       </div>
13853       <div class="tags">
13854
13855
13856         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>.
13857
13858
13859       </div>
13860     </div>
13861     <div class="padding"></div>
13862
13863     <div class="entry">
13864       <div class="title">
13865         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
13866       </div>
13867       <div class="date">
13868         22nd May 2010
13869       </div>
13870       <div class="body">
13871         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
13872 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
13873 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
13874 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
13875
13876 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
13877 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
13878 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
13879 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
13880 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
13881 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
13882 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
13883 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
13884 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
13885 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
13886 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
13887 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
13888 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
13889 going to work.</p>
13890
13891 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
13892 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
13893 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
13894 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
13895 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
13896 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
13897 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
13898 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
13899 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
13900 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
13901 Edu.</p>
13902
13903 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
13904 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
13905 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
13906 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
13907 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
13908 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
13909
13910 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
13911 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
13912
13913       </div>
13914       <div class="tags">
13915
13916
13917         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>.
13918
13919
13920       </div>
13921     </div>
13922     <div class="padding"></div>
13923
13924     <div class="entry">
13925       <div class="title">
13926         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
13927       </div>
13928       <div class="date">
13929         19th May 2010
13930       </div>
13931       <div class="body">
13932         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
13933 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
13934 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
13935 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
13936 into unstable.  The
13937 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
13938 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
13939 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
13940 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
13941 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
13942 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
13943 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
13944
13945 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
13946 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
13947 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
13948 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
13949 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
13950 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
13951 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
13952 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
13953
13954 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
13955 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
13956 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
13957 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
13958 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
13959 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
13960 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
13961
13962 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
13963 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
13964 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
13965 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
13966 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
13967 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
13968 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
13969 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
13970 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
13971 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
13972 on the home directory servers.</p>
13973
13974 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
13975 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
13976 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
13977 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
13978 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
13979 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
13980
13981 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13982 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13983
13984       </div>
13985       <div class="tags">
13986
13987
13988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13989
13990
13991       </div>
13992     </div>
13993     <div class="padding"></div>
13994
13995     <div class="entry">
13996       <div class="title">
13997         <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>
13998       </div>
13999       <div class="date">
14000         14th May 2010
14001       </div>
14002       <div class="body">
14003         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
14004 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
14005 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
14006 expected, if I am to believe the
14007 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
14008 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
14009 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
14010 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
14011 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
14012 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
14013 version.</p>
14014
14015 More information about
14016 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
14017 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
14018 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
14019 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
14020
14021 <blockquote><pre>
14022 CONCURRENCY=none
14023 </pre></blockquote>
14024
14025 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
14026 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
14027 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
14028 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
14029
14030       </div>
14031       <div class="tags">
14032
14033
14034         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>.
14035
14036
14037       </div>
14038     </div>
14039     <div class="padding"></div>
14040
14041     <div class="entry">
14042       <div class="title">
14043         <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>
14044       </div>
14045       <div class="date">
14046         14th May 2010
14047       </div>
14048       <div class="body">
14049         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
14050 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
14051 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
14052 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
14053 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
14054 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
14055 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
14056 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
14057
14058 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
14059 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
14060 this on the collector host:</p>
14061
14062 <blockquote><pre>
14063 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
14064 </pre></blockquote>
14065
14066 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
14067 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
14068
14069 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
14070 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
14071 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
14072 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
14073 written yet.</p>
14074
14075       </div>
14076       <div class="tags">
14077
14078
14079         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>.
14080
14081
14082       </div>
14083     </div>
14084     <div class="padding"></div>
14085
14086     <div class="entry">
14087       <div class="title">
14088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
14089       </div>
14090       <div class="date">
14091          2nd May 2010
14092       </div>
14093       <div class="body">
14094         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
14095 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
14096 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
14097
14098 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
14099 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
14100 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
14101 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
14102 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
14103
14104 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
14105 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
14106
14107 <blockquote><pre>
14108 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
14109 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
14110 Password expires                                        : never
14111 Password inactive                                       : never
14112 Account expires                                         : never
14113 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
14114 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
14115 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
14116 root@tjener:~#
14117 </pre></blockquote>
14118
14119 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
14120 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
14121 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
14122 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
14123 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
14124 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
14125
14126 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
14127 intended:</p>
14128
14129 <blockquote><pre>
14130 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
14131 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
14132 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
14133 Password expires                                        : never
14134 Password inactive                                       : never
14135 Account expires                                         : never
14136 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
14137 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
14138 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
14139 root@tjener:~#
14140 </pre></blockquote>
14141
14142 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
14143 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
14144 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
14145
14146 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
14147 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
14148
14149 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
14150 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14151
14152 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
14153 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
14154 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
14155 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
14156 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
14157 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
14158 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
14159
14160 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
14161 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
14162 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
14163 change.</p>
14164
14165       </div>
14166       <div class="tags">
14167
14168
14169         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
14170
14171
14172       </div>
14173     </div>
14174     <div class="padding"></div>
14175
14176     <div class="entry">
14177       <div class="title">
14178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
14179       </div>
14180       <div class="date">
14181         28th April 2010
14182       </div>
14183       <div class="body">
14184         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
14185 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
14186 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
14187 and go.</p>
14188
14189 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
14190 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
14191 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
14192 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
14193
14194 <ul>
14195
14196  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
14197    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
14198    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
14199    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
14200    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
14201    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
14202    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
14203    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
14204    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
14205    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
14206    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
14207    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
14208
14209  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
14210    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
14211    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
14212    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
14213    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
14214    or the Fedora developed
14215    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
14216    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
14217
14218  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
14219    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
14220    directory, using unison.</li>
14221
14222  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
14223    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
14224    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
14225    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
14226    implemented.</li>
14227
14228  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
14229    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
14230
14231  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
14232    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
14233    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
14234
14235 </ul>
14236
14237 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
14238 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
14239 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
14240 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
14241 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
14242 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
14243 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
14244 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
14245 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
14246
14247 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14248 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14249
14250       </div>
14251       <div class="tags">
14252
14253
14254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14255
14256
14257       </div>
14258     </div>
14259     <div class="padding"></div>
14260
14261     <div class="entry">
14262       <div class="title">
14263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
14264       </div>
14265       <div class="date">
14266         14th April 2010
14267       </div>
14268       <div class="body">
14269         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
14270 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
14271 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
14272 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
14273 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
14274 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
14275 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
14276 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
14277 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
14278
14279 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
14280 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
14281 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
14282 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
14283 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
14284
14285 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
14286 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
14287
14288 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
14289 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
14290 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
14291 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
14292 to work properly.</p>
14293
14294 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
14295 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
14296 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
14297 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
14298 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
14299 time.</p>
14300
14301 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
14302 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
14303 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
14304 up in a few days.</p>
14305
14306       </div>
14307       <div class="tags">
14308
14309
14310         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14311
14312
14313       </div>
14314     </div>
14315     <div class="padding"></div>
14316
14317     <div class="entry">
14318       <div class="title">
14319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
14320       </div>
14321       <div class="date">
14322          6th March 2010
14323       </div>
14324       <div class="body">
14325         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
14326 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
14327 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
14328 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
14329 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
14330 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
14331
14332 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
14333 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
14334 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
14335 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
14336
14337 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
14338 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
14339 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
14340 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
14341 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
14342 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
14343
14344       </div>
14345       <div class="tags">
14346
14347
14348         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14349
14350
14351       </div>
14352     </div>
14353     <div class="padding"></div>
14354
14355     <div class="entry">
14356       <div class="title">
14357         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
14358       </div>
14359       <div class="date">
14360         11th February 2010
14361       </div>
14362       <div class="body">
14363         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
14364 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
14365 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
14366 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
14367 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
14368 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
14369 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
14370
14371 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
14372
14373 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
14374 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
14375 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
14376 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
14377
14378       </div>
14379       <div class="tags">
14380
14381
14382         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14383
14384
14385       </div>
14386     </div>
14387     <div class="padding"></div>
14388
14389     <div class="entry">
14390       <div class="title">
14391         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
14392       </div>
14393       <div class="date">
14394         27th January 2010
14395       </div>
14396       <div class="body">
14397         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
14398 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
14399 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
14400 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
14401 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
14402 further.</p>
14403
14404 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
14405 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
14406 configured to be a server for the
14407 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
14408 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
14409 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
14410 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
14411 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
14412 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
14413 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
14414 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
14415 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
14416 and Nagios configuration.</p>
14417
14418 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
14419 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
14420 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
14421 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
14422
14423 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
14424 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
14425 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
14426 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
14427 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
14428 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
14429 the machine.</p>
14430
14431 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
14432 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
14433 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
14434 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
14435
14436 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
14437 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
14438 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
14439 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
14440 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
14441 everything is taken care of.</p>
14442
14443       </div>
14444       <div class="tags">
14445
14446
14447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
14448
14449
14450       </div>
14451     </div>
14452     <div class="padding"></div>
14453
14454     <div class="entry">
14455       <div class="title">
14456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Opphavet_til_Skolelinux_prosjektet.html">Opphavet til Skolelinux-prosjektet</a>
14457       </div>
14458       <div class="date">
14459         17th December 2009
14460       </div>
14461       <div class="body">
14462         <p>De færreste er klar over at Skolelinux-prosjektet kom som et resultat
14463 av en avgjørelse på årsmøtet i
14464 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> i 2000-06-29, der Håkon Wium
14465 Lie, da varamedlem i styret, tok på seg oppdraget om å starte et
14466 initiativ kalt "Teach the Teacher", som skulle være et initiativ for
14467 å få fri programvare og unix-lignende operativsystemer inn i Skolen.
14468 Tanken var at en måtte starte med lærerne for at ungene skulle få
14469 mulighet til å møte en bedre IT-hverdag.  Jeg var tilstede på
14470 møtet, og hadde sans for ideen, men intet skjedde.  På vårparten
14471 2001 ble det arrangert en demonstrasjon i anledning at First Tuesday
14472 hadde invitert Microsoft til et møte for å fortelle om fremtidens
14473 Internet.  Dette provoserte endel av oss, og EFN og NUUG tok initiativ
14474 til å arrangere
14475 <a href="http://www.digi.no/60982/first-tuesday-mote-med-microsoft-protest">en
14476 demonstrasjon utenfor lokalene 2001-05-21</a>.  Blant de som sto bak
14477 demonstrasjonen var Vidar Bakke fra NUUG og Håkon W. Lie fra EFN.
14478 Etter demonstrasjonen arrangerte Håkon en fest hjemme hos seg der alle
14479 som hadde vært aktive i demonstrasjonsplanlegging og gjennomføringen
14480 deltok.  Før festen var jeg blitt lei av å vente på at Håkon skulle ta
14481 initiativ til "Teach the Teacher", og for å forsøke å få litt fremgang
14482 besteme jeg meg for å benytte anledningen hos Håkon til å snakke om
14483 behovet for å hjelpe skolene i gang med bedre datasystemer bestående
14484 av fri programvare og unix-lignende operativsystemer.  Flere var
14485 interessert, og Knut Yrvin tenkte på ideen.  Han
14486 <a href="http://developer.skolelinux.no/brev/2001-06-28-invitasjon-skolelinux.txt">ropte
14487 sammen</a> til et stiftelsesmøte i prosjektet i sin arbeidsgivers
14488 Objectwares lokaler ved Ullevål stadion 2001-07-02, og jeg ble med.
14489 Resten er historie. :)</p>
14490
14491       </div>
14492       <div class="tags">
14493
14494
14495         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14496
14497
14498       </div>
14499     </div>
14500     <div class="padding"></div>
14501
14502     <div class="entry">
14503       <div class="title">
14504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_operativt_webbasert_medlemsregister_for_Fri_programvare_i_skolen.html">Endelig operativt webbasert medlemsregister for Fri programvare i skolen</a>
14505       </div>
14506       <div class="date">
14507          2nd November 2009
14508       </div>
14509       <div class="body">
14510         <p>Under helgens utviklersamling i
14511 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.no/">Skolelinux</a> fikk jeg endelig
14512 satt meg ned sammen med Ronny Aasen i styret for å få et webbasert
14513 medlemsregister tilbake på plass for foreningen som passer på
14514 skolelinuxprosjektet.  Etter flere års knot og problemer, er nå
14515 memberdb satt opp og klart til bruk.  Import av det gamle
14516 medlemsregisteret har vist seg vanskelig, så alle medlemmer bes om å
14517 registrere seg på nytt.  Hvis du støtter FRiSKs formål så er du
14518 hjertelig velkommen til
14519 <a href="http://medlem.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">å melde deg
14520 inn</a>. Formålet lyder:</p>
14521
14522 <blockquote>Linux i skolen skal tilrettelegge for og informere om bruk
14523 av fri programvare, i henhold til Debian Free Software Guidelines av
14524 2002-02-03, i den norske skolen, slik som f.eks. Linux og
14525 GNU.</blockquote>
14526
14527       </div>
14528       <div class="tags">
14529
14530
14531         Tags: <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>.
14532
14533
14534       </div>
14535     </div>
14536     <div class="padding"></div>
14537
14538     <div class="entry">
14539       <div class="title">
14540         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
14541       </div>
14542       <div class="date">
14543         29th March 2009
14544       </div>
14545       <div class="body">
14546         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
14547 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
14548 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
14549 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
14550 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
14551 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
14552 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
14553 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
14554 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
14555 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
14556 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
14557 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
14558 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
14559 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
14560 now. :)</p>
14561
14562       </div>
14563       <div class="tags">
14564
14565
14566         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>.
14567
14568
14569       </div>
14570     </div>
14571     <div class="padding"></div>
14572
14573     <div class="entry">
14574       <div class="title">
14575         <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>
14576       </div>
14577       <div class="date">
14578         29th March 2009
14579       </div>
14580       <div class="body">
14581         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
14582 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
14583 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
14584 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
14585 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
14586 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
14587
14588 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
14589 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
14590 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
14591 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
14592 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
14593 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
14594 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
14595 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
14596 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
14597 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
14598 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
14599 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
14600 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
14601
14602 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
14603 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
14604 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
14605 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
14606
14607 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
14608 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
14609
14610 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
14611 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
14612 new IETF work group?</p>
14613
14614       </div>
14615       <div class="tags">
14616
14617
14618         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>.
14619
14620
14621       </div>
14622     </div>
14623     <div class="padding"></div>
14624
14625     <div class="entry">
14626       <div class="title">
14627         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
14628       </div>
14629       <div class="date">
14630         15th February 2009
14631       </div>
14632       <div class="body">
14633         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
14634 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
14635 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
14636 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
14637 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
14638 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
14639 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
14640 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
14641 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
14642 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
14643 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
14644 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
14645
14646       </div>
14647       <div class="tags">
14648
14649
14650         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>.
14651
14652
14653       </div>
14654     </div>
14655     <div class="padding"></div>
14656
14657     <div class="entry">
14658       <div class="title">
14659         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_norsk_stavekontroll_med_st_tte_for_ord_med_bindestrek.html">Endelig norsk stavekontroll med støtte for ord med bindestrek</a>
14660       </div>
14661       <div class="date">
14662         26th December 2008
14663       </div>
14664       <div class="body">
14665         <p>Etter flere års mislykkede forsøk på å skrive om byggesystemet for
14666 <a href="http://no.speling.org/">den norske stavekontrollen for bokmål
14667 og nynorsk</a> til å ikke bruke bindestrek som ordskillemarkør, lyktes jeg
14668 endelig første juledag.  Bruken av bindestrek som ordskillemarkør har
14669 gjort det umulig å få med ord med bindestrek i
14670 stavekontrolldatagrunnlaget, slik at ord som e-post og CD-spiller ikke
14671 kunne godtas av stavekontrollen.  Hadde litt tid til overs å bruke på
14672 stavekontrollen, og satte meg ned med to kopier av byggsystemet og en
14673 liten testdatafil, og byttet ut - med = på utvalgte steder i
14674 byggsystemet og datafilen helt til jeg fikk samme resultat med det
14675 gamle og det nye byggsystemet.  Dette tror jeg var forsøk 4, der de
14676 foregående har feilet uten at jeg klarte å forstå hvorfor.  Det sier
14677 kanskje litt om kompleksiteten i det originale byggsystemet som Rune
14678 Kleveland laget i sin tid.</p>
14679
14680 <p>Etter å ha endret byggsystemet, var neste steg å importere ordene
14681 med bindestrek.  Vi har en rekke slike i databasene for
14682 <a href="http://tyge.sslug.dk/~korsvoll/nb.speling.org/htdocs/">bokmål</a>
14683 og
14684 <a href="http://tyge.sslug.dk/~korsvoll/nn.speling.org/htdocs/">nynorsk</a>
14685 for korrektur av datagrunnlaget for stavekontrollen, og etter importen
14686 skulle nå 10350 nye ord bli godkjent som korrekt stavede ord av
14687 stavekontrollen.</p>
14688
14689       </div>
14690       <div class="tags">
14691
14692
14693         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
14694
14695
14696       </div>
14697     </div>
14698     <div class="padding"></div>
14699
14700     <div class="entry">
14701       <div class="title">
14702         <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>
14703       </div>
14704       <div class="date">
14705          7th December 2008
14706       </div>
14707       <div class="body">
14708         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
14709 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
14710 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
14711 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
14712 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
14713 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
14714 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
14715 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
14716
14717 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
14718 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
14719 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
14720 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
14721 of these cards.</p>
14722
14723       </div>
14724       <div class="tags">
14725
14726
14727         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>.
14728
14729
14730       </div>
14731     </div>
14732     <div class="padding"></div>
14733
14734     <div class="entry">
14735       <div class="title">
14736         <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>
14737       </div>
14738       <div class="date">
14739         25th November 2008
14740       </div>
14741       <div class="body">
14742         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
14743 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
14744 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
14745 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
14746 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
14747 notes are available on
14748 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
14749 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
14750 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
14751 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
14752 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
14753 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
14754 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
14755 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
14756 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
14757
14758 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
14759 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
14760
14761       </div>
14762       <div class="tags">
14763
14764
14765         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>.
14766
14767
14768       </div>
14769     </div>
14770     <div class="padding"></div>
14771
14772     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian edu.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
14773     <div id="sidebar">
14774
14775
14776
14777 <h2>Archive</h2>
14778 <ul>
14779
14780 <li>2016
14781 <ul>
14782
14783 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
14784
14785 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
14786
14787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
14788
14789 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
14790
14791 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (1)</a></li>
14792
14793 </ul></li>
14794
14795 <li>2015
14796 <ul>
14797
14798 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
14799
14800 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
14801
14802 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
14803
14804 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
14805
14806 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
14807
14808 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
14809
14810 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
14811
14812 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
14813
14814 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
14815
14816 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
14817
14818 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
14819
14820 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14821
14822 </ul></li>
14823
14824 <li>2014
14825 <ul>
14826
14827 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
14828
14829 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
14830
14831 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
14832
14833 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
14834
14835 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
14836
14837 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14838
14839 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
14840
14841 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
14842
14843 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
14844
14845 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
14846
14847 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14848
14849 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
14850
14851 </ul></li>
14852
14853 <li>2013
14854 <ul>
14855
14856 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
14857
14858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
14859
14860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
14861
14862 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
14863
14864 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14865
14866 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
14867
14868 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
14869
14870 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
14871
14872 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
14873
14874 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
14875
14876 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
14877
14878 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14879
14880 </ul></li>
14881
14882 <li>2012
14883 <ul>
14884
14885 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
14886
14887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
14888
14889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
14890
14891 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
14892
14893 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
14894
14895 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
14896
14897 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
14898
14899 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14900
14901 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
14902
14903 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
14904
14905 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
14906
14907 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
14908
14909 </ul></li>
14910
14911 <li>2011
14912 <ul>
14913
14914 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
14915
14916 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
14917
14918 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
14919
14920 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
14921
14922 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
14923
14924 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14925
14926 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
14927
14928 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14929
14930 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
14931
14932 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14933
14934 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14935
14936 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
14937
14938 </ul></li>
14939
14940 <li>2010
14941 <ul>
14942
14943 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
14944
14945 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
14946
14947 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
14948
14949 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
14950
14951 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14952
14953 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
14954
14955 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
14956
14957 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
14958
14959 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
14960
14961 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
14962
14963 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
14964
14965 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
14966
14967 </ul></li>
14968
14969 <li>2009
14970 <ul>
14971
14972 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
14973
14974 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
14975
14976 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
14977
14978 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
14979
14980 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14981
14982 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
14983
14984 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
14985
14986 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
14987
14988 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
14989
14990 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14991
14992 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14993
14994 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14995
14996 </ul></li>
14997
14998 <li>2008
14999 <ul>
15000
15001 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
15002
15003 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
15004
15005 </ul></li>
15006
15007 </ul>
15008
15009
15010
15011 <h2>Tags</h2>
15012 <ul>
15013
15014  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
15015
15016  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
15017
15018  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
15019
15020  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
15021
15022  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
15023
15024  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
15025
15026  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
15027
15028  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
15029
15030  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (125)</a></li>
15031
15032  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (155)</a></li>
15033
15034  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
15035
15036  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
15037
15038  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (21)</a></li>
15039
15040  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
15041
15042  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (312)</a></li>
15043
15044  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
15045
15046  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
15047
15048  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (26)</a></li>
15049
15050  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
15051
15052  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
15053
15054  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
15055
15056  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
15057
15058  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (11)</a></li>
15059
15060  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
15061
15062  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
15063
15064  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
15065
15066  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
15067
15068  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
15069
15070  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
15071
15072  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (37)</a></li>
15073
15074  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (7)</a></li>
15075
15076  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (275)</a></li>
15077
15078  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (179)</a></li>
15079
15080  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (25)</a></li>
15081
15082  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
15083
15084  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (59)</a></li>
15085
15086  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
15087
15088  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
15089
15090  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
15091
15092  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
15093
15094  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
15095
15096  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
15097
15098  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
15099
15100  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
15101
15102  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
15103
15104  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (46)</a></li>
15105
15106  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
15107
15108  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
15109
15110  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (49)</a></li>
15111
15112  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (4)</a></li>
15113
15114  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
15115
15116  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
15117
15118  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
15119
15120  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
15121
15122  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
15123
15124  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (55)</a></li>
15125
15126  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
15127
15128  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
15129
15130 </ul>
15131
15132
15133     </div>
15134     <p style="text-align: right">
15135  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
15136 </p>
15137
15138   </body>
15139 </html>