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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "english".
</h3>
25 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to
</a>
31 Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular. The most
32 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
33 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
34 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
35 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue. I am sure it
36 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
37 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
38 too. The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous. To have
39 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
41 "
<a href=
"https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
42 decision shouldn't belong to a robot
</a>", where he suggested this
43 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
47 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
48 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
49 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
50 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
51 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
52 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
53 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
54 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
55 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
56 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
57 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
59 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
60 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
61 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
65 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
66 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
67 both the government and others use of drones. For such control to be
68 effective, everyone must be able to do it. What should such beacon
69 contain? At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
70 location. Probably also the origin and target position of the current
71 flight. And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
72 the drone in a central database tracking their movement. Robots
73 should not have privacy. It is people who need privacy.</p>
79 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot
">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>.
84 <div class="padding
"></div>
88 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html
">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
94 <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
95 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml
">our
96 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
97 Oslo</a>. The workshop to help people get started will take place
98 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
99 people joining forces to make this happen. We have
100 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson
">9
101 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
102 a connected mesh spread across Oslo. If this sound interesting to
103 you, please join us at the workshop. If you are too impatient to wait
104 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
105 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%
23nuug
">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
112 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network
">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
117 <div class="padding
"></div>
121 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html
">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
127 <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
128 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
129 bought arrived on Friday. Here are my notes on how to set up the
130 MR3040 as a mesh node using
131 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/
">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
133 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
134 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040
">TL-MR3040</a>,
136 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin
">the
137 recommended firmware image</a>
138 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
139 uploaded it into the original web interface. The flashing went fine,
140 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port. After
141 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
142 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
144 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
145 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research
">Wireless
146 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
147 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
148 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config
">using
149 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>. A small snag was the fact that the
150 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
151 should. The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
152 dependency crc16 was not already loaded. I
153 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/
14452">reported the bug</a> to
154 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon. But the problem
155 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
156 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
158 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/. I did not bridge
159 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
160 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
161 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
164 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
168 config interface 'loopback'
170 option proto 'static'
171 option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
172 option netmask '255.0.0.0'
174 config globals 'globals'
175 option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
177 config interface 'lan'
181 option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
182 option netmask '255.255.255.0'
183 option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
184 option ip6assign '60'
186 config interface 'mesh'
187 option ifname 'adhoc0'
189 option proto 'batadv'
193 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
196 config wifi-device 'radio0'
197 option type 'mac80211'
200 option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
202 list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
203 list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
204 list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
205 list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
208 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
209 option device 'radio0'
210 option ifname 'adhoc0'
211 option network 'mesh'
212 option encryption 'none'
214 option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
215 option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
217 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
221 option interfaces 'adhoc0'
222 option 'aggregated_ogms'
223 option 'ap_isolation'
225 option 'fragmentation'
226 option 'gw_bandwidth'
228 option 'gw_sel_class'
230 option 'orig_interval'
232 option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
233 option 'distributed_arp_table'
234 option 'network_coding'
237 # yet another batX instance
238 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
239 # option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
242 <p>The mesh node is now operational. I have yet to test its range,
243 but I hope it is good. I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
244 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
250 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network
">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
255 <div class="padding
"></div>
259 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html
">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
265 <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
266 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=
147">to get rid of huge
267 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
268 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
269 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
272 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
275 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
276 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
277 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
278 # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
279 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6
280 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
281 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
282 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
283 # used as a drop-in replacement.
285 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
286 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
289 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
290 script was
137 lines, and the above is just
15 lines, most of it meta
293 <p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
294 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
299 # Define LSB log_* functions.
300 # Depend on lsb-base (
>=
3.2-
14) to ensure that this file is present
301 # and status_of_proc is working.
302 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
305 # Function that starts the daemon/service
311 #
0 if daemon has been started
312 #
1 if daemon was already running
313 #
2 if daemon could not be started
314 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test
> /dev/null \
316 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
319 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
320 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
321 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
325 # Function that stops the daemon/service
330 #
0 if daemon has been stopped
331 #
1 if daemon was already stopped
332 #
2 if daemon could not be stopped
333 # other if a failure occurred
334 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/
30/KILL/
5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
336 [ "$RETVAL" =
2 ] && return
2
337 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
338 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
339 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
340 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
341 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
342 # sleep for some time.
343 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=
0/
30/KILL/
5 --exec $DAEMON
344 [ "$?" =
2 ] && return
2
345 # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
351 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
355 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
356 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
357 # then implement that here.
359 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal
1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
364 scriptbasename="$(basename $
1)"
365 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
366 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
374 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
375 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
377 # Exit if the package is not installed
378 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit
0
380 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
381 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
383 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
388 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
391 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
392 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
396 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
399 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
400 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
404 status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit
0 || exit $?
406 #reload|force-reload)
408 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
409 # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
411 #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
415 restart|force-reload)
417 # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
418 # 'force-reload' alias
420 log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
427 1) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Old process is still running
428 *) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Failed to start
438 echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}"
>&
2
446 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
447 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
448 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
449 optimize it nor make it more robust either.
</p>
451 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
452 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
453 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
454 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
455 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.
</p>
461 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
466 <div class=
"padding"></div>
470 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian
</a>
476 <p><a href=
"http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol
</a> for
477 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
478 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
479 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
480 missing in Debian. The
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
481 for a package
</a> was from
2012-
04-
10 with no progress since
482 2013-
04-
01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
483 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
484 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
485 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
486 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
487 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.
</p>
489 <p>The source is now available from
490 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary
</a>.
</p>
496 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
501 <div class=
"padding"></div>
505 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images
</a>
512 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap
</a>
513 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
514 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
515 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
516 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
517 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi
</a>, as part
518 of a plan to simplify the build system for
519 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
520 project
</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
521 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
522 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
525 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
526 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
527 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
528 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
529 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
530 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
531 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi
</a>. First, the
532 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler
</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
533 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
534 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
535 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
536 two new options
<tt>--bootsize size
</tt> and
<tt>--boottype
537 fstype
</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
538 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
539 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a
<tt>--variant
540 variant
</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
541 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
542 <tt>--no-extlinux
</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
543 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
544 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
545 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
547 <a href=
"http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
548 upstream project page
</a>.
</p>
550 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
551 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
552 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
557 set -e # Exit on first error
560 cat
<<EOF
> etc/apt/sources.list
561 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
563 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
564 # install a kernel somewhere too.
565 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
566 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
567 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
568 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
569 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
570 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
573 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
574 to build the image:
</p>
577 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
580 --distribution jessie \
581 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
590 --root-password raspberry \
591 --hostname raspberrypi \
592 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
593 --customize `pwd`/customize \
597 --package ca-certificates \
602 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
603 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
604 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
605 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
606 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
607 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
608 using a non-free binary blob.
</p>
610 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
611 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
612 build dependency list.
</p>
614 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
615 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
616 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
617 than
<a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian
</a> based images.
</p>
623 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>.
628 <div class=
"padding"></div>
632 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node
</a>
638 <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
639 <a href=
"http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
640 batman-adv mesh technology
</a>. I want to gain some experience to see
641 if it will fit
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
642 Freedombox project
</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
643 mesh network around the park where I live. Batman-adv is a layer
2
644 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
645 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.
</p>
647 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
648 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv. So
649 instead, I started playing with a
650 <a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi
</a>, and tried to
651 get it working as a mesh node. My idea is to use it to create a mesh
652 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
653 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
654 network. This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
655 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
656 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh. This in turn is useful for
657 Android phones using
<a href=
"http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
658 Project
</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
659 phone and message each other for free. The reason is that Android
660 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
661 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted. But if
662 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
663 every client on the local network.
</p>
665 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
666 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node
</a>
668 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node
</a>
669 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image. I'm using Debian Jessie (and
670 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
671 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
672 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now. Also, as
673 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
674 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit. I hope
675 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
678 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
679 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:
</p>
682 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
683 https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
684 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node
> build.log
2>&
1
685 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=
1M
689 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
690 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node. At least it does for
691 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
692 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
693 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
694 earlier blog post about this mesh testing
</a>.
</p>
696 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either. I bought
697 everything over the counter in shops nearby. If I had ordered online
698 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:
</p>
702 <tr><th>Supplier
</th><th>Model
</th><th>NOK
</th></tr>
703 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet
</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B
</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
704 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet
</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case
</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
705 <tr><td>Lefdal
</td><td>Jensen Air:Link
25150</td><td>295.-
</td></tr>
706 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson
</td><td>Kingston
16 GB SD card
</td><td>199.-
</td></tr>
707 <tr><td>Total cost
</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
711 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
712 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the
1th
713 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
714 play-node I use to develop the image building script. And some times
715 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it. I look forward
716 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
717 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)
</p>
723 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
728 <div class=
"padding"></div>
732 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github
</a>
738 <p>Back in
2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
739 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot
</a>
740 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
741 web page. Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
742 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github. If
743 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
744 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
745 libspykee-perl github repository
</a>.
</p>
751 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
756 <div class=
"padding"></div>
760 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway
</a>
766 <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
767 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
770 <p>Via
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
771 Project News for
2013-
10-
14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
772 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
773 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
774 to match
<a href=
"http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
775 earmarked
</a> for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
776 hope you will to. :)
</p>
778 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
779 create
<a href=
"https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
780 documentaries about the excessive spying
</a> on every Internet user that
781 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I've already
782 donated. Are you next?
</p>
784 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
785 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
786 statement under the heading
787 <a href=
"http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
788 Access
</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
789 Norwegian government. So far
499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
796 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
801 <div class=
"padding"></div>
805 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania
</a>
811 <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
812 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
813 areas, depending on the radio technology used. Normal wifi equipment
814 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
815 successful examples like
816 <a href=
"http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk
</a> and
817 <a href=
"http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network
</a>
819 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
820 for a large list
</a>) around the globe. To give you an idea how it
821 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
822 can be seen from their
823 <a href=
"http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
824 updated node graph and map
</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
825 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
826 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
827 and that is the main topic of this blog post.
</p>
829 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
830 to do it as part of my involvement with the
<a
831 href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation
</a> community, and
832 my recent involvement in
833 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project
</a>
834 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
835 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
836 when possible, given that most communication between people are
837 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
838 communication patterns). It also allow people to communicate without
839 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
840 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
841 important over the years.
</p>
843 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
844 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
845 <a href=
"http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet
</a> at Husmania. They seem to
846 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
847 <a href=
"http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
848 Freifunk project
</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
849 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
850 <a href=
"http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx
</a>. Unfortunately the wiki
851 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
852 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
853 the new project. A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
854 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks. I
855 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
856 speakers about this talk (from
857 <a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube
</a>):
</p>
859 <p><iframe width=
"420" height=
"315" src=
"https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe></p>
861 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
862 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
863 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
864 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
865 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
866 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
867 batman-adv for now. It sure help me to know that the very cool
868 <a href=
"http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia
</a>
869 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
870 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
871 less industrialized communities. Check out this cool video presenting
873 <a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube
</a>):
</p>
875 <p><iframe width=
"560" height=
"315" src=
"https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe></p>
877 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
878 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
879 mesh network
</a> there are around
70 competing schemes for routing
880 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
881 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
882 based community mesh networks.
</p>
884 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer
2
885 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
886 network. One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
887 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
888 computer. The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
889 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up. A
890 <a href=
"http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
891 introduction
</a> is available from the Open Mesh project. These are
892 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:
</p>
895 <tr><th>Setting
</th><th>Value
</th></tr>
896 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module
</td><td>batman-adv
</td></tr>
897 <tr><td>ESSID
</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet
</td></tr>
898 <td>Channel / Frequency
</td><td>11 /
2462</td></tr>
899 <td>Cell ID
</td><td>02:BA:
00:
00:
00:
01</td>
902 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
903 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers. (See a nice post from
905 "
<a href=
"http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
906 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!
</a>
907 for details.) When these settings are activated and you have some
908 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
909 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
910 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)
</p>
912 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
913 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
914 firmware supporting batman-adv. If anyone know how to use that old
915 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.
</p>
917 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
918 us on IRC, either channel
919 <a href=
"irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace
</a>
920 or
<a href=
"irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug
</a> on
921 irc.freenode.net.
</p>
923 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
924 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
925 and Innovation called
926 <a href=
"http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
927 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks
</a> and elsewhere
928 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
929 Grünerløkka in Oslo. So mesh networks are also interesting for
930 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
931 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
932 know have closed down the experiment. Perhaps Telenor or others would
933 be interested in a cooperation?
</p>
935 <p><strong>Update
2013-
10-
12</strong>: I was just
936 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
937 by the Serval project developers
</a> that they no longer use
938 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
945 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
950 <div class=
"padding"></div>
954 <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>
960 <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
961 Salvador had published a
962 <a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
963 Youtube
</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
964 Skolelinux profile. This is the profile intended for use at home or
965 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
966 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
967 in other word a single user machine). The result is
11 minutes long,
968 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
969 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
970 showing the
<a href=
"http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body
3D model
971 of the human body
</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
972 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
973 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
974 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
975 computers without hard drives by installing one central
976 <a href=
"http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server
</a>.
</p>
978 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:
</p>
980 <iframe width=
"420" height=
"315" src=
"http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe>
982 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux? Please let
989 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>.
994 <div class=
"padding"></div>
998 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!
</a>
1004 <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
1005 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team. The
1006 complete announcement text can be found at
1007 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
1008 section
</a>, translated to several languages. Please check it out.
</p>
1010 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon. One
1011 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
1012 partition is too small. A workaround is to extend the partition (use
1013 lvresize + resize2fs in tty
2 while installing).
</p>
1019 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>.
1024 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1028 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning
</a>
1034 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
1035 project
</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
1036 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
1037 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.
</p>
1041 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
1042 2,
5 minute marketing film
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1044 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
1045 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1047 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
1048 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
1049 Web
2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting
2010</a>
1052 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem
2011
1053 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1055 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
1056 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1058 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
1059 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
1060 York City in
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1062 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
1063 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in
2012</a>
1066 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
1067 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat,
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1069 <li><a href=
"https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
1070 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem
2013</a> (FOSDEM)
</li>
1072 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
1073 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
1074 2013</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1078 <p>A larger list is available from
1079 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
1080 Freedombox Wiki
</a>.
</p>
1082 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
1083 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
1084 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
1085 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
1086 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
1087 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
1088 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
1089 us on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
1090 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)
</a> and
1091 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1092 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
1098 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
1103 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1107 <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>
1113 <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1114 today. This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:
</p>
1119 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta
2 for
1120 short) of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1121 Skolelinux
</a> based on Debian Wheezy!
</p>
1123 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
1124 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
1125 weekend. We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
1126 if you find something, please notify us immediately!
</p>
1128 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
1129 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)
</p>
1131 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~b2
1132 compared to beta1:
</p>
1136 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
1137 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.
</li>
1138 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
1139 understand ical/dav sources.
</li>
1140 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
1142 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.
</li>
1143 <li>Updates for chromium (
29.0.1547.57-
1~deb7u1), imagemagick
1144 (
6.7.7.10-
5+deb7u2), php5 (
5.4.4-
14+deb7u4), libmodplug
1145 (
0.8.8.4-
3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (
4.0.2-
6+deb7u2), linux-image
1146 (
3.2.0-
4-
486_3.2
.46-
1+deb7u1).
</li>
1150 <p>Where to get it:
</p>
1152 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
1155 <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>
1156 <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>
1157 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .
</li>
1160 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f
</p>
1162 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
1164 <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>
1165 <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>
1166 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .
</li>
1169 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e
</p>
1171 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
1172 debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
1173 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
1174 as the other isos.
</p>
1176 <p>How to report bugs
</p>
1178 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
1179 <br><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
1182 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</p>
1184 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
1185 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1186 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
1187 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1188 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1189 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1190 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1191 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1192 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1193 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1194 services. The desktop contains more than
60 educational software
1195 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1196 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
1198 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1199 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1200 Squeeze release.
</p>
1202 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases
</p>
1204 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1205 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1206 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
1207 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (
1) Keep
1208 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (
2)
1209 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
1210 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
1211 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
1212 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
1224 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>.
1229 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1233 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi
</a>
1239 <p>I was introduced to the
1240 <a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project
</a>
1241 in
2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
1242 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
1243 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
1244 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
1245 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
1246 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
1247 control over their own basic infrastructure.
</p>
1249 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
1250 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
1251 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
1252 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
1253 actually started working on the project a while back.
</p>
1255 <p>The
<a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
1256 Debian initiative
</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
1257 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
1258 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
1259 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
1260 <a href=
"http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug
</a>,
1261 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
1262 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
1263 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
1264 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker
</a>
1265 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
1266 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
1267 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
1268 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
1269 missing in Debian).
</p>
1271 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
1273 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>),
1274 and a administrative web interface
1275 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth
</a> + exmachina +
1276 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
1277 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>
1278 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
1279 client (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat
</a>)
1280 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
1281 (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd
</a>). The
1282 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
1283 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
1284 this is really working yet, see
1285 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
1286 project TODO
</a> for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
1287 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
1288 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
1289 users. I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
1290 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
1291 with lots of half baked features.
</p>
1293 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
1294 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
1297 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64
</strong></p>
1301 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.
</li>
1302 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.
</li>
1303 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
1304 to the Debian installer:
<p>
1305 <pre>url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat
</a></pre></li>
1307 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
1310 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
1311 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.
</li>
1315 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian
</strong></p>
1319 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.
</li>
1320 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.
</li>
1321 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:
</p>
1323 deb
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox
</a> wheezy main
1325 <li><p>Run this as root:
</p>
1327 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
1330 apt-get install freedombox-setup
1331 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
1333 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.
</li>
1337 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
1338 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
1339 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
1340 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
1341 short "
<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy
</tt>" away. :)</p>
1343 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
1344 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
1345 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
1346 disable
</tt>" as root.</p>
1348 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
1349 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
1350 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:
6667/%
23freedombox
">#freedombox</a> on
1351 irc.debian.org and the
1352 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
">project
1353 mailing list</a>.</p>
1355 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
1356 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
1357 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
1358 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
1359 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is 'admin' and the
1360 default password is 'secret'.</p>
1366 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox
">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
1371 <div class="padding
"></div>
1375 <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>
1381 <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1382 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
1383 integration fixes . This is the release announcement:</p>
1385 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
1387 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1388 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
1390 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
1392 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
1393 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1394 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1395 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1396 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1397 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1398 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1399 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
1400 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1401 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1402 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1404 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
1405 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
1406 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1407 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
1409 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
1410 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
1413 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1414 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1415 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
1416 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (
1) Keep
1417 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
1418 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
1419 the mailing list
</a>. (
2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
1420 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
1421 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
1422 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
1423 CIFS access to their home directory.
</p>
1425 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
1429 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
1430 work also without a attached tty.
</li>
1431 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
1432 make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
1433 tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
1434 has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
1439 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
1443 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
1444 needed for desktop=xfce installations.
</li>
1445 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
1446 stick ISO image.
</li>
1447 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).
</li>
1448 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.
</li>
1449 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
1450 during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
1451 cope with this.
</li>
1452 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².
</li>
1453 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
1454 empty password hashes.
</li>
1455 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
1456 smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
1457 from joining the Samba domain.
</li>
1461 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
1465 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
1466 not use the http proxy as it should.
</li>
1467 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
1468 (using the KDE configuration).
</li>
1472 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
1474 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
1478 <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>
1480 <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>
1482 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
</li>
1486 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
1487 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2
</p>
1489 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
</p>
1493 <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>
1494 <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>
1495 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .
</li>
1499 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
1500 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119
</p>
1503 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
1505 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a>
1511 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>.
1516 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1520 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel
180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware
</a>
1526 <p>Earlier, I reported about
1527 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
1528 problems using an Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB disk
</a>. Friday I was
1529 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
1530 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
1531 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
1532 currently on the disk.
</p>
1534 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
1535 <a href=
"https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0
.4.iso
</a>
1536 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
1537 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
1538 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
1539 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
1540 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
1541 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
1542 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
1543 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
1544 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
1545 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
1546 the broken disks.
</p>
1552 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1557 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1561 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture
</a>
1567 <p>It has been a while since my last update. Since last summer, I
1568 have worked on a Norwegian
1569 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
1570 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1571 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
1572 law. Yesterday, I finally broken the
90% mark, when counting the
1573 number of strings to translate. Due to real life constraints, I have
1574 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
1575 I found time to work on it again. Still lots of work left, but the
1576 first draft is nearing completion. I created a graph to show the
1577 progress of the translation:
</p>
1579 <p><img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
1581 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
1582 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
1583 drawings need to be fixed. There are probably also some index entries
1584 missing that need to be added. This can be done by comparing the
1585 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
1586 English docbook version with the paper version. Last, the colophon
1587 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
1588 done. I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
1589 of the index pages. All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
1590 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
1591 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.
</p>
1593 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
1594 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
1595 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
1596 translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
1597 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
1598 around? There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
1599 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
1600 project files currently available from
1601 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
1603 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
1605 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
1607 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
1608 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
1609 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
1610 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
1616 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
1621 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1625 <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>
1631 <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1632 today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
1634 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~b0 released
1635 2013-
07-
27</strong></p>
1637 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1638 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
1640 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
1642 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
1643 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1644 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1645 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1646 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1647 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1648 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1649 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
1650 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1651 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1652 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1654 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
1655 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
1656 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1657 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
1659 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1660 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1661 Squeeze release.
</p>
1663 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1664 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1667 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
1671 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
1672 for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.
</li>
1673 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
1674 packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
1675 by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
1676 installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
1677 and libpam-mklocaluser.
</li>
1678 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).
</li>
1679 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).
</li>
1680 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
1685 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
1689 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
1690 desktop=gnome installations.
</li>
1691 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
1693 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
1694 setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.
</li>
1695 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
1696 install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
1697 with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.
</li>
1698 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
1699 exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
1700 name setting at run time to work again.
</li>
1701 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
1702 fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
1703 updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.
</li>
1704 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
1705 (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.
</li>
1706 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.
</li>
1710 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
1714 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.
</li>
1715 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
1716 not use the http proxy as it should.
</li>
1717 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.
</li>
1721 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
1723 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
1727 <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>
1729 <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>
1731 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .
</li>
1735 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
1736 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f
</p>
1738 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
</p>
1742 <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>
1743 <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>
1744 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .
</li>
1748 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
1749 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733
</p>
1752 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
1754 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a>
1760 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>.
1765 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1769 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken
180 GB SSD disk
</a>
1775 <p>Today I switched to
1776 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
1777 new laptop
</a>. I've previously written about the problems I had with
1778 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
1779 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
1780 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware
</a> that did not handle
1781 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
1782 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
1783 identical
180 GB disks they decided to send me a
256 GB Samsung SSD
1784 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
1785 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
1786 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
1787 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
1788 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
1789 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
1790 station from now on.
</p>
1792 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
1793 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
1794 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
1795 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
1796 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
1797 package
<tt>ssd-setup
</tt> to handle this tuning. The
1798 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
1799 for the ssd-setup package
</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
1800 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
1801 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
1802 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
1803 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.
</p>
1805 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
1806 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
1807 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
1808 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
1809 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
1810 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
1811 parameters are tuned:
</p>
1815 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
1816 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)
</li>
1818 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
1819 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
1820 0 to
1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.
</li>
1822 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
1825 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
1828 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.
</li>
1830 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
1833 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to
1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
1834 to
50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.
</li>
1838 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
1839 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
1840 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
1841 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
1842 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
1843 from getting the data on the disk (see
1844 <a href=
"http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #
538</a> for an explanation why).
1845 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
1846 right thing to do.
</p>
1848 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
1849 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
1850 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.
</p>
1852 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
1853 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
1854 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
1855 instead of during my work.
</p>
1857 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
1858 this is already done by Debian Edu.
</p>
1860 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
1861 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
1862 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.
</p>
1864 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
1867 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
1868 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
1869 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
1870 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
1871 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
1872 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
1879 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1884 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1888 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes
</a>
1894 <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
1895 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
1896 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk
</a>, which
1897 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
1898 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
1899 <a href=
"http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo
</a>, and they wanted to send a
1900 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
1901 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.
</p>
1903 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
1904 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
1905 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
1906 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
1907 die after
4-
7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
1908 going past
10%,
20%,
40% and even past
50%. But around
60%, the disk
1909 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
1910 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
1911 lock up when I download a new
1912 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> ISO or
1913 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
1914 the next proposal from Lenovo.
</p>
1916 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB,
1917 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
1918 LF1i,
29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-
300, LBA
351,
651,
888, LI P/N:
0C38722,
1919 Pb-free
2LI, LC P/N:
16-
200366, WWN:
55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
1920 SSDSC2BW180A3L
2.5"
6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
1921 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
1923 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB,
1924 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-
302, FW:
1925 LF1i,
22APR2013, PBA: G39779-
300, LBA
351,
651,
888, LI P/N:
0C38722,
1926 Pb-free
2LI, LC P/N:
16-
200366, WWN:
55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
1927 SSDSC2BW180A3L
2.5"
6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
1928 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
1930 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
1931 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
1932 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
1933 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
1940 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1945 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1949 <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>
1955 <p>The upcoming Saturday,
2013-
07-
13, we are organising a combined
1956 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
1957 party in Oslo. It is organised by
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the
1958 member assosiation NUUG
</a> and
1959 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1960 project
</a> together with
<a href=
"http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
1963 <p>It starts
10:
00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
1964 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
1965 hand limited space, and only room for
30 people. Please put your name
1966 on
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
1967 wiki page
</a> if you plan to join us.
</p>
1973 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>.
1978 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1982 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?
</a>
1988 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
1989 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
1990 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41
</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
1991 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
1992 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
1994 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230
</a>
1995 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
1996 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
1997 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
2000 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2001 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2002 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
2003 feature at
<a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
2004 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2005 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
2006 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
2007 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
2008 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.
</p>
2010 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
2011 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
2012 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
2013 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
2014 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
2015 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
2016 needed a new laptop now. :)
</p>
2018 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
2019 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.
</p>
2021 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The
180 GB SSD disk
2022 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
2023 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
2024 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
2025 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
2026 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
2027 reported to Debian as
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
2028 report #
691427 2012-
10-
25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
2029 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
2030 kernel developers as
2031 <a href=
"https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
2032 report #
51861 2012-
12-
20</a> (Intel SSD
520 stops working under load
2033 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
2034 Lenovo forums, both for
2035 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
2036 2012-
11-
10</a> and for
2037 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
2038 03-
20-
2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
2039 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
2040 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
2041 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
2043 <a href=
"https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
2044 available
</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
2045 minutes by writing to a file.
</p>
2047 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
2048 contacting PCHELP Norway (request
01D1FDP) which handle support
2049 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
2050 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
2051 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
2052 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
2059 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2064 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2068 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230
</a>
2074 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
2075 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
2076 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
2077 picking a
<a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
2078 X230
</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
2079 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
2080 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
2081 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
2082 with an expencive door stop.
</p>
2084 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2085 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2086 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
2087 feature at
<ahref=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
2088 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2089 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
2090 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.
</p>
2092 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
2093 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
2094 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
2095 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
2096 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
2097 new laptop now. :)
</p>
2099 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.
</p>
2105 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2110 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2114 <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>
2120 <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2121 today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
2123 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
2124 2013-
07-
03</strong></p>
2126 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2127 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
2129 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
2131 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2132 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2133 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2134 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2135 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2136 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2137 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2138 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2139 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2140 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2141 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2143 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2144 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
2145 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2146 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
2148 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2149 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2150 Squeeze release.
</p>
2152 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
2154 <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.
</li>
2155 <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
2156 submenu. It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
2157 brings KDE in line with the others.
</li>
2158 <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
2159 they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
2160 menu now that menu-xdg was removed.
</li>
2161 <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
2162 multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
2163 X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
2165 <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
2166 are too few to make the package useful.
</li>
2168 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
2170 <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
2171 <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.
</li>
2172 <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
2173 up for some language options.
</li>
2174 <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.
</li>
2175 <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.
</li>
2176 <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
2177 d-i is doing it.
</li>
2178 <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
2179 debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.
</li>
2180 <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
2181 script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
2182 Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.
</li>
2183 <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
2184 installation, to work properly in Wheezy.
</li>
2185 <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).
</li>
2186 <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
2187 and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.
</li>
2188 <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
2189 work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.
</li>
2191 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
2193 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2194 available yet (
698840).
</li>
2195 <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.
</li>
2197 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
2199 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
2201 <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>
2202 <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>
2203 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .
</li>
2206 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
2207 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8
</p>
2209 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
</p>
2211 <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>
2212 <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>
2213 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .
</li>
2216 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
2217 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721
</p>
2219 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
2221 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
2227 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>.
2232 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2236 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram
0.4)
</a>
2242 <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
2243 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
2244 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
2245 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
2246 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
2247 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version
0.4 of the
2248 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package
</a>
2249 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
2250 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
2251 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
2252 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:
</p>
2255 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2256 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
2257 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
2258 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
2259 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
2260 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
2263 Preconfiguring packages ...
2264 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
2265 (Reading database ...
259727 files and directories currently installed.)
2266 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
2267 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (
0.28+squeeze1) ...
2271 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
2272 printed instead:
</p>
2275 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2276 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
2280 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
2281 me some time when setting up new machines. :)
</p>
2283 <p>So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
2284 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
2285 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
2286 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
2287 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
2288 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
2289 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
2290 <tt>apt-get install
</tt>. The end result is a slightly better working
2293 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
2294 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
2295 finally fix
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
2296 #
655507</a>. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
2297 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
2298 from the nearby Debian mirror.
</p>
2304 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
2309 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2313 <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>
2319 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2320 Skolelinux
</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
2321 which check that services are running, working, and return the
2322 expected results. It runs automatically just after the first boot on
2323 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
2324 installations (using non-test ISOs). It test that the LDAP service is
2325 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
2326 online resizable, etc, etc. And it check that the PXE service is
2327 configured, which is the topic of this post.
</p>
2329 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
2330 Edu Wheezy release. These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
2331 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
2332 happen all the needed packages need to be on them. Thanks to our test
2333 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
2334 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
2335 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
2336 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
2337 working packages to get it working. And the packages changed name
2338 from debian-installer-
6.0-netboot-$arch to
2339 debian-installer-
7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
2340 packages during installation. Without our test suite, I suspect we
2341 would never have discovered this before release. Now it is fixed
2342 right after we got the ISOs operational.
</p>
2344 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
2345 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
2346 test suite using
<tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install
</tt> and see if
2347 any errors are detected. This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
2350 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
2352 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
2353 irc.debian.org
</a> and the
2354 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@
</a> mailing
2361 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>.
2366 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2370 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu
</a>
2376 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2377 Skolelinux
</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
2378 globe. And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
2379 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
2380 #debian-edu
</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
2381 worked. We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
2382 help us with translations. And today I managed to get an interview
2383 with him, to learn more about him.
</p>
2385 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2387 <p>I'm a
25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
2388 which is also my country of origin. Back in
2009, at a New Year's Eve
2389 party, I had a very nice
<strike>beer
</strike> discussion with a
2390 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
2391 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
2392 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
2393 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
2394 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
2397 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
2398 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
2399 activities. For the last
13 months, I have been the Technical Director
2400 of
<a href=
"http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata
</a>, which is a free
2401 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
2402 the only one we have in our country.
</p>
2404 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2405 project?
</strong></p>
2407 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
2408 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
2409 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
2410 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
2411 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
2412 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
2413 ways to contribute.
</p>
2415 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
2416 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
2417 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
2418 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
2419 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
2420 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
2421 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
2422 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
2423 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
2424 have a pretty consistent starting point.
</p>
2426 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2429 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
2430 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
2431 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
2432 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
2433 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
2434 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
2435 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
2436 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.
</p>
2438 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
2439 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
2440 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
2441 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
2442 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
2445 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2448 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
2449 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
2450 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
2451 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story. I'd like to see
2452 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
2453 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
2454 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
2455 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
2456 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!
</p>
2458 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
2459 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
2460 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
2463 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2465 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
2466 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
2467 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
2468 Enlightenment project a lot!),
2469 <a href=
"http://www.claws-mail.org/">Claws Mail
</a> due to its ease of
2470 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
2471 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift
</a>, which helps me
2472 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
2473 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!
</p>
2475 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2476 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2478 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
2479 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
2484 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software
</li>
2486 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
2487 experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
2488 of teenagers more?
</li>
2490 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
2491 be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
2492 other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
2495 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
2496 lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
2497 person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)
</li>
2501 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
2502 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
2503 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
2504 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
2505 very hard to convert against their will.
</p>
2511 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>.
2516 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2520 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter
</a>
2526 <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
2527 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2528 project
</a> and
<a href=
"http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
2529 project
</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
2530 effort between the projects. One person with a foot in both camps is
2531 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.
</p>
2533 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2535 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
2536 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
2537 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)
</p>
2539 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
2540 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
2543 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2544 project?
</strong></p>
2546 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
2547 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
2548 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in
2005 in
2549 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
2550 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
2551 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
2552 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
2553 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
2554 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
2555 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
2556 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
2557 we'll get there one day.
</p>
2559 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2562 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
2563 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
2564 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
2565 very high quality work.
</p>
2567 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
2568 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
2569 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
2570 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
2571 community members and commercial suppliers to support.
</p>
2573 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2576 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
2577 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
2578 what I originally rambled on about)
</p>
2580 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
2581 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
2582 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
2583 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
2584 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
2585 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
2586 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
2587 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
2588 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
2591 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
2592 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
2593 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
2594 educational institutions spend on
3rd party solutions that they don't
2595 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
2596 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
2599 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2601 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows
7. I was
2602 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
2603 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
2604 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
2605 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)
</p>
2607 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
2608 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
2609 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
2610 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
2611 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
2612 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
2613 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
2616 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
2617 using Norton Commander in the early
90's and it stuck (I think the
2618 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
2621 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2622 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2624 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
2625 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
2626 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
2629 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
2630 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
2631 advantage of that.
</p>
2633 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
2634 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
2635 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
2636 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
2637 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
2638 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
2639 best solution for them.
</p>
2641 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
2642 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
2643 make a decision that would work for them.
</p>
2649 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>.
2654 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2658 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video
</a>
2664 <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
2665 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
2666 or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
2667 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
2668 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
2669 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
2670 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
2671 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
2672 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
2673 i915 driver used by the
2674 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2675 EasyNote LV
</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.
</p>
2677 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
2678 i915.invert_brightness=
1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
2679 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=
1
2680 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
2681 can be done by running these commands as root:
</p>
2684 echo options i915 invert_brightness=
1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
2685 update-initramfs -u -k all
2688 <p>Since March
2012 there is
2689 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
2690 mechanism in the Linux kernel
</a> to tell the i915 driver which
2691 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
2692 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
2693 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
2694 intel_quirks array
</a> in the driver source
2695 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
</tt> (look for "
<tt>static
2696 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks
</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
2697 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
2700 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
2701 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
2704 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
2705 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
2706 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
2707 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
2708 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
2709 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
2710 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
2711 <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
2713 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
2714 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
2715 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
2716 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
2717 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
2718 Capabilities: <access denied>
2719 Kernel driver in use: i915
2722 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
2725 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
2727 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
2728 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
2733 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
2734 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
2735 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
2736 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
">dri-devel
2737 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
2738 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
2740 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/
2013-June/thread.html
">the
2741 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
2742 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
2743 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
2744 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
2745 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
2747 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
2748 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
2749 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
2750 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
2751 the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
2752 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
2753 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
2754 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
2755 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
2756 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
2757 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
2758 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
2760 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
2761 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
2762 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
2763 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
2770 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
2775 <div class="padding
"></div>
2779 <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>
2785 <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2786 today. This is the release announcement:</p>
2788 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
2789 2013-06-10</strong></p>
2791 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
2792 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
2794 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
2796 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2797 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2798 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2799 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2800 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2801 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2802 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2803 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2804 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2805 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2806 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2808 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2809 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
2810 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2811 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
2813 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2814 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2815 Squeeze release.
</p>
2817 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
2821 <li>Iceweasel was updated from
10 to
17. (DSA
2699-
1)
2822 <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).
2823 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
2824 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
2825 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
2829 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
2833 <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.
2834 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
2835 <li>New Romanian translation.
2836 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
2837 <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).
2838 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
2839 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
2840 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
2841 <li>More testsuite tests.
2842 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
2843 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
2845 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
2846 LTSP in Wheezy.
</li>
2848 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
2849 them up with GOsa².
</li>
2851 <li>Update IMAP server setup.
</li>
2853 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
2854 slbackup-php/
0.4.4-
1: #
700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
2855 entered password).
</li>
2859 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
2863 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.
</li>
2865 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2866 available yet (Open in gosa/
2.7.4-
4: #
698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
2867 missing import feature).
</li>
2869 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).
</li>
2871 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #
502192: menu-xdg: invents
2872 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
2877 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
2879 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
2883 <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>
2885 <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>
2887 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .
</li>
2891 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
2892 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419
</p>
2894 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
2896 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a>
2902 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>.
2907 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2911 <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>
2917 <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
2918 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
2919 hope to get released soon. The two problems require some with PHP
2920 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
2925 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
2926 (slbackup-php) using the root user and password. This is
2927 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #
700257</a>.
2928 This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
2929 Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?
</li>
2931 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
2932 using ldif nor using CSV files. The feature was disabled after a
2933 major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
2934 This is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
2939 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
2940 (
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
2941 irc.debian.org
</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.
</p>
2947 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>.
2952 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2956 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier
</a>
2962 <p>It has been a while since my last English
2963 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
2964 interview last November. But the developers and translators are still
2965 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
2966 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
2967 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.
</p>
2969 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2971 <p>I am
34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
2972 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
2973 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
2974 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.
</p>
2976 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
2977 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
2978 packaging, publicity and translation.
</p>
2980 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2981 project?
</strong></p>
2983 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
2984 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
2985 Debian Edu manual
</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
2986 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
2989 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
2990 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
2991 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
2992 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.
</p>
2994 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
2995 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
2996 by
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²
</a>. What pleased
2997 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
2998 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
2999 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
3000 artistic skills with music (
<a href=
"http://ardour.org/">Ardour
</a>,
3001 <a href=
"http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity
</a>) and
3002 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
3003 <a href=
"http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion
</a>).
</p>
3005 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
3006 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu
</a>.
3007 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
3008 beautiful project.
</p>
3010 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3013 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
3014 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
3015 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.
</p>
3017 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
3018 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
3019 of educational free software.
</p>
3021 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3024 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
3025 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
3026 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
3027 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
3028 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.
</p>
3030 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
3031 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
3032 wiki dokumentation
</a>, where some countries already have a number of
3033 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
3034 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
3035 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
3036 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
3037 support for Debian Edu as well.
</p>
3039 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3041 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
3042 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
3043 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice. I am
3044 also using the mathematical software
3045 <a href=
"http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about">Scilab
</a> and
3046 <a href=
"http://www.sagemath.org/index.html">Sage
</a> (built from
3047 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
3049 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
3050 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
3051 statistics?
</strong></p>
3053 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
3054 university, we use both
<a href=
"http://www.r-project.org/">R
</a> and
3055 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
3056 geometry, there are nice programs:
</p>
3060 <li><a href=
"http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo
</a> and
3061 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig">kig
</a> to do
3062 constructions in planar geometry
3064 <li><a href=
"http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali
</a>
3065 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
3066 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.
</li>
3071 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor
</a>, which
3072 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
3073 <a href=
"http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave">Octave
</a>, etc...
</p>
3075 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3076 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3078 <p>My suggestions would be to
</p>
3082 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.
</li>
3084 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
3085 well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
3086 OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.
</li>
3088 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.
</li>
3090 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
3099 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>.
3104 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3108 <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>
3114 <p>Included in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3115 Skolelinux
</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
3116 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn. We have tried to
3117 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
3118 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
3119 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
3120 debtag field. Here it is. Click on a image to learn more about the
3123 <!-- 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 -->
3125 <p><strong>field::arts
</strong></p>
3127 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=audacity'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'
></a>
3128 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=childsplay'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'
></a>
3129 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=denemo'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'
></a>
3130 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=freebirth'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'
></a>
3131 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3132 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gimp'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'
></a>
3133 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=hydrogen'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'
></a>
3134 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=lilypond'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'
></a>
3135 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=lmms'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'
></a>
3136 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=rosegarden'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'
></a>
3137 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=scribus'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'
></a>
3138 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=solfege'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'
></a>
3139 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=stopmotion'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'
></a>
3140 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=tuxpaint'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'
></a>
3143 <p><strong>field::astronomy
</strong></p>
3145 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=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>
3146 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gpredict'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'
></a>
3147 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kstars'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'
></a>
3148 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=planets'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'
></a>
3149 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=stellarium'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'
></a>
3150 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xplanet'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'
></a>
3153 <p><strong>field::biology:structural
</strong></p>
3155 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=pymol'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'
></a>
3158 <p><strong>field::chemistry
</strong></p>
3160 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=atomix'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'
></a>
3161 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=chemtool'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'
></a>
3162 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=easychem'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'
></a>
3163 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gchempaint'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'
></a>
3164 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gdis'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'
></a>
3165 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=ghemical'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'
></a>
3166 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gperiodic'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'
></a>
3167 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kalzium'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'
></a>
3168 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=pymol'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'
></a>
3169 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=viewmol'
>[viewmol]
</a>
3170 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xdrawchem'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'
></a>
3173 <p><strong>field::electronics
</strong></p>
3175 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3176 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gpsim'
>[gpsim]
</a>
3179 <p><strong>field::geography
</strong></p>
3181 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kgeography'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'
></a>
3182 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=marble'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'
></a>
3183 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xplanet'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'
></a>
3186 <p><strong>field::linguistics
</strong></p>
3188 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3189 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kanagram'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'
></a>
3190 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=khangman'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'
></a>
3191 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=klettres'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'
></a>
3192 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=parley'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'
></a>
3195 <p><strong>field::mathematics
</strong></p>
3197 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=childsplay'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'
></a>
3198 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=drgeo'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'
></a>
3199 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3200 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=geogebra'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'
></a>
3201 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=geomview'
>[geomview]
</a>
3202 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=grace'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'
></a>
3203 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=graphmonkey'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'
></a>
3204 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=graphthing'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'
></a>
3205 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kalgebra'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'
></a>
3206 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kbruch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'
></a>
3207 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kig'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'
></a>
3208 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kmplot'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'
></a>
3209 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=mathwar'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'
></a>
3210 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=rocs'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'
></a>
3211 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=scratch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'
></a>
3212 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=tuxmath'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'
></a>
3213 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xabacus'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'
></a>
3216 <p><strong>field::physics
</strong></p>
3218 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3219 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=step'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'
></a>
3222 <p><strong>field::TODO
</strong></p>
3224 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=blinken'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'
></a>
3225 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=cgoban'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'
></a>
3226 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=childsplay'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'
></a>
3227 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3228 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gnuchess'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'
></a>
3229 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gnugo'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'
></a>
3230 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gtans'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'
></a>
3231 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=ktouch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'
></a>
3232 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=librecad'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'
></a>
3233 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=scratch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'
></a>
3236 <p>In total,
61 applications.
3 of them lacked screen shots on
3237 <a href=
"http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net
</a>. If
3238 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
3239 know on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
3240 on irc.debian.org
</a>, or our
3241 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
3242 debian-edu@
</a>.
</p>
3248 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>.
3253 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3257 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows
8</a>
3263 <p>Two days ago, I asked
3264 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
3265 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
3266 preinstalled with Windows
8</a>. I found a solution, but am horrified
3267 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
3270 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
3271 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
3272 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
3273 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
3276 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
3277 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
3278 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
3279 without accepting the Windows
8 license agreement. I am told (and
3280 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
3281 firmware setup once booted into Windows
8. But as I believe the terms
3282 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
3283 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
3286 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
3287 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
3288 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
3289 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows
8 certified laptops. Is
3290 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
3291 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
3292 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
3293 without risking to loose the warranty?
</p>
3296 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
3297 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV
</a>, to ensure the next person
3298 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
3301 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
3302 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.
</p>
3308 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3313 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3317 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows
8?
</a>
3323 <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
3324 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
3325 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
3326 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
3327 computer is preinstalled with Windows
8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
3328 instead of a BIOS to boot.
</p>
3330 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
3331 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
3332 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
3333 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
3334 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
3335 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
3336 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
3337 Windows
8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
3338 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
3339 to get it to boot the Linux installer.
</p>
3341 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
3342 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3343 EasyNote LV
</a> model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
3344 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
3345 page. If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
3346 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.
</p>
3348 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
3349 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
3356 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3361 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3365 <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>
3371 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is
3372 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
3373 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3374 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
3375 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3376 educational software. The project was founded almost
12 years ago,
3377 2001-
07-
02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3378 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3379 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
3380 donate some money
</a>.
3382 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3383 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3384 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
3385 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3386 the Debian Edu installer.
</p>
3389 <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/>
3390 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3391 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3392 into a Debian Edu Workstation:
</p>
3396 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.
</li>
3397 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.
</li>
3398 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3399 our configuration.
</li>
3400 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3401 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3402 according to the profile specified in the config above,
3403 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.
</li>
3404 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3405 that could not be done using preseeding.
</li>
3406 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.
</li>
3410 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3411 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3412 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3413 the needed packages.
</p>
3415 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3416 setting up
<a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi
</a> as a
3417 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3418 <a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage">Raspbian
</a> installation and
3419 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3420 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).
</p>
3422 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3423 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3424 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:
</p>
3427 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
3431 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
3432 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
3433 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
3440 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>.
3445 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3449 <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>
3455 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3456 project
</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
3457 release today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
3459 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.0.0 alpha1 released
3460 2013-
05-
14</strong></p>
3462 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7.0.0 edu
3463 alpha1, based on
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org">Debian
</a> with
3464 codename "Wheezy".
</p>
3466 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
3468 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
3469 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
3470 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
3471 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
3472 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
3473 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
3474 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
3475 other machines can be installed via the network.
</p>
3477 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3478 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3479 version compared to the Squeeze release.
</p>
3481 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
3483 <li>Install freemind (
0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
3485 <li>Install chromium (
26.0.1410.43) by default.
</li>
3486 <li>Install goplay (
0.5-
1.1) to make golearn available by default.
</li>
3487 <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
3491 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
3494 <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
3495 reliability improvements.
</li>
3496 <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
3497 of
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.
</li>
3498 <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
3500 <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
3502 <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.
</li>
3503 <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.
</li>
3504 <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.
</li>
3505 <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
3506 servers, to make room for all the software installed.
</li>
3507 <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
3508 log in (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).
</li>
3511 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
3514 <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
3515 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>). Only install
3516 libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.
</li>
3517 <li>DVD images are not yet ready.
</li>
3518 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3519 available yet (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).
</li>
3520 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).
</li>
3521 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.
</li>
3522 <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
3523 (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.
</li>
3524 <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
3525 password submission problem
3526 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).
</li>
3530 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
3532 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
3535 <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>
3536 <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>
3537 <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>
3541 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b
</p>
3543 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c
</p>
3545 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
3547 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
3553 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>.
3558 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3562 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?
</a>
3569 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
3570 announced a
</a> new
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
3571 channel #debian-lego
</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
3572 community interested in
<a href=
"http://www.lego.com/">LEGO
</a>, the
3573 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
3574 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page
</a> to have
3575 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
3576 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
3577 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
3578 <a href=
"http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego
</a>
3579 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count
10 packages related to
3580 LEGO and
<a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms
</a>:
</p>
3583 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos
</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++
</td></tr>
3584 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad
</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software
</td></tr>
3585 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt
</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX
</td></tr>
3586 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd
</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS
</td></tr>
3587 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc
</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
</td></tr>
3588 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc
</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX
</td></tr>
3589 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt
</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
</td></tr>
3590 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer
</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT
</td></tr>
3591 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch
</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages
8 and up
</td></tr>
3592 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n
</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
</td></tr>
3595 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
3596 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
3597 available in experimental.
</p>
3599 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
3600 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
3601 for LEGO designers.
</p>
3607 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
3612 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3616 <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>
3622 <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3623 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
3624 for Debian Wheezy
</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
3625 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3628 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3629 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
3630 <a href=
"http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch
</a> program, made famous by
3631 the
<a href=
"http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code
</a> movement, is
3632 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
3633 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle
</a> and
3634 <a href=
"http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart
</a>,
3635 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3636 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3637 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3640 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3641 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
3642 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
3643 alpha release
</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3650 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>.
3655 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3659 <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>
3665 <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
3666 its first Wheezy based release today. This is the release
3669 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~
7.0.0 alpha0 released
3670 2013-
04-
26</strong></p>
3672 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~
7.0.0
3673 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
3675 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
3677 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3678 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3679 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3680 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
3681 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3682 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3683 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3684 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3685 installed via the network.
</p>
3687 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3688 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3689 version compared to the Squeeze release.
</p>
3691 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
3694 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
3696 <li>Linux kernel
3.2.x
</li>
3697 <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma"
4.8.4, GNOME
3.4, and LXDE
4
3698 (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
3700 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
10 ESR
</li>
3701 <li>LibreOffice
3.5.4</li>
3704 <li>CUPS print system
1.5.3</li>
3705 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
12.01</li>
3706 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
12.04</li>
3707 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.8.2</li>
3708 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.1</li>
3709 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.11.3</li>
3710 <li>Scratch visual programming environment
1.4.0.6</li>
3711 <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
3712 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
3713 manual
</a> for more details.
</li>
3714 <li>Debian Wheezy includes about
37000 packages available for
3716 <li>More information about Debian Wheezy
7.0 is provided in the
3717 <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>
3721 <p><strong>Documentation
</strong></p>
3723 <li>The (
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English
</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
3724 German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
3725 for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
</li>
3728 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes
</strong></p>
3730 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
3731 choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
3732 server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.
</li>
3735 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
3737 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
3738 configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
3739 entry in lts.conf or LDAP.
<li>
3740 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
3741 functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
3742 completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.
</li>
3745 <p><strong>Regressions
</strong></p>
3747 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
3751 <p><strong>No updated artwork
</strong></p>
3754 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
3755 screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
3756 had for our Squeeze based release.
</li>
3759 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
3761 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
3763 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/
</a></li>
3764 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/
</a></li>
3765 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/
</li>
3768 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c
</p>
3770 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2
</p>
3772 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
3774 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
3780 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>.
3785 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3789 <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>
3795 <p>This years first
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
3796 Debian Edu
</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
3797 Details about the gathering can be found
3798 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
3799 the FRiSK wiki
</a>. The dates are
19-
21th of April
2013, and online
3800 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
3801 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
3804 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
3805 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
3808 <p>See you on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,
</a> then?
</p>
3814 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>.
3819 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3823 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram
0.2 finally in the Debian archive
</a>
3829 <p>Today the
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
3830 package
</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
3831 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
3832 2013-
01-
27, and today it was accepted into the archive.
</p>
3834 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
3835 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
3836 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
3837 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
3838 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
3845 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
3850 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3854 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)
</a>
3860 <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
3861 time, without much sacrifice? A small step could be to change the
3862 font you use when printing.
</p>
3865 <a href=
"http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
3866 Technica
</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
3867 changed their default front from
3868 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial
</a> to
3869 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
3870 Gothic
</a> to save money. The Century Gothic font uses
30% less toner
3871 than Arial to print the same text. In other word, you could cut your
3872 toner costs by
30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
3873 by more than
30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
3876 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
3877 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $
100,
000 per year
3878 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
3879 <a href=
"http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
3880 TwinCities.com
</a>, and expected to save between $
5,
000 and $
10,
000
3881 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font. Not
3882 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
3883 sources will most likely still use a different font. Also, the
3884 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
3885 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
3886 depend on the documents printed.
</p>
3888 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
3889 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
3890 and save some money in the process.
</p>
3892 <p>Update
2013-
04-
10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
3893 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
3894 <a href=
"http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
3895 difference between font pairs
</a>. They also
3896 <a href=
"http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
3897 which fonts to use
</a> to save ink. Check it out. :) While updating
3898 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
3899 <a href=
"http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
3900 the fonts they recommend
</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.
</p>
3906 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3911 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3915 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB
</a>
3921 <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
3922 <a href=
"http://www.efn.no/">EFN
</a> about interesting books to read
3923 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
3924 the
1968 short story Kodémus by
3925 <a href=
"http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd
</a>
3926 came up. The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
3927 easily available for current and future generations. Some of the
3928 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
3929 reported back
2013-
03-
19 that the author was OK with releasing the
3930 short story using a
<a href=
"http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
3931 Commons
</a> license. The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
3932 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.
</p>
3934 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
3935 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
3936 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
3937 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook
</a> processing framework to
3938 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story. The tools to
3939 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
3940 distribution of choice,
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>, so
3941 all I had to do was to use the
3942 <a href=
"http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex
</a>,
3943 <a href=
"http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub
</a>
3944 and
<a href=
"https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto
</a> tools to do the
3945 conversion. After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
3947 <a href=
"http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl
</a>),
3948 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
3949 nicer
<variablelist
> typesetting, but that is just a minor
3950 technical detail.
</p>
3952 <p>There were a few challenges, of course. We want to typeset the
3953 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
3954 control over the layout. The original short story have three
3955 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
3956 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
3957 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.
</p>
3959 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
3960 single star in it, ie
<para
>*
</para
>, but it made sure a
3961 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted. This did not look too
3962 good without the centring. The next approach was to create a new
3963 preprocessor directive
<?newscene?
>, mapping to "
<hr/
>"
3964 for HTML and "
<fo:block
text-align="center"
><fo:leader
3965 leader-pattern="rule"
rule-thickness="
0.5pt"/
></fo:block
>"
3966 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
3967 switched at this time). The HTML XSL file looked like this:
</p>
3969 <p><blockquote><pre>
3970 <?xml version='
1.0'?
>
3971 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:
xsl="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Transform" version='
1.0'
>
3972 <xsl:template
match="processing-instruction('newscene')"
>
3974 </xsl:template
>
3975 </xsl:stylesheet
>
3976 </pre></blockquote></p>
3978 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:
</p>
3980 <p><blockquote><pre>
3981 <?xml version='
1.0'?
>
3982 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:
xsl="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Transform" version='
1.0'
>
3983 <xsl:template
match="processing-instruction('newscene')"
>
3984 <fo:block
text-align="center"
>
3985 <fo:leader
leader-pattern="rule"
rule-thickness="
0.5pt"/
>
3987 </xsl:template
>
3988 </xsl:stylesheet
>
3989 </pre></blockquote></p>
3991 <p>Finally, I came across the
<bridgehead
> tag, which seem to be
3992 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced
<?newscene?
>
3993 with
<bridgehead
>*
</bridgehead
>. It isn't centred, but we
3994 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
3997 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
3998 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
3999 directive
<?linebreak?
>, mapping to
<br/
> in HTML, and
4000 <fo:block/
> in FO/PDF. I suspect there are better ways to do
4001 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github. The HTML XSL file now
4004 <p><blockquote><pre>
4005 <?xml version='
1.0'?
>
4006 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:
xsl="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Transform" version='
1.0'
>
4007 <xsl:template
match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"
>
4009 </xsl:template
>
4010 </xsl:stylesheet
>
4011 </pre></blockquote></p>
4013 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:
</p>
4015 <p><blockquote><pre>
4016 <?xml version='
1.0'?
>
4017 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:
xsl="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Transform" version='
1.0'
4018 xmlns:
fo="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Format"
>
4019 <xsl:template
match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"
>
4021 </xsl:template
>
4022 </xsl:stylesheet
>
4023 </pre></blockquote></p>
4025 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
4026 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
4027 structure in the DocBook source. No idea how to do this, so we ended
4028 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
4031 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
4032 <a href=
"https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
4034 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
4035 repository
</a>). We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
4042 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
4047 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4051 <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>
4058 <a href=
"https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter
</a>
4059 I just discovered that
<a href=
"http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz
</a> have
4060 done a
<a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
4061 review
</a> on Youtube of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
4062 / Debian Edu
</a> version
6. He installed the standalone profile and
4063 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
4064 a few programs and his view of our distribution.
</p>
4066 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
4067 have heard wrong). While looking thought the Graphics menu:
</p>
4070 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
4073 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:
</p>
4076 "So, yeah, a bit bloated. It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
4077 to keep it nice and GNU. So, I do not want to go on about it, but
4078 lets give it
7 out of
10. I am not going to use it. That is because
4079 I am not deploying a school network. There may be some mythical
4080 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
4083 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
4084 installation option. It make it possible to install only the main
4085 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
4086 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)
</p>
4088 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
4089 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
4092 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
4093 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
4094 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
4095 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
4098 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
4099 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
4100 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
4101 consistent menu system
</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
4102 inconsistent menu systems.
</p>
4104 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
4107 <iframe width=
"560" height=
"315" src=
"http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe>
4113 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>.
4118 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4122 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released
</a>
4128 <p>Last Sunday,
2013-
03-
03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
4129 of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
4130 based on Debian Squeeze. This is the first update since
4131 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
4132 initial release
2012-
03-
11</a>. This is the
4133 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
4134 announcement email from Holger
</a>:
</p>
4136 <blockquote><p>Hi,
</p>
4138 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
4139 Edu
6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").
</p>
4141 <p>Debian Edu
6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
4142 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian
6.0.4 and
6.0.7 as
4143 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
4144 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes. Please see
4145 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311</a>
4146 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".
</p>
4148 <p>Images are available for download at
4149 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/
</a></p>
4152 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
4153 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
4154 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso
</p>
4157 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3 debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
4158 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
4159 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso
</p>
4161 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.
</p>
4163 <p>Changes for Debian Edu
6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
4167 <li>sitesummary was updated from
0.1.3 to
0.1.8
4169 <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient
</li>
4170 <li>Comply with
3.X kernel
</li>
4172 <li>debian-edu-doc from
1.4~
20120310~
6.0.4+r0 to
1.4~
20130228~
6.0.7+r1
4174 <li>Minor updates from the wiki
</li>
4175 <li>Danish translation now complete
</li>
4177 <li>debian-edu-config from
1.453 to
1.455
4179 <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #
699880</li>
4180 <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.
</li>
4181 <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after
2 days.
4182 Closes: #
664596</li>
4183 <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
4184 Closes: #
664976</li>
4185 <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
4187 <li>Don't fail if password contains "
</li>
4188 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog
</li>
4190 <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
4192 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes
</li>
4193 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²
</li>
4194 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
4195 "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #
687256</li>
4196 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users
</li>
4198 <li>Add Danish web page
</li>
4200 <li>debian-edu-install from
1.528 to
1.530
4202 <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation
</li>
4206 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
4207 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/
</a>
4208 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
4209 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)
</p>
4211 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
4213 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</a>!
4216 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)
</p>
4222 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>.
4227 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4231 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web
</a>
4237 <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
4238 broadcast them on the air? Using free software? With video on demand
4240 <a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
4241 open standards
</a>? Included a web based video stream as well? And
4242 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world? A
4243 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
4244 <a href=
"http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen
</a> have been building a
4245 system to do just this. The source code for the solution is licensed
4246 using the GNU LGPL, and
4247 <a href=
"http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github
</a>.
</p>
4249 <p>The idea is simple. You upload a video file over the web, and
4250 attach meta information to the file. You select a time slot in the
4251 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
4252 in the web stream. It is also made available in a video on demand
4253 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time. All
4254 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.
</p>
4256 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution. I'll mention
4257 the three most important ones. The first part is the database of
4258 videos and the schedule. This is written in Django and include a REST
4259 API. The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
4260 PostgreSQL. At the moment this system can be tested on
4261 <a href=
"http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv
</a>. The
4262 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
4263 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast. This is done
4264 using
<a href=
"http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT
</a> and
4265 <a href=
"http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit
</a>. Video
4266 signal distribution is handled using
4267 <a href=
"http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder
</a>. The
4268 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
4269 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
4270 on demand. It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
4271 decided what it will end up using. Note that the source of the latter
4272 two parts are not yet pushed to github. The lead author want to clean
4273 them up a bit more first.
</p>
4275 <p>The development is coordinated on the
4276 <a href=
"irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
4277 channel
</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
4278 <a href=
"http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
4279 frikanalen mailing list
</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
4280 (phed on IRC). Anyone is welcome to participate in the
4287 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
4292 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4296 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March
1st
2013</a>
4302 <p>Dr.
<a href=
"http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman
</a>,
4303 founder of
<a href=
"http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation
</a>,
4304 is giving
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
4305 talk in Oslo March
1st
2013 17:
00 to
19:
00</a>. The event is public
4306 and organised by
<a href=
"">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)
</a>
4307 (where I am the chair of the board) and
4308 <a href=
"http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
4309 Center
</a>. The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
4310 GNU», with this description:
4313 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
4314 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
4315 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
4316 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
4319 <p>The meeting is open for everyone. Due to space limitations, the
4320 doors opens for NUUG members at
16:
15, and everyone else at
16:
45. I
4321 am really curious how many will show up. See
4322 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
4323 page
</a> for the location details.
</p>
4329 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
4334 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4338 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap
</a>
4344 <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
4345 now a great source of free maps available from
4346 <a href=
"http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart
</a>. To
4347 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
4348 download the map type you want. There are
8 different maps available,
4349 using different colours and data selection. Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
4350 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
4351 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
4352 page for descriptions).
</p>
4354 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
4355 map you can just edit the
4356 <a href=
"http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap
</a> map source
4357 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)
</p>
4363 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart
</a>.
4368 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4372 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code
</a>
4378 <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
4379 <a href=
"http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
4380 by the Norwegian government
</a> require that invoices are sent through
4381 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
4382 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
4383 facilitators. This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
4384 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers. My preferred
4385 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
4386 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
4387 protocol like REST or SOAP. But this might also be overkill, as the
4388 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
4389 using a simple bar code. My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
4390 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there. The
4391 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
4392 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format
</a>, as
4393 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.
</p>
4395 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
4396 information can be included using such extentions. For example an
4397 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
4398 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
4399 for donations to the Debian Edu project
</a> and thus have bank account
4400 information publicly available) for NOK
1000.00 could have these extra
4405 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
4406 X-INVOICE-KID:
123412341234
4407 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
4408 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:
16040884339
4409 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
4410 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
4413 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
4415 <a href=
"http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
4416 to put bank account information into a vCard
</a>. For payments in
4417 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
4418 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.
</p>
4420 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:
</p>
4425 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
4426 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei
29D;OSLO;;
0485;Norway
4427 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
4428 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
4429 REV:
20130212T095000Z
4431 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
4432 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
4433 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:
16040884339
4434 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
4435 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
4439 <p>The resulting QR code created using
4440 <a href=
"http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode
</a> would look
4441 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
4442 phone, or for example the
<a href=
"http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
4443 bar code reader
</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
4446 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
4448 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
4449 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
4450 handling invoices. I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
4451 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.
</p>
4453 <p><strong>Update
2013-
02-
12 11:
30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
4454 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.
</p>
4460 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
4465 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4469 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids
</a>
4475 <p><img align=
"left" style=
"margin-right:25px;" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
4477 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
4478 during the night and wake up when it is morning. I mean, when I
4479 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier. In our household we
4480 have decided that
07:
00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
4481 sleep until
07:
00 is a small challenge every day. They have adapted
4482 quite well, and rarely wake up at
05:
00 any more, but some times wake
4483 up at times like
05:
50,
06:
15,
06:
30 or
06:
45, and it is hard to put
4484 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
4485 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until
07:
00
4486 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
4487 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.
</p>
4489 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem. It
4490 involve home automation. A few years ago I bought a
4491 <a href=
"http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick
</a> and RF
4492 switches at the local
<a href=
"http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
4493 Ohlson
</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
4494 gadgets using my Linux server. When I moved from the old flat to a
4495 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
4496 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
4497 the gadgets I had. But recently I bought a
4498 <a href=
"http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
4499 Net
</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
4500 sockets. I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
4501 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding. The default
4502 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
4503 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
4505 <a href=
"http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
4506 with local access
</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
4507 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
4508 code. I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
4509 important. But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
4510 the kids came to me yesterday. We can set up a night light controlled
4511 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at
07:
00. The kids can
4512 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
4513 get up or not. They joined me in setting everything up, and I
4514 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
4515 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.
</p>
4517 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
4518 after
07:
00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
4519 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
4520 arrived. So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
4521 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
4522 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.
</p>
4524 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
4525 to tell the kids to get up. We do not have to wait until
07:
00, and
4526 can also delay it if we want to.
</p>
4532 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4537 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4541 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)
</a>
4548 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4549 bitcoin related blog post
</a> mentioned that the new
4550 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package
</a> for
4551 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4552 2013-
01-
19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
4553 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4556 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4557 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4558 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4559 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4560 architectures (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #
672524</a>).
4561 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4562 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
4563 failing, please let us know via the BTS.
</p>
4565 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4566 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4567 if it run short on space (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4568 #
696715</a>). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4571 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4572 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4573 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4579 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4584 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4588 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!
</a>
4595 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4596 for testers
</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4597 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4598 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4599 out to create
</a> earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
4600 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4601 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4602 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4603 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
4604 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4605 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint
</a>
4606 repository in Debian. The new name? It is
<strong>Isenkram
</strong>.
4607 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use
</p>
4610 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4611 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4614 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
4615 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4616 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4617 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)
</p>
4619 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4620 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
4621 stuff, in other words. I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4622 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4625 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4626 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4629 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4630 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.
</p>
4636 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
4641 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4645 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian
</a>
4651 <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4652 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4653 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices
</a>. Now my
4654 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
4656 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4657 from the Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>, build and install the
4658 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
4659 autostart script.
</p>
4661 <p>The design is simple:
</p>
4665 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4666 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.
</li>
4668 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4669 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4672 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4673 the APT database, a database
4674 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4675 via HTTP
</a> and a database available as part of the package.
</li>
4677 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4678 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4679 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4680 package or packages.
</li>
4682 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4683 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.
</li>
4685 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4686 package while showing progress information in a window.
</li>
4690 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
4691 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
4692 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4693 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.
</p>
4695 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4696 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4697 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4698 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4699 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width=
"70%"></p>
4701 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4702 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
4703 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4704 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4705 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4706 method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4707 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4708 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.
</p>
4710 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
21 16:
50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4711 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4713 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4714 hw-support-handler; debuild
</tt>'. If you lack debuild, install the
4715 devscripts package.
</p>
4717 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
23 12:
00</strong>: The project is now
4718 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4719 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
4720 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4721 instructions
</a> for details.
</p>
4727 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
4732 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4736 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service
</a>
4742 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
4743 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4744 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
4745 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
4746 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
4747 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
4748 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4749 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4750 not a durable solution.
4752 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
4753 got a new one more than
10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
</p>
4757 <li>Lightweight (around
1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4759 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
</li>
4760 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
</li>
4761 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
</li>
4762 <li>Internal WIFI network card.
</li>
4763 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.
</li>
4764 <li>Some USB slots (
2-
3 is plenty)
</li>
4765 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
</li>
4766 <li>Video resolution at least
1024x768, with size around
12" (A4 paper
4768 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4769 X.org packages.
</li>
4770 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4775 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4776 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4777 last
10-
15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4778 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
4779 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4780 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4781 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4782 still be useful.
</p>
4784 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4785 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
4786 <a href=
"http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site
</a> for
4787 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4788 of the vendors listed on the
<a href=
"http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4789 Pre-loaded site
</a>.
</p>
4795 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4800 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4804 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type
</a>
4810 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4811 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
4812 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4813 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4814 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4815 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4816 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
4822 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4827 version = pkg.candidate
4829 version = pkg.installed
4832 record = version.record
4833 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4835 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4836 for t in mime_types:
4837 t = t.rstrip().strip()
4839 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4841 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4842 if
1 < len(sys.argv):
4843 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
4844 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4845 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4849 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
4852 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4853 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4855 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4856 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4857 browser-plugin-gnash
4861 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4862 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4863 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
4864 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
4866 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
18 14:
20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4867 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4868 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#
484010</a> from
2008 (and
4869 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#
698426</a> from today). Lack
4870 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4871 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.
</p>
4877 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4882 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4886 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?
</a>
4892 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
4893 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
4894 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4895 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4896 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
4897 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4898 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4899 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
4901 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4902 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4903 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
4905 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4906 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
4907 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
4908 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4909 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
4911 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
4915 ----- -----------------------
4931 18 application/x-ogg
4938 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
4942 ----- -----------------------
4958 18 application/x-ogg
4965 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
4969 ----- -----------------------
4986 18 application/x-ogg
4992 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
4993 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
4994 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
4997 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
4998 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
5004 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5009 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5013 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware
</a>
5019 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
5020 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
5021 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
5022 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
5023 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
5024 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
5025 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
5026 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
5027 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5030 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5031 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5032 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5036 Package: package-name
5037 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
5040 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
5041 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
5043 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
5044 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
5048 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
5051 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
5052 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
5055 Package: pcmciautils
5056 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
5059 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
5060 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
5063 Package: colorhug-client
5064 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
5067 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
5068 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
5069 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
5071 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
5072 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
5073 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
5074 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
5075 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
5076 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
5077 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
5080 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
5081 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
5082 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
5083 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
5085 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
5086 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
5087 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
5088 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
5090 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
5091 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
5094 % ./hw-support-lookup
5095 <br>yubikey-personalization
5099 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5100 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
5103 % ./hw-support-lookup
5108 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5109 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5110 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
5112 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5113 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
5114 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5115 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
5116 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5117 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5118 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
5121 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5122 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5123 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5124 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
5130 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
5135 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5139 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware
</a>
5145 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5146 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5147 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5148 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
5150 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5151 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
5153 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
5155 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5156 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
5157 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
5158 <URL:
<a href=
"http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/
26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device
</a> >,
5159 <URL:
<a href=
"http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c
</a> > and
5160 <URL:
<a href=
"http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup
</a> >.
5162 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5163 this shell script:
</p>
5166 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
5169 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5173 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5174 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5175 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5179 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
5181 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
5182 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
5185 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5188 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
5193 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
5194 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
5196 sc
00 (bus subclass)
5200 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5201 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5202 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
5203 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
5205 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5208 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
5210 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
5211 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
5214 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5217 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
5220 v
1D6B (device vendor)
5221 p
0001 (device product)
5223 dc
09 (device class)
5224 dsc
00 (device subclass)
5225 dp
00 (device protocol)
5226 ic
09 (interface class)
5227 isc
00 (interface subclass)
5228 ip
00 (interface protocol)
5231 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
5232 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
5233 these alias entries show up:
</p>
5236 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5237 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5238 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5239 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5242 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
5243 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
5244 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
5246 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
5248 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
5249 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
5252 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5255 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
5257 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
5259 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5260 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5261 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
5264 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5267 <p>The values present are
</p>
5270 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
5271 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
5272 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
5273 svn IBM (system vendor)
5274 pn
2371H4G (product name)
5275 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
5276 rvn IBM (board vendor)
5277 rn
2371H4G (board name)
5278 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
5279 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
5280 ct
10 (chassis type)
5281 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
5284 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
5285 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
5289 4 Low Profile Desktop
5302 17 Main Server Chassis
5303 18 Expansion Chassis
5305 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5306 21 Peripheral Chassis
5308 23 Rack Mount Chassis
5317 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5318 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5319 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
5321 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
5323 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
5327 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5330 <p>The values present are
</p>
5339 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
5340 the valid values are.
</p>
5342 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
5344 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5345 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5346 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5347 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5348 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
5349 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5350 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
5352 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
5354 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5355 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
5358 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
5360 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
5364 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5365 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
5369 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5371 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5373 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5374 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5375 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5376 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5377 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5378 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5379 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5380 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5384 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5385 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5386 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5387 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
5389 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5390 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5391 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
5397 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
5402 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5406 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint
</a>
5412 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5413 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5414 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5415 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
5416 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
5417 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5418 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5419 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
5420 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5421 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
5422 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5423 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
5424 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5425 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
5426 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5427 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5428 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
5429 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
5435 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot
">robot</a>.
5440 <div class="padding
"></div>
5444 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html
">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
5450 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5451 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5452 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5453 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5454 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5455 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5456 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5457 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5458 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5459 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
5460 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5462 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5463 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
5464 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
5469 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5470 starting when a user log in.</li>
5472 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5473 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5475 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5476 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5479 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5480 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5484 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5485 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5486 discover database to find packages and
5487 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
5490 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5491 draft package is now checked into
5492 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
5493 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
5494 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
5495 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5496 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5497 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
5498 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
5499 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5500 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
5501 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
5502 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5503 because of the freeze).</p>
5505 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5506 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5509 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
5511 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5512 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5513 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
5515 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5516 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5517 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5518 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5519 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5520 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5521 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
5523 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5524 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
5525 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
5526 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5527 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
5528 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
5529 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5530 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
5531 not be installed?
</p>
5533 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5534 please send me an email. :)
</p>
5540 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
5545 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5549 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian
</a>
5555 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5556 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5557 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5558 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5559 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
5560 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5561 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
5562 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5563 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
5564 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
5566 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
5567 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
5568 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
5574 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
5579 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5583 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
5589 <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
5590 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
5591 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
5592 Agency in Trondheim. NOK
1000,- showed up on our donation account
5593 December
24th. I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
5594 present. As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
5595 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
5596 gatherings, this donation was most welcome. One developer gathering
5597 cost around NOK
15 000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
5598 development pace we want. Thus, I hope their example this year is
5599 followed by many others. :)
</p>
5601 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
5602 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
5603 donation page
</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
5604 you want to donate to the project.
</p>
5610 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>.
5615 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5619 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version
0.7.2-
2 to Debian Squeeze
</a>
5625 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5626 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
5628 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
5629 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5630 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5631 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5632 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
5633 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5634 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5635 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
5636 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5639 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5640 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5641 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
5644 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5646 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5647 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5650 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
5651 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5652 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
5653 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5654 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
5655 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5656 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5657 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5658 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
5660 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5661 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5662 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
5668 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5673 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5677 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
5683 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5684 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
5685 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5686 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
5687 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5688 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
5689 is now maintained by a
5690 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5691 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
5692 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5693 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5694 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5695 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5696 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
5697 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5698 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5700 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5701 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5704 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5705 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5706 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5707 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5708 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5709 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5710 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5711 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
5712 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5713 new version to unstable.
5715 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5716 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
5717 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5718 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5719 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5720 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5721 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5722 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
5723 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5724 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5725 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
5726 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5727 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5728 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
5729 have not tested them.
</p>
5732 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5733 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5734 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5735 years ago, as can be
5736 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5737 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
5738 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5739 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5740 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
5741 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5742 the same address as last time,
5743 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
5749 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5754 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5758 <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>
5764 <p>A few days ago I came across
5765 <a href=
"http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
5766 Hess
</a> describing
<a href=
"http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger
</a> and
5767 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting. I found it
5768 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
5769 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
5770 the different web based systems we use. I find it hard to find what I
5771 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
5772 the systems. Ledger seem different. The accounting data is kept in
5773 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
5775 are at least
<a href=
"https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
5776 different implementations
</a> able to read the format. An example
5777 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
5778 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:
</p>
5781 2004-
05-
27 Book Store
5782 Expenses:Books $
20.00
5786 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
5787 look for others using it. I found blog posts from
5788 <a href=
"http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
5790 <a href=
"http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
5792 <a href=
"http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
5794 <a href=
"http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
5795 Ip
</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
5796 <a href=
"https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
5797 M. Kuhn
</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy. All seemed like good
5798 recommendations fitting my need.
</p>
5800 <p>The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger
</a>
5801 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
5802 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger
</a>
5803 package only is available in Debian Sid. As I use Squeeze, ledger
5804 seemed the best choice to get started.
</p>
5806 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
5807 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper
</a> for
5808 <a href=
"http://www.lodo.no/">LODO
</a>, the accounting system used by
5809 the
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a> association, and started to
5810 play with the data set. I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
5811 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
5812 using the "
<tt>ledger balance
</tt>" command. But I will have to
5813 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
5814 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
5820 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>.
5825 <div class="padding
"></div>
5829 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html
">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
5835 <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/
">University of
5836 Oslo</a>, we use the
5837 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/
">Cerebrum user
5838 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
5839 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
5840 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC
">XML-RPC</a> API, but
5841 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
5842 always use the bofh command line client at work. Until today. I want
5843 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
5844 virtual machines. Here are a few notes on how to use it with
5847 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
5848 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/
">bofh
5849 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server. I also
5850 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
5851 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html
">a
5852 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
5854 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
5855 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
5856 user currently logged in:</p>
5859 #!/usr/bin/env python
5862 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
5863 username = getpass.getuser()
5864 password = getpass.getpass()
5865 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
5866 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
5867 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
5868 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
5869 result = server.logout(sessionid)
5873 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
5874 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.
</p>
5880 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin
</a>.
5885 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5889 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?
</a>
5895 <p>While working on a
5896 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
5897 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
</a> (
76% done),
5898 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
5899 creativity, one idea occurred to me. The idea is to get the tax
5900 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
5901 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.
</p>
5903 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
5904 <a href=
"http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
5905 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
5906 by John Perry Barlow
</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
5907 in writing for a wider audience. The idea is not really based on the
5908 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
5909 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
5910 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
5911 controlled by the citizens in a country. I'm sharing the idea here to
5912 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
5915 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government. At least here in
5916 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
5917 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
5918 stocks and other valuables are all added together. If the tax value
5919 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
5920 taxes for these values. And copyrighted work have value. It have
5921 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
5922 work. But it is not included in the tax calculations? Why not?
</p>
5924 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
5925 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
5926 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
5927 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes. If such
5928 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
5929 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
5930 hard operation with todays copyright law. To ensure that copyright
5931 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
5932 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
5933 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
5934 correct right holder.
</p>
5936 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
5937 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
5938 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
5939 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
5940 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
5941 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
5942 work. Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
5943 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
5944 tax calculation. I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
5945 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
5946 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain. The
5947 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
5948 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
5949 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.
</p>
5951 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
5952 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
5953 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .
</p>
5955 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet? I am sure the tax office
5956 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.
</p>
5962 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
5967 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5971 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß
</a>
5977 <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the
<a
5978 href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
5979 community. I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
5980 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
5981 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
5982 the people behind the German
5983 "
<a href=
"http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule
</a>"
5984 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview. Give a warm
5985 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
5987 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5989 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
5990 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
5991 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
5993 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
5994 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
5995 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
5996 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
5997 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-). We are also
5998 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.
</p>
6000 <p>In
2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
6001 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there. Besides
6002 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
6003 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
6004 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
6005 relationship management and the communication processes in the
6008 <p>Since
2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
6009 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
6010 and a yoga teacher.
</p>
6012 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6013 project?
</strong></p>
6015 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).
</p>
6017 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
6018 Free Software. At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
6019 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
6020 their IT environment. Often when Mike came home from working at the
6021 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
6022 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
6023 teachers did not work. So we were clear that he would not work for
6024 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
6025 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
6028 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
6029 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
6030 schools. One day before Christmas
2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
6031 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
6032 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
6033 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
6036 <p>For information about our school project you can read
6037 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
6038 interview with Mike Gabriel
</a>.
</p>
6040 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6043 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
6044 answer comes rather from a social point of view.
</p>
6046 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
6047 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
6048 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
6049 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
6050 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
6051 ;-). This is of course a user experience. What I also get as a big
6052 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
6053 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
6054 teachers, parents...
</p>
6056 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6059 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
6060 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
6062 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
6063 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
6064 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
6065 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
6066 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
6068 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
6069 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
6070 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
6071 and helpful. I am also missing some kind of contact between the
6072 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
6073 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
6074 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
6076 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
6078 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu
10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
6079 on. As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
6080 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
6081 my N900 running with Maemo.
</p>
6083 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6084 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
6086 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
6087 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
6088 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
6089 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
6090 strategy has three crucial pillars:
</p>
6094 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
6095 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
6096 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.
</li>
6098 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
6099 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
6100 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
6101 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
6102 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
6103 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
6104 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.
</li>
6106 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
6107 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
6108 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
6109 offer to become more and more independent from us.
</li>
6117 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>.
6122 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6126 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin
</a>
6132 <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
6133 <a href=
"http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
6134 a report (PDF)
</a> about virtual currencies and
6135 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>. It is interesting to
6136 see how a member of the bitcoin community
6137 <a href=
"http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
6138 the report
</a>. As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
6139 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
6140 competition. My thoughts go to the
6141 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment
</a> with
6142 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
6143 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in
1933. A successful
6144 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
6145 powerful forces to work against it.
</p>
6147 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
6148 that the community already seem to have
6149 <a href=
"http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
6150 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme
</a>. Not very surprising, given
6151 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other. I guess
6152 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
6153 wealth is available.
</p>
6159 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
6164 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6168 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick
</a>
6174 <p>I work at the
<a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a>
6175 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
6176 all over the place. I am also a member (and currently leader) of
6177 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association
</a>, which in turn
6178 make me a member of
<a href=
"http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX
</a>. NUUG
6179 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
6180 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
6181 is a US based member organisation with similar targets. And thanks to
6182 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
6183 <a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:
</a> in the
6184 mail several times a year. The magazine is great, and I read most of
6187 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
6188 article by
<a href=
"http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick
</a> from
6189 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
6190 "
<a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
6191 Takes Us Down
</a>" (longer version also
6192 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/
2012-
06-
30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf
">available
6193 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
6194 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
6195 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
6196 etc etc. The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
6197 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
6198 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
6200 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
6201 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
6202 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
6203 assumtions on scope and user impact. Here is the two example from the
6204 article: First the unplanned outage:
6207 Subject: Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
6208 Severity: Critical (Unplanned)
6209 Start: Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
6210 End: Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
6211 Duration: 40 minutes
6212 Scope: Exchange 2003
6213 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
6216 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
6217 access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
6221 Next the planned outage:
6224 Subject: H Building Switch Upgrades
6225 Severity: Major (Planned)
6226 Start: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
6227 End: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
6230 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
6231 stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
6233 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
6234 this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
6239 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
6240 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
6241 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
6242 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
6243 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
6244 format listed above). There are also other issues with the format
6245 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
6247 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
6248 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
6249 university too. We do register
6250 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/
">planned
6251 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
6252 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
6253 report to the same location for unplanned outages. Perhaps something
6254 for other sites to consider too?</p>
6260 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
6265 <div class="padding
"></div>
6269 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html
">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
6275 <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
6276 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/
2012/
10/
22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/
">how
6277 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
6278 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>. If a real book store did
6279 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
6280 and theft. The story has spread around the net today. A bit more
6281 background information is available in Norwegian from
6282 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon
">digi.no</a>.
6283 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
6284 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
6285 introduced many years back. And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
6287 <a href="http://boingboing.net/
2009/
07/
20/amazons-orwellian-de.html
">
6288 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
6289 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
6290 customers who had bought it. From the official comments, it even
6292 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/
2009/
07/
18/technology/companies/
18amazon.html
">Amazon
6293 would never do that again</a>. And here we are, three years
6296 <p>And thought this action is
6297 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/
904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende
">against
6298 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
6299 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
6300 Norwegian laws. It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
6301 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
6304 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
6305 unacceptable terms. For example
6306 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/
">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
6307 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/
">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
6308 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts
">The Internet
6309 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
6310 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
6312 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
6313 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
6314 restored the account of the user, as reported by
6315 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904675/helomvending-fra-amazon
">digi.no</a>
6316 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/
1.8368487">NRK</a>.
6317 Apparently public pressure work. The story from Martin have seen
6318 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
6319 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention. But even when the
6320 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist. I recommend
6321 reading two opinions from
6322 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2012/
10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm
">Simon
6324 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm
">Glen
6325 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
6326 details about the original story.</p>
6332 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>.
6337 <div class="padding
"></div>
6341 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html
">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
6347 <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
6348 drain, and it is hard to fight against it. I try to do my best, but
6349 time is limited. I hope you do your best too. A few years ago I came
6350 across a marvellous drawing by
6351 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html
">Clay Bennett</a>
6352 visualising some of what is going on.
6354 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html
">
6355 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg
"></a></p>
6358 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
6359 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
6362 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport? I do not. Do you feel safe when
6363 you see a surveillance camera? I do not. Do you feel safe when you
6364 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions? I do not. I
6365 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
">the
6366 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
6367 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
6373 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>.
6378 <div class="padding
"></div>
6382 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html
">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
6388 <p>Thanks to a blog post by
6389 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/
2012/
10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html
">Eddy
6390 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
6391 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
6392 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
6393 <a href=
"http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
6394 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions
</a>, the producer
6395 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if
6396 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
6397 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
6398 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we
6399 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
6402 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
6403 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
6404 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
6405 health of its users. This caused the company behind the product,
6406 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
6407 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
6408 to argue its side.
</p>
6410 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
6411 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the
6412 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
6413 effect
</a> can make it rethink its strategy.
</p>
6415 <p>What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at
6416 <a href=
"http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
6417 victims of detoxification
</a>.
</p>
6423 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis
</a>.
6428 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6432 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?
</a>
6438 <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
6439 <a href=
"http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
6440 the computer science book collection available in his local
6441 library
</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
6442 computer books becoming obsolete so soon. That is part of the reason
6443 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
6444 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
6445 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
6446 computer classic from trash. And they need to know which one will
6447 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
6448 recently published books.
</p>
6450 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
6451 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
6452 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
6453 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess. Once, just
6454 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
6455 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
6456 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection. I
6457 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
6458 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
6459 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
6460 collection
</a>). I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
6461 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
6462 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
6463 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
6464 for the library that evening.
</p>
6466 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
6467 going to know that for example
6468 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
6469 Practice of Programming
</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
6470 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
6471 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
6472 the suggestions for books to get? I know they would love to hear from
6473 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
6474 book right away.
</p>
6480 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6485 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6489 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture
</a>
6495 <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian
<a
6496 href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
<a
6497 href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
6498 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
6499 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
6500 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
6503 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
6504 for volunteers
</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
6505 and progress is a bit slow. Anyway, today I broken the
70 percent
6506 mark for the first rough translation. At the moment, less than
700
6507 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate. With
6508 my current progress of
10-
20 strings per day, it will take a while to
6509 complete the translation. This graph show the updated progress:
</p>
6511 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
6513 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
6514 commitments. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
6515 the project files currently available from
6516 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
6518 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6520 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
6522 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
6523 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
6524 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6525 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
6531 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
6536 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6540 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda
</a>
6546 <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
6547 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
6548 community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is
6549 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
6550 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
6551 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
6552 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.
</p>
6554 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
6556 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
6557 in secondary (
15-
18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
6558 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
6559 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
6560 IT.
3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
6561 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
6562 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
6563 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
6564 training is anyway very important
</p>
6566 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
6567 <a href=
"http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school
</a> (secondary) is a very
6568 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
6569 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
6570 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
6572 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6573 project?
</strong></p>
6575 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
6576 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
6577 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
6578 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
6579 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
6582 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6585 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
6586 very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with
6587 the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
6588 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
6589 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
6590 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
6591 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
6592 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
6595 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6598 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
6599 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
6600 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
6601 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
6602 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
6603 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
6604 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
6605 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)
</p>
6607 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
6609 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
6610 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
6611 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
6612 <a href=
"http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus
</a>
6615 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
6616 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
6617 something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
6618 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.
</p>
6620 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6621 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
6623 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
6624 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
6625 just because they are normally not open to change.
</p>
6627 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
6628 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
6631 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
6632 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
6633 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had
20
6634 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
6635 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
6636 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
6637 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.
</p>
6643 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>.
6648 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6652 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec
</a>
6659 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
6660 codec made
</a> it into
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> as
6661 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716</a>, I had a look
6662 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
6663 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
6664 area. A non-"working group" mailing list
6665 <a href=
"https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec
</a>
6667 <a href=
"http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created
2012-
08-
20</a>. It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
6668 formal working group should be formed.
</p>
6670 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out. There is already
6671 <a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
6672 email from someone
</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
6673 participate in the ISO group. Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
6674 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
6675 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
6676 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
6677 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.
</p>
6679 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
6680 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
6687 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
6692 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6696 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus
</a>
6702 <p>Yesterday,
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> announced the
6704 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716, the Definition
6705 of the Opus Audio Codec
</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
6706 intended for both VoIP, film and music. This is the first time, as
6707 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec. In
6708 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC
3533</a>, IETF
6709 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
6710 royalty free container for audio, video and movies. I hope IETF will
6711 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
6712 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
6713 multimedia content on the Internet.
</p>
6715 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
6716 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
6717 free specifications. Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
6718 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.
</p>
6720 <p>Visit the
<a href=
"http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page
</a> if
6721 you want to learn more about the solution.
</p>
6727 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
6732 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6736 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
6743 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
6744 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
6745 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
6746 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
6747 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
6749 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
6750 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
6751 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
6752 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
6754 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
6755 PostScript formats at
6756 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
6757 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
6763 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
6768 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6772 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)
</a>
6778 <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
6779 <a href=
"http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
6780 have been forced to open Office
</a>, and it made me remember and
6781 revisit the great site
6782 <a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots
</a> which allow you
6783 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format. I
6784 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)
</p>
6790 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
6795 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6799 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture
</a>
6805 <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
6806 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
6807 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
6808 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
6809 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
6810 English book. It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
6811 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society. When the
6812 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
6813 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
6814 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law. This
6816 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
6817 for volunteers
</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
6818 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.
</p>
6820 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the
50% mark. Then more than
50% of
6821 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
6822 titles and index entries are also counted). All parts from the
6823 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated. So is
6824 chapters six, seven and the conclusion. I created a graph to show the
6827 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
6829 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
6830 entries into the docbook. They were missing with the docbook version
6831 I initially started with. There are still quite a few index entries
6832 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done. I
6833 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
6834 english version of the docbook source.
</p>
6836 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
6837 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
6838 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
6839 translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
6840 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
6841 around? I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
6842 me. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
6843 project files currently available from
<a
6844 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
6846 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6848 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
6850 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
6851 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
6852 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6853 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
6859 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
6864 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6868 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...
</a>
6874 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> one can specify
6875 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
6876 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
6877 also', 'index' etc. And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
6878 this work just fine. For example a German user can start the document
6879 with
<book
lang="de"
>, and the document will show up with the
6880 correct content with any of the docbook processors. This is not the
6881 case for the language
6882 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
6883 am working with at the moment
</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.
</p>
6885 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
6886 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
6887 all tools. I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
6888 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way. Some
6889 of them do not handle it at all.
</p>
6891 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
6892 this mess. Norwegian is not one, but two written variants. The
6893 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. There are three
6894 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
6895 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
6896 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
6897 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
6898 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
6899 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
6902 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian. The dblatex tool only
6903 understand 'nn'. There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
6904 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#
684391</a>), but due to a bug
6905 (BTS
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#
682936</a>) the 'no'
6906 language code is not recognised. The docbook-xsl tool chain only
6907 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The xmlto tool only recognise
6908 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The end result that there is no language
6909 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
6910 at the same time. :(
</p>
6912 <p>The correct solution is to use
<book
lang="nb"
>, but it will
6913 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
6916 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/
</p>
6922 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
6927 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6931 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?
</a>
6937 <p>I tried to send this text to the
6938 <a href=
"https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
6939 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org
</a>, but it only accept messages
6940 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
6941 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
6942 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
6945 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
6946 learning curve at the moment.
</p>
6948 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
6949 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
6950 docbook to handle the process. The files to build the book are
6952 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
6953 The book got around
400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
6954 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
6955 software docbook processors. My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
6958 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
6959 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
6960 formats. I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
6965 <li>Using dblatex, the
<part
> handling is not the way I want to,
6966 as
</part
> do not really end the
<part
>. (See
6967 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #
683166</a>), the
6968 xetex backend (needed to process UTF-
8) give incorrect hyphens in
6969 index references spanning several pages (See
6970 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #
682901</a>), and
6971 I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
6972 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #
682936</a>).
</li>
6974 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
6975 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
6978 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
6979 show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
6980 footnote and text body, see
6981 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #
683197</a>), and
6982 fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
6983 refs listed are not right).
</li>
6985 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.
</li>
6987 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
6988 index problems the xmlto + fop processing.
</li>
6992 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
6993 of this book? Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
6994 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?
</p>
6996 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?
</p>
7002 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
7007 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7011 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian -
5 chapters done,
74 percent left to do
</a>
7017 <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
7018 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
7019 norwegian version
</a> of the book
7020 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7021 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
7022 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six. The source files as well as a
7023 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
7024 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
7026 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
7027 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
7028 completely translated. This completes
26 percent of the number of
7029 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus
74
7030 percent left to translate. A graph of the progress is present at the
7031 bottom of the github project page. There is still room for more
7032 contributors. Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
7033 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
7036 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
7037 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
7044 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
7049 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7053 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
</a>
7059 <p>I am currently working on a
7060 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
7061 to translate
</a> the book
7062 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig
7063 to Norwegian. And the source we base our translation on is the
7064 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook
</a> version, to
7065 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
7066 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
7067 tagged. The source files of this project is available from
7068 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
7070 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
7071 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert. Is there a
7072 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
7073 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
7074 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book? This will provide a
7075 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
7076 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version. If you can and want
7077 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
7078 send pull requests with fixes. :)
</p>
7084 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
7089 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7093 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg
</a>
7099 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7100 Skolelinux
</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
7101 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
7102 country Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
7103 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
7104 to adjust and scale the just released
7105 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7106 Wheezy
</a> setup to his liking. He granted me an interview, and I am
7107 happy to share his answers with you here.
</p>
7109 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
7111 <p>I'm a
44 year old country guy that have been working
12 years at
7112 the same school as
50% IT-manager and
50% Teacher. My educational
7113 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
7114 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
7115 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
7116 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
7117 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
7118 perspective when working with IT.
</p>
7120 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7121 project?
</strong></p>
7123 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
7124 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
7125 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
7126 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
7127 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
7128 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
7130 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7133 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
7134 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
7135 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
7136 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
7137 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
7138 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
7139 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
7140 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
7141 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
7142 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
7143 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
7144 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
7145 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
7146 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
7147 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
7148 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
7149 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
7150 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
7151 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
7152 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
7153 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
7154 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
7157 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7160 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
7161 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
7162 year (
2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
7163 sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
7164 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
7165 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.
</p>
7167 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
7168 install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
7169 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
7170 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
7171 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
7172 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
7173 support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
7174 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
7175 need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
7176 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
7177 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
7178 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
7179 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
7180 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
7181 are done. This is important if you want to get a job.
</p>
7183 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
7184 magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
7185 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
7186 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
7187 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
7188 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
7189 edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
7190 there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.
</p>
7192 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
7193 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
7194 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
7195 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
7196 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
7197 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
7198 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
7199 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
7200 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
7201 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
7202 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
7203 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
7204 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
7207 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
7208 will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
7209 they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
7210 look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
7211 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
7212 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
7213 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
7214 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
7215 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.
</p>
7217 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
7219 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
7220 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
7221 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
7224 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7225 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
7227 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
7228 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
7229 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
7230 flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
7231 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
7232 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
7233 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
7234 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
7235 the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
7236 open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
7237 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
7238 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
7239 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
7240 desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
7241 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.
</p>
7243 <p>Update
2012-
07-
09 08:
30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
7244 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
7245 article
<a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
7246 management with Airtime
</a>,
7247 <a href=
"http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime
</a> which
7248 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
7249 <a href=
"http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell
</a> which claim to
7250 be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
7251 useful to the aspiring radio producer.
</p>
7257 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>.
7262 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7266 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?
</a>
7272 <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
7273 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
7274 in schools and municipalities. We provide what the happy users of
7275 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
7276 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution. I
7277 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
7278 Steinberg in his blog post
7279 "
<a href=
"http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
7280 you recognize the million pound chair?
</a>". Read it and weep for the
7281 spending of your tax money.</p>
7283 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
7284 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
7285 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
7286 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
7287 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
7294 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>.
7299 <div class="padding
"></div>
7303 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html
">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
7309 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu /
7310 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
7311 software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
7312 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
7313 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
7314 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
7315 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
7316 receive. The software is
7318 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/
">named FET</a>, and it provide a
7319 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
7320 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
7321 both teachers and students. It is available both for
7322 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html
">Linux, MacOSX and
7325 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html
">the
7326 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
7330 <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
7331 You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
7333 <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
7334 (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
7335 (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
7336 (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
7337 (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
7338 (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
7339 sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
7340 (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
7343 <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
7344 semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
7346 <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
7347 GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
7349 <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
7350 with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
7352 <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
7354 <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
7357 <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
7358 and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
7359 non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
7360 (as separate sets)</li>
7362 <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
7363 (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
7366 <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
7367 demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
7370 <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
7371 <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
7372 <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
7373 <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
7374 <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
7375 <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
7376 <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
7377 <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
7378 <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
7379 <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
7380 students sets for each activity. (it is possible
7381 also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
7383 <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
7384 <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
7387 <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
7389 <li>Break periods</li>
7392 <li>Not available periods</li>
7393 <li>Max/min days per week</li>
7394 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
7395 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
7396 <li>Min hours daily</li>
7397 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
7399 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
7402 <li>For students (sets):
7404 <li>Not available periods</li>
7405 <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
7406 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
7407 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
7408 <li>Min hours daily</li>
7409 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
7411 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
7414 <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
7416 <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
7417 <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
7418 <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
7419 <li>Min/max days between them</li>
7420 <li>End(s) students day</li>
7421 <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
7422 <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
7423 flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
7424 <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
7425 <li>Not overlapping</li>
7426 <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
7427 <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
7431 <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
7433 <li>Room not available periods</li>
7436 <li>Home room(s)</li>
7437 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
7438 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
7442 <li>For students (sets):
7444 <li>Home room(s)</li>
7445 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
7446 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
7449 <li>Preferred room(s):
7451 <li>For a subject</li>
7452 <li>For an activity tag</li>
7453 <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
7454 <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
7458 <li>For a set of activities:
7460 <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
7467 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
7468 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
7469 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
7470 manually, check it out.
7472 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
7473 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/
2012/
03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/
">a
7474 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
7475 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
7476 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos
">Debian Edu HowTo
7483 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>.
7488 <div class="padding
"></div>
7492 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html
">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
7498 <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a>
7499 project (Norwegian version of
7500 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> from
7501 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
7502 a problem with the municipalities using
7503 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/
">Zimbra</a>. When FiksGataMi send a
7504 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
7505 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
7506 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address. The intention is to make
7507 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
7508 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
7509 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
7510 Zimbra. Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
7511 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
7512 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
7513 the From: header.</p>
7515 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
7516 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
7517 problem. We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
7518 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
7519 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports. We have been in
7520 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
7521 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
7524 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
7525 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
7526 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
7527 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
7528 differently. Anyone know? Please let us know at
7529 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
7530 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
7536 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
7541 <div class="padding
"></div>
7545 <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>
7551 <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
7552 another interview with the people behind
7553 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
7554 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
7555 helpers from Spain. His effort was the reason we added support for
7556 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
7557 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
7558 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.html
">Debian Edu
7559 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
7561 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7563 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
7564 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
7567 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7568 project?</strong></p>
7570 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
7571 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
7572 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
7573 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
7575 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7578 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
7579 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
7580 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
7581 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
7583 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7586 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
7587 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
7588 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
7589 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
7590 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
7591 technologies in school.</p>
7593 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7595 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
7596 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/
">Geany</a> and
7597 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator
">Terminator</a>.</p>
7599 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7600 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7602 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
7603 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
7604 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
7605 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
7607 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
7608 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
7609 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
7611 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
7612 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
7613 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
7614 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
7615 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
7616 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
7617 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
7618 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
7625 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>.
7630 <div class="padding
"></div>
7634 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html
">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
7640 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
7641 <a href="http://www.uit.no/
">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
7642 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
7643 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
7644 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
7645 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
7646 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
7647 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
7648 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
7649 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
7650 missing in my book.</p>
7652 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
7653 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
7654 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
7655 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/
">Debconf
7656 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
7657 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/
">Petter's
7658 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
7664 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>.
7669 <div class="padding
"></div>
7673 <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>
7679 <p>During my work on
7680 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.nb.html
">Debian Edu
7681 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
7682 addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my
7683 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
7688 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
7689 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
7690 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
7691 system depend on tasksel tasks in
7692 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
7695 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
7696 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
7697 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
7698 at least try to enable it for these services:
7701 <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
7703 <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
7704 <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
7705 <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
7706 <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
7707 <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
7711 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
7712 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
7713 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
7714 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
7716 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made
7717 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
7718 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
7720 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
7721 touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is
7722 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
7723 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
7724 it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust
7725 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
7727 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
7728 time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
7729 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
7732 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
7733 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
7734 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
7736 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
7737 change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on
7738 paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require
7739 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
7741 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
7742 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
7743 familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
7744 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
7746 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
7747 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the
7748 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
7750 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
7751 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
7752 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
7754 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
7755 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was
7756 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
588968">BTS report
7757 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a
7758 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
7760 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
7763 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
7764 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
7765 <li>and probably more?</li>
7768 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is
7769 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
7770 examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
7771 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
7772 some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
7773 could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some
7774 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
7775 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
7778 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We
7779 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
7780 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
7783 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
7784 interesting educational packages. We should work on the package
7785 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
7786 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
7787 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
7789 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
7790 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
7791 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
7792 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should
7793 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
7794 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.
</li>
7796 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
7797 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
7798 There are at least three implementations,
7799 <a href=
"italc.sourceforge.net/">italc
</a>,
7800 <a href=
"http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula
</a> og
7801 <a href=
"http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes
</a> and we should pick one of
7802 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is
7803 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
7804 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
7807 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
7808 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
7809 the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should
7810 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
7811 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
7812 configuration and data with the central server. This should be
7817 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
7824 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>.
7829 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7833 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience
</a>
7839 <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
7840 <a href=
"http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
7841 with face recognition
</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
7842 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
7843 recognition on the TV image itself. It could let the viewer know who
7844 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
7845 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
7846 evaluate what is being said and done. That would be a feature I would
7847 be willing to pay for.
</p>
7849 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
7850 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
7851 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
7852 <a href=
"http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
7859 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
7864 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7868 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status
</a>
7875 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
7876 reported how to get
</a> the support status out of Dell using an
7877 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
7878 <a href=
"http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
7879 by Daniel De Marco in february
</a>. Combined with my web scraping
7880 code for HP, Dell and IBM
7881 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
7882 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
7883 <a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
7884 web service
</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
7885 support status and get a machine readable result back.
</p>
7887 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
7891 % GET
<a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=
2v1xwn1
</a>
7892 supportstatus({"servicetag": "
2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "
2013-
11-
24", "shipped": "
2010-
11-
24", "scrapestamputc": "
2012-
06-
06T20:
26:
56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://
143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
7896 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
7897 support for other vendors. The python source is available on
7898 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.
</p>
7904 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
7909 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7913 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
</a>
7919 <p>Back in
2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
7920 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
7921 mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
7922 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
7923 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7924 Squeeze
</a> version.
</p>
7926 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
7928 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am
38 years old and live near Kiel,
7929 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
7930 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
7933 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
7934 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
7935 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
7936 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
7937 becoming an osteopath.
</p>
7939 <p>Starting in
2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
7940 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
7941 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
7942 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
7943 skills with communication skills.
</p>
7945 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7946 project?
</strong></p>
7948 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
7949 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
7950 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
7951 people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
7952 distributions that target being used for school networks.
</p>
7954 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
7955 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
7956 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between
12/
2010 and
03/
2011 we
7957 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
7958 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
7959 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
7960 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
7961 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
7962 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
</p>
7964 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
7965 people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
7966 protection experts, other IT professionals.
</p>
7968 <p>We came to two conclusions:
</p>
7970 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
7971 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
7972 by
100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
7973 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
7974 IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
7975 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
7976 possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
7977 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
7978 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
7979 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
7982 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
7983 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
7984 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
7985 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
7986 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
7987 tries to provide an approach for this.
</p>
7989 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
7990 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
7991 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
7992 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
7993 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
7996 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
7997 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
7998 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
7999 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
8000 non-existent until
2010/
2011.
</p>
8002 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
8003 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
8004 avoidance do exist.
</p>
8006 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
8007 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
8008 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
8009 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
8010 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
8011 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
8012 and probably a gain for all.
</p>
8014 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8017 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
8018 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
8019 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
8020 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
8021 project communication, honest communication within the group of
8022 developers, etc.
</p>
8024 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8027 <p>Every coin has two sides:
</p>
8029 <p>Technically:
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
8030 #
311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
8031 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
8032 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
8033 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
8034 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
8037 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
8038 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
8039 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
8040 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
8041 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
8042 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
8043 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
8044 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
8045 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
8046 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
8048 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
8050 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
</p>
8052 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
8053 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
8054 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
</p>
8056 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In
2010 I started the
8057 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
8058 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
8059 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
</p>
8061 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
8062 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
8063 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
8064 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
8067 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
</p>
8069 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8070 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
8072 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
8079 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>.
8084 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8088 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status
</a>
8094 <p>A few years ago I wrote
8095 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
8096 to extract support status
</a> for your Dell and HP servers. Recently
8097 I have learned from colleges here at the
8098 <a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> that Dell have
8099 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service. Given
8100 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
8101 readable information about the support status. This perl code
8102 demonstrate how to do it:
</p>
8109 my $GUID = '
11111111-
1111-
1111-
1111-
111111111111';
8111 my $servicetag = $ARGV[
0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
8112 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
8114 -
> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
8115 -
> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
8116 -
> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
8118 my $a = $s-
>GetAssetInformation(
8119 SOAP::Data-
>name('guid')-
>value($GUID)-
>type(''),
8120 SOAP::Data-
>name('applicationName')-
>value($App)-
>type(''),
8121 SOAP::Data-
>name('serviceTags')-
>value($servicetag)-
>type(''),
8123 print Dumper($a -
> result) ;
8126 <p>The output can look like this:
</p>
8132 'EntitlementData' =
> [
8134 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
8135 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
8137 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
8141 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
8142 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
8144 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
8148 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
8149 'EndDate' =
> '
2007-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
8151 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
8156 'AssetHeaderData' =
> {
8157 'SystemModel' =
> 'GX620',
8158 'ServiceTag' =
> '
8DSGD2J',
8159 'SystemShipDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T19:
00:
00-
05:
00',
8161 'Region' =
> 'Europe',
8162 'SystemID' =
> 'PLX_GX620',
8163 'SystemType' =
> 'OptiPlex'
8169 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
8171 <a href=
"http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
8172 documentation
</a>, and according to
8173 <a href=
"http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
8174 comment
</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
8175 scraping HTML pages. :)
</p>
8177 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service. If
8178 you know of one, drop me an email. :)
</p>
8184 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8189 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8193 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug
</a>
8199 <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
8200 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug
</a> arrived in the
8201 mail, and I've had a few days to test it. As all my machines are
8202 running Debian Squeeze, where
8203 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
8204 calibration software
</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
8205 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD. This worked
8206 just fine. So far I have only done the quick calibration. It was
8207 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
8210 <p>After calibration, I get a
8211 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
8212 profile
</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
8213 tools. KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
8214 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
8215 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
8216 monitor setups. But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
8217 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
8218 monitor. After searching a bit, I
8219 <a href=
"http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered
</a>
8220 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
8224 dispwin -d
1 profile.icc
8227 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor. The
8228 result was a bit more pink than I expected. I guess I picked the
8229 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
8236 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8241 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8245 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter
</a>
8251 <p>In
2003, a German teacher showed up on the
8252 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
8253 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
8254 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
8255 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
8256 since then, helping to make sure the
8257 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8258 Squeeze
</a> release became as good as it is..
</p>
8260 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
8262 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
8263 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past
12
8264 years (since
2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
8265 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
8266 O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
8267 our computer network.
</p>
8269 <p>Now, in my early
40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
8270 spare time together with my wife, our son (
3 years) and our daughter
8273 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8274 project?
</strong></p>
8276 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
8277 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
8278 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
8279 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
8280 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt,
2005 (IIRC). Few
8281 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
8282 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
8283 than
7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
8284 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
8285 approximately
50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
8286 locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
8287 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
8288 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
8289 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.
</p>
8291 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8294 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
8295 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
8296 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
8297 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
8298 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
8299 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
8300 labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
8301 administration costs tend towards zero.
</p>
8303 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8306 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
8307 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
8308 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
8309 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
8310 office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
8311 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
8312 capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
8313 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
8314 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
8315 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
8316 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
8317 i.e. harder to understand for novices.
</p>
8319 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
8321 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
8322 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
8323 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)
</p>
8325 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8326 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
8330 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
8331 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
8332 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
8335 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
8336 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
8337 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
8338 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
8339 share among German Skolelinux schools.
</li>
8341 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
8342 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
8343 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
</li>
8345 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
8346 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
8347 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
8348 shared world wide (school books e.g.).
</li>
8350 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
8351 office suites is much above
20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
8352 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
</li>
8354 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
</li>
8356 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
8357 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
8358 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
8359 keep sending documents in ODF formats.
</li>
8367 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>.
8372 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8376 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML
</a>
8382 <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
8383 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
8384 government. I just sent him an email to let him know that his
8385 assumption are most likely wrong. Sharing it here in case some of my
8386 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.
</p>
8388 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi. I just noted your
8389 <a href=
"http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-
500-million/index.htm
</a>
8392 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
8393 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
8394 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard
" as claimed by the
8395 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
8396 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
8399 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated. I believe it is
8400 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around
2007,
8401 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
8402 at the content. In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
8403 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
8404 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
8405 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
8406 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
8407 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver. In
8408 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
8409 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
8410 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not
20 minutes
8411 of wasted effort.
</p>
8413 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
8414 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending
10
8415 minutes converting to ODF. :)
</p>
8418 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php
</a>
8420 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php
</a>
8421 for background information. Norwegian only, sorry. :)
</p>
8428 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
8433 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8437 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration
</a>
8444 <a href=
"http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
8445 the ColorHug
</a>, a USB dongle from
8446 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski
</a> to calibrate
8447 the color on a computer screen. The software required is
8448 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
8449 in Debian
</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
8450 batch. Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
8451 opportunity to order. Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
8452 delivery. I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
8453 should go in the mail on monday. :)
</p>
8455 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
8456 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
8463 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8468 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8472 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner
</a>
8478 <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
8479 publish another interview with the people behind
8480 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>.
8481 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
8482 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
8483 details get right before release.
8485 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
8487 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm
49 years old and living in
8488 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly
20 years as
8489 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
8490 international company for machinery and equipment. Since
2011 I'm a
8491 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
8492 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
8493 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
8494 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.
</p>
8496 <p>My first contact with linux was around
1993. Since that time I used
8497 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
8498 home since
2006.
</p>
8500 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8501 project?
</strong></p>
8503 <p>Once a day in the early year of
2001 when I wanted to fetch my
8504 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
8505 middle of
20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
8506 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
8507 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
8508 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".
</p>
8510 <p>Some weeks later every of the
10 classrooms had one computer
8511 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
8512 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
8513 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
8514 and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
8515 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
8516 building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
8517 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
8518 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
8519 costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
8520 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
8521 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
8522 prerelease
32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
8523 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
8524 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
8525 Bielefeld in December of
2006.
</p>
8527 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8530 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
8531 for me as today.
</p>
8533 <p>In the past there were advantages like:
</p>
8537 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
8538 they had little money to spent for computers and software.
</li>
8540 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
8543 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
8544 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
8545 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
8546 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
8549 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
8554 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
8555 came up in this way:
</p>
8559 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
8562 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
8563 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
8564 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.
</li>
8566 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
8567 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
8568 interfaces used in the past.
</li>
8570 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
8571 different needs.
</li>
8573 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.
</li>
8575 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
8576 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
8577 is sharing knowledge and minds.
</li>
8579 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
8580 solved today by Debian Edu.
</li>
8584 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8589 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
8590 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
8591 whole municipality areas.
</li>
8593 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
8594 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
8597 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.
</li>
8601 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
8603 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
8604 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
8605 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
8606 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
8607 need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
8608 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.
</p>
8610 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
8611 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
8612 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
8613 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
8614 and the whole family. I probably forgot something.
</p>
8616 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8617 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
8619 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
8620 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
8621 countries and areas all over the world.
</p>
8627 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>.
8632 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8636 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job
</a>
8642 <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
8643 <img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
8645 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
8646 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
8647 But the last ones have not really been up to the task. My last
8648 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
8649 time, and cutting my head took forever. And the one before that did
8650 not work very well either. We have looked for something better for a
8651 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
8652 discovered that there are indeed better tools available. But these
8653 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers". The hair saloons
8654 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
8655 companies. The models they sell, are very different from the ones
8656 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal. The main difference is their
8657 efficiency. It would cut my hair in
5 minutes, instead of the
30-
40
8658 minutes required by my impotent Braun. The hairdresser I visited had
8659 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
8660 producer. But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.
</p>
8662 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it. This was not
8663 straight forward. The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
8664 did not want to sell anything to me. But searching for the model on
8665 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
8666 around NOK
4000,-. This was a bit much. We kept searching and
8667 finally found a Danish supplier
8668 <a href=
"http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
8669 it for around NOK
1800,-
</a>. We ordered one, and it arrived a few
8672 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for
8 hours when we started
8673 to use it, so we left it charging over night. Normally it will only
8674 need one hour to charge. The following evening we successfully tested
8675 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
8676 cutter. The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
8683 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8688 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8692 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video? What do you mean?
</a>
8698 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
8699 article today
</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
8700 <a href=
"http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke
</a> reports
8701 that the video editor application included with
8702 <a href=
"http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
8703 X
</a> have some quite surprising terms of use. The article is mostly
8704 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
8707 "
<a href=
"http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
8708 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
8709 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.
</a>"
8712 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
8715 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
8716 commercially. Although I can ONLY use them privately.
"
8719 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
8720 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
8721 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html
">discovered
8722 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>. The HTC One X specification specifies that
8723 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
8725 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues
">Adaptive
8726 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
8727 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
8728 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/
">VoiceAge</a>. MP4 is
8729 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H
.264/MPEG-
4_AVC#Patent_licensing
">MPEG4 with
8730 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
8731 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/
">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
8733 <p>I know why I prefer
8734 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and open
8735 standards</a> also for video.</p>
8741 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
8746 <div class="padding
"></div>
8750 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html
">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
8756 <p>Here in Norway, the
8757 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=
339"> Ministry of
8758 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
8759 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder
">directory of
8760 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
8761 government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made
8762 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
8763 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
8764 to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete
8765 on the same level.</p>
8767 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
8768 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing
">Reasonable
8769 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
8770 directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
8771 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
8772 implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
8773 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
8774 willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In
8775 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
8776 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By
8777 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
8778 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
8779 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
8780 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
8781 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
8782 to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result
8783 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
8784 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
8786 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
8787 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
8788 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free
8789 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
8790 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
8791 in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
8792 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
8793 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
8795 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
8797 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2010/
11/rand-not-so-reasonable/
">RAND:
8798 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
8800 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
8801 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm
">blog
8802 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
8803 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I
8804 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
8805 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder
">the
8806 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
8807 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
8808 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
8814 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
8819 <div class="padding
"></div>
8823 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html
">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
8829 <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and
8830 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
8831 setting together all the pieces. This time I present to you Andreas
8832 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
8833 years. He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
8834 up in the recently released
8835 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze
">Debian
8836 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8838 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8840 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
8841 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
8842 Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
8843 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
8844 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
8845 information technology and science/technology.</p>
8847 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8848 project?</strong></p>
8850 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
8851 project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
8852 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
8855 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8858 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
8859 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
8862 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8865 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
8866 downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
8867 setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
8868 possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
8869 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
8870 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
8871 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
8873 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN
">Debian LAN</a>
8874 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
8876 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8878 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
8879 on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
8880 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
8881 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
8883 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8884 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8886 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
8887 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
8888 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
8889 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
8890 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
8891 free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
8892 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.
</p>
8894 <p>To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
8895 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
8896 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
8897 the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
8898 "Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
8899 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
8900 fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
8901 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.
</p>
8907 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>.
8912 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8916 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye
</a>
8922 <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
8923 like
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>,
8924 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
8926 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
8927 Edu Squeeze release manual
</a>.
8929 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
8931 <p>I'm a
44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
8932 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.
</p>
8934 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8935 project?
</strong></p>
8937 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
8938 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
8939 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
8940 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
8941 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
8944 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8947 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8950 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
8951 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
8952 education system.
</p>
8954 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
8955 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
8956 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
8957 money on the latest hardware.
</p>
8959 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
8961 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
8962 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
8963 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).
</p>
8965 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8966 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
8968 <p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
8969 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
8970 you would hardly need a strategy.
</p>
8976 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>.
8981 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8985 <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>
8991 <p>Recently I have spent time with
8992 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a> on speeding
8993 up a
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
8994 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
8995 process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
8996 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
8997 due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
8998 the Multimedia menu would cause more than
20 000 IP packages to be
8999 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
9001 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
9002 ping times between the client and the server were in the range
2-
20
9003 ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
9004 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
9005 the source of these NFS calls are access(
2) system calls for
9006 non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(
2) calls to find
9007 one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
9008 around
230 access(
2) calls.
</p>
9010 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
9011 directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
9012 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
9013 and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
9014 mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
9015 requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
9016 <a href=
"https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
9017 from
2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.
</p>
9019 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
9020 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
9021 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
9022 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
9023 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
9024 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
9025 for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
9026 one icon from several hundred to less than
5, and make the KDE menu
9027 almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
9028 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.
</p>
9030 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
9031 and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
9032 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
9033 that is not really an option at the moment.
</p>
9035 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
9036 (at) lists.debian.org.
</p>
9042 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>.
9047 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9051 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News
</a>
9057 <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
9058 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a> by
9059 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
9060 non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
9061 for schools. Check out his article
9062 <a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
9063 distribution for education
</a> if you want to learn more.
</p>
9069 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>.
9074 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9078 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer
</a>
9084 <p>Germany is a core area for the
9085 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
9086 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
9087 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
9089 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
9091 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
9092 Bochum, Germany. Since
1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
9093 "
<a href=
"http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
9094 Dortmund
</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
9095 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
9096 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
9097 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
9098 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
9100 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
9101 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
9102 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
9103 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
9104 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
9105 the end of April this year.</p>
9107 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9108 project?</strong></p>
9110 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
9111 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
9112 Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
9113 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
9114 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
9115 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
9116 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
9117 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
9118 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
9119 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
9122 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
9123 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
9124 clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
9125 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
9126 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
9127 the admin teachers.</p>
9129 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9132 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
9133 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
9134 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
9136 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
9137 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
9138 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
9139 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
9140 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
9142 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9147 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9149 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
9150 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
9151 Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
9154 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9155 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9157 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
9158 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
9159 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
9165 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>.
9170 <div class="padding
"></div>
9174 <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>
9180 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
9182 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
9183 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
9184 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
9185 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
9186 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
9187 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/
38601767">vimeo</a>
9189 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg
9190 Theora</a> file. Check it out below.</p>
9192 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie
" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
9193 <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
"' />
9194 <p>Download video as
9195 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg</a>.</p>
9202 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>.
9207 <div class="padding
"></div>
9211 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html
">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
9217 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9218 users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
9219 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/
2012/
03/msg00001.html
">the
9220 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
9221 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
9223 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9225 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
9226 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
9227 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
9228 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
9229 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
9230 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
9231 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
9234 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9235 project?</strong></p>
9237 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
9238 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
9239 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
9240 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
9241 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
9242 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
9243 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
9244 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
9245 these things we decided to try it.</p>
9247 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9250 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
9251 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
9252 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
9253 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
9254 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
9255 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about
25
9256 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
9257 proprietary software everywhere.
</p>
9259 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9262 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
9263 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
9264 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
9265 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
9266 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!
</p>
9268 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
9270 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
9271 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
9272 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
9273 use Ubuntu and an Android
4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
9276 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9277 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
9279 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
9280 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
9281 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
9282 applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
9283 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
9284 XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
9285 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
9286 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
9287 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
9288 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
9289 first
10,
000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in
2 hours.
</p>
9291 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
9292 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
9293 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.
</p>
9299 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>.
9304 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9308 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu
</a>
9314 <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
9315 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
9316 translated versions in sync. To do this we have come up with what we
9317 believe is a very efficient work flow.
</p>
9321 <li>The documentation is written in a
9322 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki
</a> (see for example
9323 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
9324 Squeeze release manual
</a>) with support for exporting the content as
9327 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
9328 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
9329 with the translated text.
</li>
9331 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
9332 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed. They can
9333 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
9334 the translation. There is even a system in place to handle translated
9337 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
9338 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.
</li>
9340 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
9341 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.
</li>
9345 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues. The biggest
9346 issue is that
<a href=
"http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
9347 we use in moinmoin
</a> is not actively maintained. The docbook
9348 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
9349 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.
</p>
9351 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
9352 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
9359 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>.
9364 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9368 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!
</a>
9374 <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
9375 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> based
9376 on Debian/Squeeze. The full announcement is
9377 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available
</a>
9378 from the project announcement list. Now is a good time to test if it
9379 you have not done so already.
</p>
9381 <p>I plan to present the new version at
9382 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
9383 meeting
</a> on tuesday. I look forward to seeing you there if you are
9384 in Oslo, Norway.
</p>
9390 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>.
9395 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9399 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker
</a>
9405 <p>Inspired by
<a href=
"http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
9406 interview series
</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
9407 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9408 community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
9409 more international audience.
</p>
9411 <p>While
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
9412 Skolelinux
</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
9413 Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
9414 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
9415 and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
9416 work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
9417 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
9420 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
9422 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
9423 and we have three lovely children, aged
15,
14 and
4(!) I am the IT
9424 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
9425 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
9426 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
9427 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
9428 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
9429 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
9430 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
9431 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
9432 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.
</p>
9434 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9435 project?
</strong></p>
9437 <p>In around
2004 or
5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
9438 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
9439 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
9440 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
9441 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
9442 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
9443 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
9444 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
9445 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
9446 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
9447 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
9448 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
9449 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.
</p>
9451 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9454 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
9455 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
9456 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
9457 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
9458 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
9459 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
9462 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9465 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
9466 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
9467 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
9468 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
9469 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
9470 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
9471 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
9472 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
9473 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
9474 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
9475 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
9476 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
9477 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
9478 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
9481 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
9483 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
9484 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
9485 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
9486 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
9487 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
9488 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
9489 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
9490 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
9491 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
9492 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
9493 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.
</p>
9495 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9496 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
9498 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
9499 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
9500 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
9501 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
9502 file formats and Word than they did
5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
9503 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
9504 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
9505 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
9506 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
9507 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
9508 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
9509 doesn't play flash, for example.
</p>
9515 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>.
9520 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9524 <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>
9530 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
9532 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
9533 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
9534 Debian Edu Squeeze. The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
9535 also available from
<a href=
"http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo
</a> and
9537 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
9538 Theora
</a> file. Check it out below.
</p>
9540 <p><video id=
"gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width=
"256" height=
"184" preload controls
>
9541 <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"'
/>
9542 <p>Download video as
9543 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
</a>.
</p>
9550 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>.
9555 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9559 <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>
9565 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
9566 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9567 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement is
9568 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available
</a>
9569 from the project announcement list. Check it out if you
9570 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
9576 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>.
9581 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9585 <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>
9591 <p>Many years ago, the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9592 / Debian Edu project
</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
9593 for making stop motion movies. The proposal came from a teacher
9594 needing such tool on Skolelinux. The project, called "stopmotion",
9595 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
9596 national aware with this great project. The project was initiated and
9597 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
9598 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad. They got in touch with people at Aardman
9599 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
9600 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
9601 animators around the globe. But as is usual after studying, both got
9602 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
9603 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now. Until last
9606 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
9607 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
9609 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion
</a>.
9610 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
9611 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
9612 mean). I've been following
9613 <a href=
"https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
9614 mailing list
</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
9615 the future is encouraging. If you want to make stop motion movies.
9616 Check it out. :)
</p>
9622 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>.
9627 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9631 <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>
9637 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
9638 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9639 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement did for some
9640 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
9641 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available
</a>
9642 from the Debian development announcement list. Check it out if you
9643 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
9649 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>.
9654 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9658 <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>
9664 <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
9665 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
9666 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
9667 on Squeeze. The full announcement is
9668 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available
</a>
9669 on the project announcement list. Check it out if you need a software
9670 solution for your school.
</p>
9676 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>.
9681 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9685 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail
</a>
9691 <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems. Thanks to Linux
9692 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
9693 <a href=
"http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
9694 close
</a> this summer :). But once a disk is starting to behave
9695 funny, a practical problem present itself. How to get from the Linux
9696 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
9697 the disk when the computer is turned off? In my case I have SATA
9698 disks with a unique ID printed on the label. All I need is a way to
9699 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.
</p>
9701 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
9702 <a href=
"http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
9703 that hdparm -I
</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
9704 printed on the disk label. The following (almost) one-liner can be
9705 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:
</p>
9708 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
9710 printf "Failed disk $d: "
9711 hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
9715 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
9716 next time, and in case other find it useful.
</p>
9718 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(
</p>
9721 Failed disk sdd1: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
9722 Failed disk sdd2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
9723 Failed disk sde2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1840589
9726 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
9727 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
9728 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
9729 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label. The vendor
9730 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
9731 mounted inside my box.
</p>
9733 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
9734 Software RAID in the
9735 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard
</a>
9736 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
9737 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail. At the moment
9738 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
9739 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
9740 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.
</p>
9746 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid
</a>.
9751 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9755 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
9761 <p>New in the Squeeze version of
9762 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is the
9763 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
9764 based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
9765 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from
<tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat
</tt>, to
9766 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
9767 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
9768 change the global proxy setting by editing
9769 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat
</tt> and the change propagate
9770 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.
</p>
9772 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
9773 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
9774 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):
</p>
9777 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
9779 if (!isResolvable(host) ||
9780 isPlainHostName(host) ||
9781 dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
9784 return "PROXY webcache:
3128; DIRECT";
9788 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:
</p>
9791 http_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
9792 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
9795 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
9796 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
9798 <tt><a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/
</a></tt>,
9799 and insert this extracted proxy URL in
<tt>/etc/environment
</tt> and
9800 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf
</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
9801 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
9802 javascript code is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
9803 able to build
</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
9804 library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
9805 is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
9806 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
9807 known alternative is known at the moment.
</p>
9809 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
9810 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
9811 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
9812 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
9813 feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
9814 announced, direct connections will be used instead.
</p>
9816 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
9817 or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
9818 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
9819 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
9820 distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
9821 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
9822 first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
9823 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
9824 the network setup changes.
</p>
9826 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
9827 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
9829 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
9830 page
</a> for those that want to learn more.
</p>
9836 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>.
9841 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9845 <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>
9851 <p>Since the Lenny version of
9852 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, a
9853 feature to save power have been included. It is as simple as it is
9854 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
9855 in the morning. This is done using the
9856 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night
</a> Debian package.
</p>
9858 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
9859 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts. For Debian Edu, this is done in
9860 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
9861 every hour from
16:
00 until
06:
00 to see if the machine is unused, and
9862 shut it down if it is. If the hardware in question is supported by
9864 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup
</a>
9865 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around
07:
00 +-
9866 10 minutes. If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
9867 try to turn on the client. The wake-on-lan option is only documented
9868 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.
</p>
9870 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
9871 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
9872 the common setup for a classroom. The nvram-wakeup method only work
9873 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock. I've seen old
9874 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
9875 starting from
0 (or was it
1990?) every boot. If you have one of
9876 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.
</p>
9878 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
9879 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment. For those without a
9880 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
9881 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night
</tt> to enable it.
9882 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?
</p>
9888 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>.
9893 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9897 <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>
9903 <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
9904 publish the third beta version of
9905 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
9906 on Squeeze. If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
9907 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
9908 installing new machines, check it out. If you need a software
9909 solution for your school, check it out too. The full announcement is
9910 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available
</a>
9911 on the project announcement list.
</p>
9913 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
9914 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):
</p>
9918 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
9919 10.0.0.0/
8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
9920 the installation.
</li>
9922 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
9923 Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.
</li>
9925 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
9926 disabled queues are restarted every hour. This should cut down on
9927 the amount of manual administration needed for printers.
</li>
9929 <li>The set of initial users have been changed. Now a personal user
9930 for the local system administrator is created during installation
9931 instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
9932 and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
9933 membership. This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
9934 up to date on the system.
</li>
9938 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
9939 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home. I will use it look
9940 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
9941 final Squeeze release is published.
</p>
9943 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
9944 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
9945 gathering
</a> in Oslo. We will continue the work on the Squeeze
9946 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version. Perhaps I
9947 will see you there?
</p>
9953 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>.
9958 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9962 <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>
9968 <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
9969 This is the sad fact of todays computers. In the next version of
9970 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
9971 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
9972 firmware blobs easier to handle. The common use case I run into is a
9973 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
9974 work, but there are other use cases as well.
</p>
9976 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
9977 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
9978 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
9979 during installation. This take care firmware for network devices used
9980 by the installer when installing from from local media. But for
9981 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
9982 not taken care of by this.
</p>
9984 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
9985 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware
</tt> which
9986 search through the
<tt>dmesg
</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
9987 firmware. The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
9988 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
9989 the requested firmware file(s) is installed. I have proposed to do
9990 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
9991 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#
655507</a>), to allow PXE
9992 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better. Run the
9993 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
9994 firmware packages.
</p>
9996 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
9997 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
9998 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
9999 included to be able to install at all. To fill the PXE installation
10000 initrd with extra firmware, the
10001 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware
</tt> script is
10002 provided. Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
10003 PXE initrd with firmware packages.
</p>
10005 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
10006 network cards working. For this,
10007 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware
</tt> is
10008 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs. It is used
10009 the same way as the other firmware related tools.
</p>
10011 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation. We
10012 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
10013 non-free software, and it is their choice.
</p>
10015 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend. You might want to give it a
10022 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>.
10027 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10029 <div class=
"entry">
10030 <div class=
"title">
10031 <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>
10037 <p>The next version of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
10038 / Skolelinux
</a> will include a new tool
10039 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp
</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
10040 the computers in a school without much manual labour. Here is a short
10041 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.
</p>
10043 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
10044 central server in the network. Next, PXE boot all the client machines
10045 as thin clients and wait
5 minutes after the last client booted to
10046 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server. When
10047 this is done, log on to the central server and run
10048 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
</tt> in the
<tt>konsole
</tt> to use the
10049 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP. The output
10050 will look similar to this:
</p>
10052 <p><blockquote><pre>
10053 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
10054 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [
10.0.2.2] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
05.
10055 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.
10057 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
10059 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10060 enter password: *******
10062 </pre></blockquote></p>
10064 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
10065 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
10066 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
10067 automatically generated names. The final step to set up the school is
10068 then to log into
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa
</a>,
10069 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
10070 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
10071 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems. All clients that should be used
10072 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
10073 group. After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
10074 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
10077 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
10078 enabled this weekend. You might want to give it a try.
</p>
10080 <p>Update
2012-
01-
28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
10081 hosts, one need to add the option -a. I forgot to mention this in my
10082 original text, and have added it to the text now.
</p>
10088 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>.
10093 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10095 <div class=
"entry">
10096 <div class=
"title">
10097 <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>
10103 <p>In the Squeeze version of
10104 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> soon
10105 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
10106 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
10107 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP. In
10108 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
10109 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
10112 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
10113 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
10114 default content. By changing this value to another URL, all users get
10115 to see the page behind this new URL.
</p>
10117 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool. It can be
10118 called as "
<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'
</tt>' to update LDAP with the
10121 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
10122 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
10123 from within Iceweasel instead.
</p>
10129 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>.
10134 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10136 <div class=
"entry">
10137 <div class=
"title">
10138 <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>
10144 <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
10145 the second beta version of
10146 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>. If
10147 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
10148 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
10149 machines, check it out. If you need a software solution for your
10150 school, check it out too. The full announcement is
10151 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available
</a>
10152 on the project announcement list.
</p>
10158 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>.
10163 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10165 <div class=
"entry">
10166 <div class=
"title">
10167 <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>
10173 <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
10174 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> ready
10175 for release. The initial problem I looked at was particularly
10178 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
10179 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
10180 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
10181 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
10182 scratch. I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
10183 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
10184 wrap up its tasks.
</p>
10186 <p>Eventually the cause was found. The kernel was simply running out
10187 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
10188 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
10189 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
10190 because I was typing.
</P>
10192 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
10193 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
10194 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
10195 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
10196 generate some disk IO. Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
10197 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
10198 generate entropy.
</p>
10201 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
10202 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a> version, and we
10203 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
10204 developers
</a>. We plan to release beta2 this weekend.
</p>
10210 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>.
10215 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10217 <div class=
"entry">
10218 <div class=
"title">
10219 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
10225 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
10226 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
10227 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
10228 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
10229 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
10230 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
10231 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
10232 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
10233 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
10234 the tools to do so.
</p>
10236 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
10237 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
10238 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
10239 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
10241 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
10242 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
10243 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
10244 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
10245 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
10246 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
10247 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
10248 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
10250 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
10251 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
10252 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
10258 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
10260 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
10261 my %rhelmodules = (
10262 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
10264 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
10265 eval "use $module;";
10267 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
10268 system("yum install -y $pkg");
10269 eval "use $module;";
10273 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
10279 sub run_firmware_script {
10280 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
10282 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
10285 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
10287 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
10288 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
10290 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
10294 sub run_firmware_scripts {
10295 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
10296 # Run firmware packages
10297 for my $dir (@dirs) {
10298 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
10299 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
10300 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
10301 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
10302 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
10310 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
10311 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
10316 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
10319 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
10321 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
10322 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
10324 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
10328 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
10329 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
10330 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
10331 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
10334 for my $url (@paths) {
10335 fetch_dell_fw($url);
10337 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
10339 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
10340 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
10344 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
10345 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
10349 sub fetch_dell_fw {
10351 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
10355 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
10356 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
10357 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
10358 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
10359 my $filename = shift;
10361 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
10363 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
10365 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
10367 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
10369 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
10370 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
10371 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
10373 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
10374 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
10376 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
10378 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
10380 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
10383 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
10384 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
10386 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
10387 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
10389 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
10390 for my $path (@paths) {
10391 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
10392 push(@paths, $cpath);
10400 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
10401 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
10402 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
10403 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
10410 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
10415 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10417 <div class=
"entry">
10418 <div class=
"title">
10419 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?
</a>
10425 <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
10426 publishing houses how to handle electronic books. Surprisingly, the
10427 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
10428 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
10429 publishing houses. Time limited renting (
2-
3 years) is one proposed
10430 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
10431 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
10434 <p>Anyway, while reading
<a href=
"http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
10435 this debate
</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
10436 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
10437 to a better model. The idea is simple:
</p>
10439 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
10440 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
10441 solution to hand out free e-books. As a start, the books distributed
10442 by
<a href=
"http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg
</a> (about
10443 36,
000 books),
<a href=
"http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg
</a>
10444 (
1149 books) and
<a href=
"http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
10445 Internet Archive
</a> (
3,
033,
748 books) could be included, but any book
10446 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
10449 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:
</p>
10453 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
10454 other relevant equipment.
</li>
10456 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.
</li>
10460 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
10461 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
10462 visiting the library. The site would be the distribution point for
10463 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
10464 books available.
</p>
10466 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this? I guess it would
10467 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
10474 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
10479 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10481 <div class=
"entry">
10482 <div class=
"title">
10483 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage
</a>
10486 17th September
2011
10489 <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
10490 server. It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
10491 movie collection easily available. It also make it possible to let
10492 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
10493 down. I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
10494 subtitle options intact. It also ensure that the entire film is one
10495 file on the disk. As this is for personal use, the ripping is
10496 perfectly legal here in Norway.
</p>
10498 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:
</p>
10502 # apt-get install lsdvd
10503 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
10504 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=
1M
10505 </pre></blockquote>
10507 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
10508 been looking for a better alternative. I have no idea why this I/O
10509 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
10510 something fishy with the DVDs in question. Or perhaps all three.
</p>
10512 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
10513 genisoimage. This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
10514 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
10519 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
10521 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
10522 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
10523 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
10524 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
10525 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
10526 </pre></blockquote>
10528 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?
</p>
10530 <p>Update
2011-
09-
18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
10531 readom program from the wodim package. It is specially written to
10532 read optical media, and is called like this:
<tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
10533 f=image.iso
</tt>. It got
6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
10534 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.
</p>
10536 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
10537 <a href=
"http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
10538 program python-dvdvideo
</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
10539 for. Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
10540 creating a ISO image. The git source built and installed just fine in
10541 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.
</p>
10547 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
10552 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10554 <div class=
"entry">
10555 <div class=
"title">
10556 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel
1 different from single user boots?
</a>
10562 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
10563 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
10564 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
10565 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
10566 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
10567 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
10568 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
10569 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
10570 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
10573 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
10574 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
10575 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
10578 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
10579 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
10580 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
10581 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
10582 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
10583 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
10584 hard to explain.
</p>
10586 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
10587 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
10588 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
10589 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
10590 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
10591 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
10592 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
10593 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
10594 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
10595 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
10596 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
10599 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
10600 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
10601 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
10602 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
10603 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
10604 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
10605 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
10606 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
10607 after visiting single user mode.</p>
10609 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
10610 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
10611 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
10612 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
10613 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
10614 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
10615 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
10616 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
10618 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
10619 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
10620 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
10626 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
10631 <div class="padding
"></div>
10633 <div class="entry
">
10634 <div class="title
">
10635 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html
">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
10641 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
10642 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
10643 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
10644 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
10645 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
10646 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
10647 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
10648 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
10649 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
10650 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
10651 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
10652 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
10653 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
10655 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
10656 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
10657 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
10658 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
10659 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
10660 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
10661 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
10662 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
10663 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
10665 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
10666 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
10667 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
10670 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
10671 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
10672 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
10673 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
10674 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
10675 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
10676 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
10677 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
10678 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
10679 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
10680 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
10681 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
10682 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
10683 find time to push this forward.</p>
10689 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
10694 <div class="padding
"></div>
10696 <div class="entry
">
10697 <div class="title
">
10698 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html
">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
10704 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
10705 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
10706 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
10707 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
10710 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
10711 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
10712 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
10716 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
10717 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
10718 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
10719 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
10720 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
10721 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
10722 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
10725 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
10726 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
10727 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
10728 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
10729 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
10730 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
10731 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
10732 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
10733 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
10734 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
10735 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
10736 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
10737 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
10739 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
10740 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
10741 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
10742 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
10743 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
10744 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
10745 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
10746 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
10747 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
10748 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
10750 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
10751 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
10752 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
10753 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
10754 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
10755 latter behaviour.</li>
10759 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
10760 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
10761 it do not matter much.</p>
10763 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
10764 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
10765 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
10771 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
10776 <div class="padding
"></div>
10778 <div class="entry
">
10779 <div class="title
">
10780 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html
">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
10786 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
10787 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
10788 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
10789 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
10790 security support for a few years.</p>
10792 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
10793 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
10794 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
10795 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
10796 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
10797 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
10798 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
10799 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
10800 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
10801 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
10802 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
10803 easier in the future.</p>
10805 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
10806 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
10807 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
10808 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
10809 do not have time for.</p>
10815 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>.
10820 <div class="padding
"></div>
10822 <div class="entry
">
10823 <div class="title
">
10824 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html
">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
10831 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/
2011/
06/
20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/
">the
10832 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
10834 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA
">Autodesk</a>
10836 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/
2011/
06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html
">Microsoft
10837 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
10838 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs. Whenever I take
10839 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
10845 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>.
10850 <div class="padding
"></div>
10852 <div class="entry
">
10853 <div class="title
">
10854 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html
">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
10860 <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
10861 <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
10862 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> started to
10863 work. It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
10864 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
10865 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
10866 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
10867 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
10868 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
10869 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
10871 <p>Where is it? Visit
10872 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/
">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
10873 to have a look. Please send feedback to the
10874 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
10875 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
10881 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311
">open311</a>.
10886 <div class="padding
"></div>
10888 <div class="entry
">
10889 <div class="title
">
10890 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html
">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
10896 <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
10897 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> in the
10898 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
10899 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
10900 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
10901 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/
">New Zealand version</a> of
10902 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
10903 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
10904 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
10905 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
10906 FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
10907 to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
10908 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
10910 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
10911 handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
10912 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
10913 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
10914 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
10915 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
10916 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
10917 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
10918 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
10919 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
10920 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
10921 know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
10922 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
10924 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
10925 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
10926 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
10927 each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
10928 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
10929 here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
10930 category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
10931 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
10934 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
10935 differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
10936 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
10937 quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
10938 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
10939 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
10940 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
10942 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
10943 near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
10944 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
10945 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
10946 and range= options.</p>
10948 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
10949 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
10950 to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
10951 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
10952 available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
10953 to best handle this. I've noticed
10954 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/
">SeeClickFix</a> added
10955 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
10956 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
10957 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
10959 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
10960 up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
10961 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/
">Gmane</a> to use for
10962 discussions instead of only
10963 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss
">a forum<a/>. Oh,
10964 well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
10965 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
10966 seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
10967 fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
10968 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
10974 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311
">open311</a>.
10979 <div class="padding
"></div>
10981 <div class="entry
">
10982 <div class="title
">
10983 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html
">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
10989 <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/
">The Gnash project</a> is still
10990 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
10991 A few days ago the project
10992 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/
2011-
04/msg00011.html
">announced</a>
10993 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code. I hope many
10994 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
11001 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
11006 <div class="padding
"></div>
11008 <div class="entry
">
11009 <div class="title
">
11010 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html
">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
11016 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
11017 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
11018 update in English.</p>
11020 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
11021 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
11022 of the British service
11023 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
11024 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
11025 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
11026 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
11027 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
11028 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
11029 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
11030 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
11031 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
11032 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
11033 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
11034 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
11035 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
11037 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
11038 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
11039 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
11040 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
11041 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
11042 public infrastructure.</p>
11044 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
11051 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart
">kart</a>.
11056 <div class="padding
"></div>
11058 <div class="entry
">
11059 <div class="title
">
11060 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html
">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
11066 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
11067 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
11068 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
11069 available on the Internet, and check our locally
11070 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
11071 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
11072 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
11073 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
11074 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
11075 out which security holes were present in our free software
11078 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
11079 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
11080 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
11081 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
11082 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
11083 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
11084 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
11085 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
11086 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
11087 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
11088 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
11089 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
11090 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
11091 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
11092 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
11093 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
11095 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
11096 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
11097 check out, one could look up
11098 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%
3A%
2Fa%
3Agnu%
3Agzip:
1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
11099 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
11100 The most recent one is
11101 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
11102 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
11103 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
11105 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
11106 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
11107 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
11108 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
11109 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
11110 security issues out.</p>
11112 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
11113 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
11114 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
11116 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
11117 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
11118 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
11120 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
11121 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
11122 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
11123 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
11124 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
11125 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
11126 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
11127 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
11128 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
11129 established soon.</p>
11131 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
11132 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
11133 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
11134 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
11135 for their packages.</p>
11141 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
11146 <div class="padding
"></div>
11148 <div class="entry
">
11149 <div class="title
">
11150 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html
">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
11157 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
11158 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
11159 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
11160 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
11161 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
11162 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
11163 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
11164 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
11165 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
11166 one of my machines like this:</p>
11170 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
11173 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
11178 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
11182 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
11183 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
11186 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
11187 echo loaded pci modules:
11189 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
11190 for address in * ; do
11191 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
11192 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
11193 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
11194 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
11195 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
11205 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
11209 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
11210 echo loaded usb modules:
11212 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
11213 for address in * ; do
11214 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
11215 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
11216 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
11217 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
11218 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
11219 if [ "$id" ] ; then
11230 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
11237 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11242 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11244 <div class=
"entry">
11245 <div class=
"title">
11246 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?
</a>
11252 <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
11253 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H
.264 and WebM. Most video sites
11254 seem to use H
.264, while others use Ogg Theora. Interestingly enough,
11255 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
11256 H
.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
11257 the Wikipedia article on
11258 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video
</a>,
11259 this is not true. Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
11260 different browsers there. The format supported by most browsers is
11261 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
11262 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
11263 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
11264 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
11265 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
11266 Firefox. H
.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
11267 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
11268 Explorer. Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
11269 Safari can install plugins to get it.
</p>
11271 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
11272 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
11273 HTML5 video tag. Of course to reach all those without a browser
11274 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms. In
11275 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a>, we provide first fallback to a
11276 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
11277 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
11278 Theora. This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an
<a
11279 href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
11280 from last week
</a>.
</p>
11282 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H
.264 is
11283 the least supported is simple. Implementing and using H
.264
11284 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
11285 are incompatible with free software licensing. If you believed H
.264
11286 was without royalties and license terms, check out
11287 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
11288 Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
11290 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
11292 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos
">the
11293 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look. I'm not aware of a
11294 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
11296 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
11297 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
11298 <video> tag support in browsers and not the video support
11299 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
11305 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
11310 <div class="padding
"></div>
11312 <div class="entry
">
11313 <div class="title
">
11314 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html
">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video></a>
11320 <p>Today I discovered
11321 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome
">via
11322 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
11323 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
">yesterday
11324 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video> in
11325 the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
11326 open" codec technology. If you believe H
.264 was free for everyone
11327 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
11328 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
11329 Free That Matters
</a>". It is not free of cost for creators of video
11330 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
11331 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
11332 licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information
11333 on the Google announcement is available from
11334 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome
">OSnews</a>.
11335 A good read. :)</p>
11337 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
11338 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
11339 the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open
11340 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
11341 for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two
11342 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some
11343 browsers support H.264, and others support
11344 <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg Theora</a> and
11345 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/
">WebM</a>
11346 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/
">Dirac</a> is not really an option
11347 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
11348 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
11349 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
11350 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video
">an
11351 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
11353 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
11354 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
11355 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/
2011/
01/simple_questions
">presents
11356 the mind set</a> of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions
11357 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
11358 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24245/
10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM
">presenting
11359 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
11361 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
11362 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This
11363 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
11364 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2011/
01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm
">todays
11365 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it
11366 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
11367 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
11369 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
11370 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
11371 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV
11372 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
11373 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
11374 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
11375 publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
11377 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the
11378 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
11379 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
11380 perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
11381 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
11382 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
11383 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
11384 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
11385 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
11386 video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be
11387 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
11388 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
11389 I guess time will tell.</p>
11391 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
11392 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html
">more
11393 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
11399 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
11404 <div class="padding
"></div>
11406 <div class="entry
">
11407 <div class="title
">
11408 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html
">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
11415 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html
">compare
11417 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">the Digistan
11418 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
11419 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
11420 this. As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
11421 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
11422 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others. But to be able to complete this in a
11423 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
11425 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
11426 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse
">the
11427 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
11428 to help out. The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
11429 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
11430 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
11431 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
11433 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do. Do not be
11434 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
11440 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
11445 <div class="padding
"></div>
11447 <div class="entry
">
11448 <div class="title
">
11449 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html
">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
11455 <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
11456 "<a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
11457 Open Standard
</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
11458 the term has been decided by Digistan. The term "Open Standard
" has
11459 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
11460 about standards. One end up discussing which definition is the best
11461 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
11462 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
11464 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
11465 standards, here are a few that I know about. This list is not
11466 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
11467 complete survey. More definitions are available on the
11468 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
">wikipedia
11471 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
11472 Interoperability Framework version 1.0. Really sad to notice that BSA
11473 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
11474 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
11475 their own people. Anyway, the definition is still available and it
11476 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
11477 specification on equal terms.</p>
11481 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
11482 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
11487 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
11488 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
11489 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
11490 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
11492 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
11493 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
11494 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
11497 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
11498 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
11501 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
11506 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
11507 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/
">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
11508 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/
">this
11509 definition</a> in 2004. It even made it into the Danish parlament as
11510 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/
20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm
">their
11511 definition of a open standard</a>. Another from a different part of
11512 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
11516 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
11520 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
11523 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
11524 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
11526 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
11527 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.
</li>
11533 <p>Then there is
<a href=
"http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
11534 definition
</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.
</p>
11538 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is
</p>
11542 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
11543 manner equally available to all parties;
</li>
11545 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
11546 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
11547 Standard themselves;
</li>
11549 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
11550 any party or in any business model;
</li>
11552 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
11553 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
11556 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
11557 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
11564 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
11566 <a href=
"http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
11567 Standards Checklist
</a> with a fairly detailed description.
</p>
11570 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
11574 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
11579 <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
11580 participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
11581 imposed by the organization under which it is developed
11584 <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
11585 method, can be changed through input from all
11588 <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
11589 the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.
</li>
11591 <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
11592 and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.
</li>
11594 <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
11595 public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
11596 comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.
</li>
11604 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard
</p>
11607 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
11608 and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
11609 implementations to the interface described in the standard without
11610 undue or restrictive constraints. Interfaces include APIs,
11611 protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.
</li>
11613 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
11614 a technical or economic barriers
</li>
11616 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
11617 interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
11618 program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
11619 programs and mutually to use the information which has been
11620 exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
11621 file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
11622 conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
11623 computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
11624 intended to function.
</li>
11626 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
11627 standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
11628 must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.
</li>
11630 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
11631 fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
11632 perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
11633 sell products based on the standard. The only exceptions are
11634 terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
11635 outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
11636 patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
11637 only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
11641 <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
11642 licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
11643 (also known as a reciprocity clause)
</li>
11645 <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
11646 or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
11647 essential to practice that standard (also known as a
11648 "defensive suspension" clause)
</li>
11650 <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
11656 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
11657 implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
11658 or restricted licensing terms
</li>
11664 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
11665 there are so many of them. As you can see, the same holds true for
11666 open standard definitions. Most of the definitions have a lot in
11667 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
11668 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
11669 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
11670 competition to downplay the significance of open standards. I hope we
11671 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
11678 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
11683 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11685 <div class=
"entry">
11686 <div class=
"title">
11687 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?
</a>
11693 <p><a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
11694 Digistan definition
</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:
</p>
11698 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
11703 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
11704 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
11705 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.
</li>
11707 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
11708 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
11709 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
11712 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
11713 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
11714 distribute, and use it freely.
</li>
11716 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
11717 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
</li>
11719 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
</li>
11723 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
11724 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
11725 products based on the standard.
</p>
11728 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
11729 and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short
11730 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the
11731 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
11732 <a href=
"http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
11733 July
2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
11734 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
11735 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.
</p>
11737 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?
</strong></p>
11739 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
11740 Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the
11741 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation
</A> is such vendor, but
11742 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
11743 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
11744 obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph
11745 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
11746 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I've
11747 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
11748 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
11749 where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an
11750 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
11751 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
11752 specification. But it seem unlikely.
</p>
11754 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?
</strong></p>
11756 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
11757 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is
11758 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
11759 documentation indicating this.
</p>
11762 <a href=
"http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report
</a>
11763 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
11764 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
11765 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
11766 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
11767 report is correct.
</p>
11769 <p><strong>Specification freely available?
</strong></p>
11771 <p>The specification for the
<a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
11772 container format
</a> and both the
11773 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis
</a> and
11774 <a href=
"http://theora.org/doc/">Theora
</a> codeces are available on
11775 the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
11779 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
11780 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
11781 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
11782 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
11783 specification compliance.
11787 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
11788 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC
3533</a>, and
11789 this is the term:
<p>
11793 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
11794 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
11795 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
11796 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
11797 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
11798 included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
11799 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
11800 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
11801 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
11802 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
11803 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
11804 translate it into languages other than English.
</p>
11806 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
11807 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
</p>
11810 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
11811 this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the
11812 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
11813 thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a
11814 requirement for the Digistan definition.
</p>
11816 <p><strong>Royalty-free?
</strong></p>
11818 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
11820 <a href=
"http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA
</a>
11822 <a href=
"http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
11823 Jobs
</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
11824 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
11825 them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
11826 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
11827 without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
11828 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H
.264 codec
11829 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.
</p>
11831 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?
</strong></p>
11833 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.
</p>
11835 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
11837 <p>3 of
5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining
2
11838 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the
11839 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
11840 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
11841 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
11844 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
11845 see if they are free and open standards.
</p>
11851 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
11856 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11858 <div class=
"entry">
11859 <div class=
"title">
11860 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru
</a>
11867 <a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
11868 article
</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
11870 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
11871 Interoperability Framework
</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
11872 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
11873 Nothing very surprising there, given
11874 <a href=
"http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
11875 reports
</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
11876 this work. But I find this very sad. The definition of
11877 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
11878 open standard from version
1</a> was very good, and something I
11879 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
11880 <a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
11881 definition from Digistan
</A>. Version
2 have removed the open
11882 standard definition from its content.
</p>
11884 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
11885 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
11886 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
11887 in the public sector in Peru. As the text was not available from a
11888 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
11889 <a href=
"http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
11890 source
</a> to ensure it is available also in the future. Some
11891 background information about that story is available in
11892 <a href=
"http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article
</a> from
11893 Linux Journal in
2002.
</p>
11896 <p>Lima,
8th of April,
2002<br>
11897 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ
<br>
11898 General Manager of Microsoft Perú
</p>
11902 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March
25,
2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number
1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.
</p>
11904 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.
</p>
11906 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.
</p>
11908 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:
</p>
11912 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen.
</li>
11913 <li>Permanence of public data.
</li>
11914 <li>Security of the State and citizens.
</li>
11918 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.
</p>
11920 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.
</p>
11922 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*.
</p>
11924 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.
</p>
11926 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.
</p>
11929 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:
<br>
11930 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software
</li>
11931 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software
</li>
11932 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use
</li>
11933 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought
</li>
11934 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.
</li>
11938 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.
</p>
11940 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.
</p>
11942 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:
</p>
11944 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "
1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."
</p>
11946 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.
</p>
11948 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No.
012-
2001-PCM).
</p>
11950 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.
</p>
11952 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.
</p>
11954 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.
</p>
11956 <p>To continue; you note that:"
2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."
</p>
11958 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."
</p>
11960 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.
</p>
11962 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.
</p>
11964 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.
</p>
11966 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).
</p>
11968 <p>You add: "
3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."
</p>
11970 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph
6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.
</p>
11972 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.
</p>
11974 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.
</p>
11976 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.
</p>
11978 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.
</p>
11980 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.
</p>
11982 <p>Your letter continues: "
4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."
</p>
11984 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.
</p>
11986 <p>On security:
</p>
11988 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.
</p>
11990 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.
</p>
11992 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.
</p>
11994 <p>In respect of the guarantee:
</p>
11996 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.
</p>
11998 <p>On Intellectual Property:
</p>
12000 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on
27th September
2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of
3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).
</p>
12002 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."
</p>
12004 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).
</p>
12006 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.
</p>
12008 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.
</p>
12010 <p>You continue: "
6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only
8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other
92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."
</p>
12012 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph
5 and partly contradicts paragraph
3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only
8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.
</p>
12014 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph
3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.
</p>
12016 <p>You further state that: "
7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."
</p>
12018 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.
</p>
12020 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than
8% of the total.
</p>
12022 <p>You continue: "
8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."
</p>
12024 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.
</p>
12026 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.
</p>
12028 <p>You then say that: "
9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."
</p>
12030 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph
4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.
</p>
12032 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.
</p>
12034 <p>You continue by observing that: "
10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices
40 million US$/year, exports
4 million US$ (
10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."
</p>
12036 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.
</p>
12038 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.
</p>
12040 <p>You go on to say that: "
11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."
</p>
12042 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.
</p>
12044 <p>You then state that: "
12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."
</p>
12046 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.
</p>
12048 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "
13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"
</p>
12050 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.
</p>
12052 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.
</p>
12054 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.
</p>
12056 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.
</p>
12059 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ
<br>
12060 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.
</p>
12067 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
12072 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12074 <div class=
"entry">
12075 <div class=
"title">
12076 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong
</a>
12082 <p>Half a year ago I
12083 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
12084 a bit
</a> about
<a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots
</a>,
12085 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
12086 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.
</p>
12088 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
12089 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
12090 different Office implementations handle different ODF features. Sad
12091 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
12092 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
12093 for OfficeShots users yet). I am glad to see that the ODF community
12094 got such a great test tool available.
</p>
12100 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
12105 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12107 <div class=
"entry">
12108 <div class=
"title">
12109 <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>
12115 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
12116 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
12117 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
12118 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
12119 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
12120 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
12121 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
12122 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
12125 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
12126 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
12127 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
12128 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
12129 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
12130 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
12131 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
12132 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
12134 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
12135 I perform on a new model.
</p>
12139 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
12140 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
12141 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
12143 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
12144 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
12146 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
12147 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
12148 reported by the program.
</li>
12150 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
12151 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
12152 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
12153 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
12154 normally test this by playing
12155 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
12156 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
12158 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
12159 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
12161 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
12162 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
12164 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
12165 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
12167 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
12168 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
12171 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
12172 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
12175 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
12176 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
12179 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
12180 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
12181 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
12182 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
12185 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
12186 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
12187 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
12192 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
12193 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
12194 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
12195 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
12196 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
12197 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
12198 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
12199 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
12205 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>.
12210 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12212 <div class=
"entry">
12213 <div class=
"title">
12214 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
12220 <p>As I continue to explore
12221 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
12222 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
12223 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
12225 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
12226 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
12227 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
12228 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
12229 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
12230 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
12231 all transactions. There I can see that my address
12232 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
12233 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
12234 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
12235 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
12236 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
12237 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
12238 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
12239 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
12240 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
12241 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
12242 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
12243 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
12244 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
12246 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
12247 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
12248 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
12249 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
12250 If the Skolelinux foundation
12251 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
12252 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
12253 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
12254 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
12255 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
12256 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
12257 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
12258 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
12260 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
12261 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
12262 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
12263 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
12264 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
12265 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
12266 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
12267 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
12268 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
12269 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
12270 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
12271 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
12272 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
12273 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
12276 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
12277 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
12278 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
12279 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
12280 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
12281 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
12282 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
12283 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
12284 BitCoins. Check out
12285 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
12286 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
12287 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
12288 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
12291 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
12292 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
12293 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
12294 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
12295 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
12301 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
12306 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12308 <div class=
"entry">
12309 <div class=
"title">
12310 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money
</a>
12316 <p>With this weeks lawless
12317 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
12318 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
12319 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
12320 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
12321 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
12323 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
12324 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
12325 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
12326 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
12327 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
12328 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
12329 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
12331 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
12332 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
12333 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
12334 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
12335 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
12336 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
12337 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
12338 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
12339 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
12340 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
12342 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
12343 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
12344 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
12345 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
12346 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
12347 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
12349 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
12350 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
12351 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
12352 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
12354 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
12355 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
12356 donations to the address
12357 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
12363 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
12368 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12370 <div class=
"entry">
12371 <div class=
"title">
12372 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap
3D printer
</a>
12378 <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
12379 student assosiation
<a href=
"http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
12380 Osloensis
</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
12381 get their own
3D printer. They wanted to learn from me based on my
12382 work in the area. After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
12383 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
12384 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon. I look
12385 forward to see how this goes. This monday their volunteer driver
12386 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
12387 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the
3D printer
12390 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
12391 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational. I really look
12392 forward to being able to print all the cool
3D designs published on
12393 <a href=
"http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse
</a>. I even got
12394 some
3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
12395 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
12396 very cool
3D scanner.
</p>
12402 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap
</a>.
12407 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12409 <div class=
"entry">
12410 <div class=
"title">
12411 <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>
12417 <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12418 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
12419 gathering
</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway. I
12420 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
12421 Squeeze release. The gathering is open for everyone interested in
12422 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
12424 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
12425 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
12427 <a href=
"http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
12428 for
2010</a>. Membership is open for all, and currently there are
388
12429 people registered as members. Last year
32 members cast their vote in
12430 the memberdb based election system. I hope more people find time to
12431 vote this year.
</p>
12437 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>.
12442 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12444 <div class=
"entry">
12445 <div class=
"title">
12446 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
12452 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
12453 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
12454 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
12455 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
12456 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
12457 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
12458 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
12459 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
12461 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
12462 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
12463 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
12464 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
12465 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
12466 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
12467 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
12468 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
12469 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
12470 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
12471 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
12473 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
12474 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
12475 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
12476 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
12477 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
12478 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
12479 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
12480 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
12481 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
12482 what is going on.
</p>
12488 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>.
12493 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12495 <div class=
"entry">
12496 <div class=
"title">
12497 <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>
12503 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
12504 upgrade testing of the
12505 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
12506 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
12507 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
12508 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
12510 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
12512 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
12519 browser-plugin-gnash
12526 freedesktop-sound-theme
12528 gconf-defaults-service
12541 gnome-codec-install
12543 gnome-desktop-environment
12547 gnome-session-canberra
12549 gnome-themes-extras
12552 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
12553 gstreamer0.10-tools
12555 gtk2-engines-pixbuf
12556 gtk2-engines-smooth
12558 libapache2-mod-dnssd
12561 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
12564 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
12565 libboost-python1.42
.0
12566 libboost-thread1.42
.0
12568 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
12570 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
12577 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
12590 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
12592 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
12597 libgtksourceview2.0-common
12598 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
12599 libmono-addins0.2-cil
12600 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
12601 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
12602 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
12603 libmono-posix2.0-cil
12604 libmono-security2.0-cil
12605 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
12606 libmono-system2.0-cil
12609 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
12610 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
12620 libtelepathy-farsight0
12629 nautilus-sendto-empathy
12633 python-aptdaemon-gtk
12635 python-beautifulsoup
12650 python-gtksourceview2
12661 python-pkg-resources
12668 python-twisted-conch
12669 python-twisted-core
12674 python-zope.interface
12676 remmina-plugin-data
12679 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
12686 system-config-printer-udev
12688 telepathy-mission-control-
5
12695 transmission-common
12701 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
12707 epiphany-extensions
12709 fast-user-switch-applet
12728 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
12730 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
12736 system-config-printer
12743 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
12746 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12749 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
12755 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
12757 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
12763 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
12767 network-manager-kde
12770 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
12786 kdeartwork-emoticons
12788 kdeartwork-theme-icon
12792 kdebase-workspace-bin
12793 kdebase-workspace-data
12805 konqueror-nsplugins
12807 kscreensaver-xsavers
12822 plasma-dataengines-workspace
12824 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
12825 plasma-runners-addons
12826 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
12827 plasma-scriptengine-python
12828 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
12829 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
12830 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
12831 plasma-scriptengines
12832 plasma-wallpapers-addons
12833 plasma-widget-folderview
12834 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
12837 update-notifier-kde
12838 xscreensaver-data-extra
12840 xscreensaver-gl-extra
12841 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
12844 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
12848 google-gadgets-common
12866 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
12871 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
12875 libkunitconversion4
12880 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
12882 libplasmagenericshell4
12896 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
12897 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
12899 libsmokektexteditor3
12907 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
12908 libsmokeqtopengl4-
3
12909 libsmokeqtscript4-
3
12913 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
12914 libsmokeqtwebkit4-
3
12925 plasma-dataengines-addons
12926 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
12927 plasma-widget-lancelot
12928 plasma-widgets-addons
12929 plasma-widgets-workspace
12933 update-notifier-common
12936 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
12937 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
12938 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
12939 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
12945 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>.
12950 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12952 <div class=
"entry">
12953 <div class=
"title">
12954 <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>
12960 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
12961 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
12962 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
12963 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
12964 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
12965 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
12966 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
12967 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
12968 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
12971 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
12972 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
12973 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
12974 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
12975 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
12976 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
12982 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
12987 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
12988 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
12994 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
12995 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
12999 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
13000 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
13001 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
13002 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
13005 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
13006 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
13008 parted $img mklabel msdos
13009 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
13010 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
13011 parted $img set
1 boot on
13014 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
13015 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
13017 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
13018 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
13019 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
13021 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
13022 losetup -d /dev/loop0
13025 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
13026 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
13028 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
13029 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
13030 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
13031 seem to work just fine.
</p>
13037 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>.
13042 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13044 <div class=
"entry">
13045 <div class=
"title">
13046 <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>
13052 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
13053 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13054 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
13055 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
13057 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
13058 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
13059 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
13061 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
13063 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
13066 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
13067 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
13068 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
13069 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
13070 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
13071 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
13072 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
13073 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
13074 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
13075 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
13076 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13077 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13078 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
13079 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
13080 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
13081 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
13082 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
13083 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
13084 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13085 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
13086 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
13087 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13088 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
13089 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
13090 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
13091 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13092 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13093 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
13094 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13095 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
13096 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
13097 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
13098 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
13099 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
13100 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
13101 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
13102 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
13103 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
13104 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
13105 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
13106 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
13107 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
13108 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
13109 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
13110 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
13111 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
13112 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
13113 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
13114 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
13115 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
13116 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
13117 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
13118 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13119 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
13120 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
13121 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
13122 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
13123 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
13127 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
13130 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
13131 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
13132 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
13133 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
13134 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
13135 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
13136 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
13137 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
13138 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
13139 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
13140 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
13141 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
13142 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
13143 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
13144 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
13145 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
13146 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
13147 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
13148 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
13149 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
13150 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
13151 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
13152 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
13153 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
13154 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
13155 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
13156 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
13157 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
13158 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
13161 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
13164 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13167 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
13173 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
13175 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
13178 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
13179 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
13180 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
13181 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
13182 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
13183 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
13184 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
13185 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
13186 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
13187 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
13188 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
13189 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
13190 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
13191 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
13192 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
13193 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
13194 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
13195 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
13196 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
13197 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
13198 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
13199 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
13200 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
13201 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
13202 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
13203 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
13204 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
13205 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
13206 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
13207 ttf-sazanami-gothic
13210 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
13213 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
13214 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
13215 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
13216 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
13217 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
13218 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
13219 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
13220 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
13221 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
13222 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
13223 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
13224 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
13225 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
13226 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
13227 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
13228 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
13229 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
13230 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
13231 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
13232 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
13233 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
13234 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
13235 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
13236 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
13237 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
13238 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
13239 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
13240 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
13241 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
13242 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
13243 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
13244 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
13245 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
13248 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
13251 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
13252 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
13253 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
13254 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
13255 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13256 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
13257 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13260 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
13263 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
13270 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>.
13275 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13277 <div class=
"entry">
13278 <div class=
"title">
13279 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
13286 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
13287 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
13288 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
13289 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
13290 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
13291 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
13292 releases out more often.
</p>
13294 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
13295 I have considered setting up a
<a
13296 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
13297 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
13298 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
13299 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
13300 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
13301 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
13302 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
13303 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
13304 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
13305 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
13306 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
13307 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
13313 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>.
13318 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13320 <div class=
"entry">
13321 <div class=
"title">
13322 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
13328 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
13330 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
13332 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
13333 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
13339 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13344 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13346 <div class=
"entry">
13347 <div class=
"title">
13348 <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>
13354 <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
13355 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> DVD, which is
13356 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
13357 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard. Even
13358 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
13359 working using this DVD.
</p>
13361 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
13362 installing recommended packages by default. We want the same set of
13363 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
13364 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD. I created
13365 a patch for debian-cd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
13366 report #
601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
13367 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.
</p>
13369 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
13370 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
13371 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
13372 Debian archive.
</p>
13374 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
13375 were using most space. A few large packages are well know;
13376 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont. But I also
13377 discovered that lilypond used
106 MiB and fglrx-driver used
53 MiB.
13378 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
13379 when looking a bit closer I discovered that
99 MiB of the
106 MiB were
13380 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
13381 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
13382 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
13383 documentation. Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
13384 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
13385 free X driver should work.
</p>
13387 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
13388 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
13389 DVD more useful again.
</p>
13395 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>.
13400 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13402 <div class=
"entry">
13403 <div class=
"title">
13404 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
13410 <p>Some updates.
</p>
13412 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
13413 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
13414 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
13415 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
13416 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
13419 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
13420 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
13421 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
13423 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
13424 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
13425 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
13426 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
13427 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
13428 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
13430 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
13431 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
13432 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
13433 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
13434 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
13435 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
13436 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
13437 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
13438 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
13439 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
13445 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>.
13450 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13452 <div class=
"entry">
13453 <div class=
"title">
13454 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support
</a>
13460 <p><a href=
"http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project
</a> is the
13461 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
13462 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
13463 funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
13464 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
13465 AVM2 flash files.
</p>
13467 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
13468 <a href=
"http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge
</a> with the
13469 following text:
</P>
13473 <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
13474 only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
13476 <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer
</p>
13478 <p>Deadline to sign up by:
24th December
2010</p>
13480 <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
13481 format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
13482 web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
13483 format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
13484 days. The project web page is available from
13485 http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
13486 of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
13487 the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.
</p>
13489 <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
13490 time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
13491 to get this to happen.
</p>
13493 <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
13494 <a href=
"http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/
32</a> .
</p>
13498 <p>I hope you will support this effort too. I hope more than
10
13499 people will participate to make this happen. The more money the
13500 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
13507 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
13512 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13514 <div class=
"entry">
13515 <div class=
"title">
13516 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot
</a>
13522 <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
13523 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
13524 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
13525 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
13526 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
13527 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
13530 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
13531 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them. There are
13532 a few less important features too.
</p>
13534 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
13535 but I never got around to releasing the current source. I decided
13536 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
13537 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.
</p>
13539 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
13540 published the source and deb. If you got a spykee robot, grab the
13541 source or binary package:
</p>
13544 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1.tar.gz
</a></li>
13545 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1.dsc
</a></li>
13546 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1_all.deb
</a></li>
13549 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
13550 please let me know.
</p>
13556 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
13561 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13563 <div class=
"entry">
13564 <div class=
"title">
13565 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for
2010-
10-
03</a>
13573 <li><a href=
"http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
13574 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly
</a></li>
13576 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
13577 <a href=
"http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
13578 already been misused at Heathrow
</a>.
</li>
13580 <li><a href=
"http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
13581 Webcasting
</a> - interesting alternative for
13582 <ahref=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch
</a> with
13591 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
13596 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13598 <div class=
"entry">
13599 <div class=
"title">
13600 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS
130 digital camera
</a>
13606 <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
13607 camera, a Canon IXUS
130. It was instructive and very disturbing to
13608 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
13609 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
13610 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
13611 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway. What is the
13612 problem, you might ask? It is software patents, MPEG-
4, H
.264 and the
13613 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
13614 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
13616 <p>On page
27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
13620 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-
4 standard
13621 and may be used for encoding MPEG-
4 compliant video and/or decoding
13622 MPEG-
4 compliant video that was encoded only (
1) for a personal and
13623 non-commercial purpose or (
2) by a video provider licensed under the
13624 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-
4 compliant video.
</p>
13626 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-
4
13630 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
13631 (MPEG-
4/H
.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
13632 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
13633 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.
</p>
13635 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
13637 "
<a href=
"http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
13638 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
13639 MPEG-LA
</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
13640 "<a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H
.264 Is Not
13641 The Sort Of Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
13642 the issue. The solution is to support the
13643 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and
13644 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg
13645 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
13651 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling
">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
13656 <div class="padding
"></div>
13658 <div class="entry
">
13659 <div class="title
">
13660 <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>
13666 <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote
">Debian
13667 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
13668 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
13669 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
13670 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
13671 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
13674 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
13675 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf
">Skolelinux
13676 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
13677 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
13678 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian
13679 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
13680 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
13681 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
13682 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
13684 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
13685 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
13686 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
13687 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
13688 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
13689 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
13690 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
13691 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
13692 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
13693 pages they want to visit.</p>
13695 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
13696 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
13697 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
13698 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
13699 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
13700 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
13701 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
13702 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
13703 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
13704 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
13705 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
13711 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>.
13716 <div class="padding
"></div>
13718 <div class="entry
">
13719 <div class="title
">
13720 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html
">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
13726 <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application. The last few
13727 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
13728 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
13729 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
13730 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
13731 allow me to drive the robot around. I picked PerlQt as I have had
13732 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
13733 browsing the web for examples. Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
13734 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
13735 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
13736 libqt-perl. Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
13739 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
13740 controlling the robot. Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
13744 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
13745 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
13746 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
13747 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
13752 $spykee-
>forward();
13759 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
13760 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
13761 implement the protocol used by the robot. I've implemented several of
13762 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
13763 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote. First I
13764 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
13765 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
13766 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
13767 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
13770 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
13771 where to make it available first. I will add a link to
13772 <a href=
"http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki
</a> for
13773 those that want to check back later to find it.
</p>
13779 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
13784 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13786 <div class=
"entry">
13787 <div class=
"title">
13788 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs
</a>
13794 <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
13795 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
13796 post about sshfs
</a>. He reported another problem with sshfs. It
13797 fail to handle hard links properly. A simple way to spot this is to
13798 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree. These should have
13799 a link count
>1, but on sshfs the count is
1. I just tested to see
13800 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:
</p>
13804 ln: creating hard link `bar' =
> `foo': Function not implemented
13808 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
13809 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
13810 avoid surprised unix programs. Not as useful as working file locking
13811 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
13812 nevertheless. :)
</p>
13814 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
13816 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a></p>
13822 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>.
13827 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13829 <div class=
"entry">
13830 <div class=
"title">
13831 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs
</a>
13837 <p>My file system sematics program
13838 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
13839 a few days ago
</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
13840 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit. I'm
13841 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
13842 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs. My friend
13843 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
13844 Edu, but stopped because of problems. I asked today what the problems
13845 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
13846 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
13850 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
13852 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
13855 struct stat statbuf;
13856 if (-
1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
13857 retval = statbuf.st_mode &
0x1ff;
13864 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
13865 int test_umask(void) {
13866 printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
13868 mode_t orig_umask = umask(
000);
13870 if (
0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
13871 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
000\n",
13875 if (
0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
13876 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
007\n",
13880 umask (orig_umask);
13884 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
13891 <p>Sure enough. On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:
</p>
13894 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
13895 info: testing symlink creation
13896 info: testing subdirectory creation
13897 info: testing fcntl locking
13898 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
13899 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
13900 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
13901 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
13902 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
13903 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
13904 info: testing umask effect on file creation
13907 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
13911 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
13912 info: testing symlink creation
13913 info: testing subdirectory creation
13914 info: testing fcntl locking
13915 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
13916 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
13917 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
13918 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
13919 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
13920 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
13921 info: testing umask effect on file creation
13922 error: Wrong file mode
644 when creating using mode
666 and umask
000
13923 error: Wrong file mode
640 when creating using mode
666 and umask
007
13926 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
13927 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
13930 <p>Update
2010-
08-
26: Reported the issue in
13931 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #
594498</a></p>
13933 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
13934 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
13935 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
13941 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>.
13946 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13948 <div class=
"entry">
13949 <div class=
"title">
13950 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent
</a>
13956 <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
13957 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
13958 to crush dissent
</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
13959 well. Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
13960 should go down. In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
13967 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
13972 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13974 <div class=
"entry">
13975 <div class=
"title">
13976 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients
</a>
13982 <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
13983 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
13984 configuration settings on the clients. I believe the work to be
13985 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
13986 generated configuration.
</p>
13988 <p>What is the point, you might ask? The point is to allow a Debian
13989 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
13990 without any manual configuration.
</p>
13992 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
13993 the University of Oslo using PXE. With the PXE installation, I am
13994 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
13995 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
13996 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
13997 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret). After answering
13998 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
13999 after around
50 minutes it is done. I press enter to finish the
14000 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE. When the machine is
14001 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
14002 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
14003 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
14004 same username and password to the KDE
4.4 desktop. At no point during
14005 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
14006 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
14007 fetched via DHCP and DNS. The roaming workstation is now ready for
14010 <p>How was this done, you might wonder? First of all, here is the
14011 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
14012 working properly out of the box:
</p>
14015 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.
</li>
14016 <li>Web proxy URL.
</li>
14017 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).
</li>
14018 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.
</li>
14019 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)
</li>
14020 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)
</li>
14021 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)
</li>
14024 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything? Let me knew if I did.)
</p>
14026 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
14027 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
14028 administrators to track their machines. Since yesterday, everything
14029 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
14030 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.
</p>
14032 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
14033 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
14034 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
14035 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
14036 /etc/apt/apt.conf. I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
14037 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
14038 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
14039 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.
</p>
14041 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
14042 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot. First the
14043 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain. If
14044 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead. If an
14045 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
14046 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
14047 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS. If there are several
14048 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
14049 LDAP subtree is used as the base. If defaultNamingContext is missing,
14050 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
14051 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
14052 such an object is used as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
14053 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
14054 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record. I've been unable to find a way to
14055 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
14056 current DNS domain is used.
</p>
14058 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
14059 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
14060 found. This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
14061 Oslo. A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
14062 server, but have not been implemented yet. I decided to fetch and
14063 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
14064 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
14065 log in nor the passwords required to log in. Usernames and passwords
14066 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
14067 network, and will not change as the laptop move around. For a
14068 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
14069 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much. Perhaps we
14070 should switch those to use sssd too?
</p>
14072 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
14073 located when the user logs in for the first time. The LDAP server is
14074 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
14075 attribute is used if found. If it isn't found, the home directory
14076 path fetched from NSS is used instead. Assuming the path is of the
14077 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
14078 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
14079 smb://server.domain/username. This algorithm works for both Debian
14080 edu and the University of Oslo. Perhaps there are better attributes
14081 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
14084 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
14085 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
14086 more flexible than before. I suspect it will also work for thin
14087 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
14088 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
14091 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
14092 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
14094 <p>Update
2010-
08-
09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
14095 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
14096 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name. Will have to
14097 implement it for Debian Edu. :)
</p>
14103 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>.
14108 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14110 <div class=
"entry">
14111 <div class=
"title">
14112 <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>
14118 <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
14119 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
14120 Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the
14121 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
14122 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
14123 mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of
14124 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.
</p>
14126 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
14127 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
14128 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
14129 underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows
14130 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
14131 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
14132 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.
</p>
14134 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
14135 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
14136 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
14137 it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
14138 help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:
</p>
14142 * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
14143 * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
14145 * License: GPL v2 or later
14147 * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
14148 * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
14151 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS
64
14152 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE
1
14153 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE
1
14155 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
14157 #include
<errno.h
>
14158 #include
<fcntl.h
>
14159 #include
<stdio.h
>
14160 #include
<string.h
>
14161 #include
<stdlib.h
>
14162 #include
<sys/file.h
>
14163 #include
<sys/stat.h
>
14164 #include
<sys/types.h
>
14165 #include
<unistd.h
>
14169 * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
14170 * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
14172 * See also
<URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5
>.
14174 #include
<sqlite3.h
>
14175 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
14176 "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
14177 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
14179 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
14182 int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
14184 printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
14189 /* create tables */
14190 rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,
0, &zErrMsg);
14191 if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
14192 printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
14196 printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
14200 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
14203 * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
14204 * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows
2003. This is
14205 * done in the sqlite3 library.
14207 *
<URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/
2001-
08/msg00854.html
> and the
14208 * POSIX specification
14209 *
<URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/
009695399/functions/fcntl.html
>.
14211 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
14213 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
14215 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE,
0644);
14216 printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
14218 fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
14219 fl.l_pid = getpid();
14220 printf(" Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
14221 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
14223 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
14224 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14226 printf(" Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
14227 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
14229 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
14230 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14232 printf(" Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824");
14233 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
14235 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
14236 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14238 printf(" Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
14239 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
14241 fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
14242 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14244 printf(" Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
14245 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
14247 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14249 printf(" Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824");
14250 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
14252 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
14253 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14260 * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
14261 * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
14262 * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
14263 * slowing down file operations.
14265 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
14267 char *path = strdup("test");
14268 char *dirs[LEVELS];
14270 printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
14271 for (level =
0; level
< LEVELS; level++) {
14272 char *newpath = NULL;
14273 if (-
1 == mkdir(path,
0777)) {
14274 printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
14275 path, strerror(errno));
14278 asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
14286 * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
14289 int test_symlinks(void) {
14290 printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
14292 if (-
1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
14293 printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
14297 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
14298 printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
14300 test_subdirectory_creation();
14302 test_sqlite_open();
14303 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
14304 test_gcompris_locking();
14309 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
14313 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14314 info: testing symlink creation
14315 info: testing subdirectory creation
14316 info: sqlite worked
14317 info: testing fcntl locking
14318 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
14319 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
14320 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
14321 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
14322 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
14323 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
14326 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
14327 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
14328 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
14329 the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
14330 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
14331 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
14332 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
14333 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.
</p>
14335 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
14338 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
14339 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
14340 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
14346 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>.
14351 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14353 <div class=
"entry">
14354 <div class=
"title">
14355 <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>
14361 <p>A few days ago, I
14362 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
14363 to install
</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
14364 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
14365 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
14366 university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
14367 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
14368 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
14369 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
14370 around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.
</p>
14372 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
14373 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
14374 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
14375 servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
14376 configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
14377 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
14378 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
14379 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
14380 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
14381 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
14382 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
14383 a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
14384 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
14385 gave it a IP address.
</p>
14387 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
14388 entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
14389 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
14390 server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
14391 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
14392 pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
14393 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
14394 uppercase version of $domain.
</p>
14396 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
14397 directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
14398 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
14399 the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
14400 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
14401 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(
</p>
14403 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
14404 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
14405 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
14406 authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
14407 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
14408 with UID and GID values.
</p>
14410 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
14411 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
14417 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>.
14422 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14424 <div class=
"entry">
14425 <div class=
"title">
14426 <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>
14432 <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
14433 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
14434 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
14435 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
14436 infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
14437 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
14440 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
14441 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
14442 /etc/mklocaluser.d/
20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
14443 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
14444 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
14445 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
14446 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
14449 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
14450 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
14451 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
14452 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
14453 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
14454 university servers.
</p>
14456 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
14457 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
14458 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
14459 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
14460 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
14467 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>.
14472 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14474 <div class=
"entry">
14475 <div class=
"title">
14476 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
14482 <p>I discovered this while doing
14483 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
14484 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
14485 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
14486 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
14487 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
14489 <p>An example is from todays
14490 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
14491 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
14492 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
14493 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
14494 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
14495 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
14496 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
14498 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
14501 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
14502 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
14503 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
14504 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
14505 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
14506 </pre></blockquote>
14508 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
14509 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
14510 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
14511 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
14512 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
14513 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
14514 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
14515 of dependency loops.
</p>
14518 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
14519 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
14521 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
14522 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
14524 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
14525 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
14526 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
14527 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
14528 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
14535 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
14540 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14542 <div class=
"entry">
14543 <div class=
"title">
14544 <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>
14550 <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
14551 with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
14555 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
14556 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
14557 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
14558 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
14559 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
14560 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
14561 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
14562 language of choice, please let us know too.
</p>
14564 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
14565 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
14566 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.
</p>
14568 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
14569 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
14572 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version
</p>
14575 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
14577 <li>Desktop environment KDE
4.4 =
> the new KDE desktop in
14578 combination with some new artwork
14579 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
3.5
14580 <li>OpenOffice.org
3.2
14581 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
9.3
14582 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
10.04.2
14583 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.6.10
14584 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.0
14585 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.10.4
14586 <li>3D modeler Blender
2.49.2 (new application)
14587 <li>Video editor Kdenlive
0.7.7 (new application)
14589 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
14595 <li>SMTP (sender verification)
14598 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.
</li>
14599 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
14600 fetched from LDAP.
</li>
14601 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.
</li>
14602 <li>General cleanup (not finished)
</li>
14604 <p>The following features are not working as they should
</p>
14607 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
14608 scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
14610 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
14611 and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
14612 clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.
</li>
14613 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.
</li>
14614 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.
</li>
14615 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.
</li>
14616 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
14617 netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.
</li>
14618 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
14619 some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
14620 jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.
</li>
14621 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
14622 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
14623 and help out with translations.
</li>
14626 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use
</p>
14629 <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>
14630 <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>
14631 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
14633 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use
</p>
14636 <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>
14637 <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>
14638 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
14641 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
14642 get closer to the final release.
</p>
14644 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are
</p>
14647 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
14648 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
14651 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are
</p>
14653 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
14654 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
14656 <p>How to report bugs:
14657 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla
</p>
14659 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</p>
14666 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>.
14671 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14673 <div class=
"entry">
14674 <div class=
"title">
14675 <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>
14681 <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
14682 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
14683 Edu/Skolelinux into shape. This future version will use Kerberos for
14684 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
14685 getting rid of password questions one at the time.
</p>
14687 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
14688 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
14689 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
14690 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server. This
14691 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
14692 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
14693 package. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.
</p>
14695 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
14696 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
14697 password when mounting the SMB volume. A simple click on the shortcut
14698 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
14701 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
14702 Debian Edu. We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
14703 also Samba. Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.
</p>
14705 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
14706 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
14707 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
14708 the release. It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
14709 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
14710 time for a alpha0 release today. As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
14711 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
14712 release another day.
</p>
14714 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
14715 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
14721 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>.
14726 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14728 <div class=
"entry">
14729 <div class=
"title">
14730 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page
</a>
14737 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
14738 opengeodata blog entry
</a>, I just discovered that the
14739 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
14740 <a href=
"http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
14741 for calculating routes
</a>. The support is still experimental and
14742 only available from the development server, until more experience is
14743 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.
</p>
14745 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
14746 was provided by
<a href=
"http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade
</a>,
14747 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
14748 the issue. I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
14749 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
14750 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
14751 www.openstreetmap.org front page.
</p>
14757 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
14762 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14764 <div class=
"entry">
14765 <div class=
"title">
14766 <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>
14773 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
14775 <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
14777 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
14778 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
14780 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
14781 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
14782 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
14783 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
14785 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
14786 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
14787 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
14789 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
14791 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
14792 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
14795 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
14796 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
14797 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
14798 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
14799 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
14800 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
14802 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
14803 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
14804 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
14805 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
14806 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
14807 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
14808 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
14809 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
14810 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
14811 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
14812 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
14813 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
14814 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
14815 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
14816 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
14817 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
14820 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14821 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14822 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14823 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14824 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14825 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14826 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14828 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14829 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14830 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
14831 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
14832 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
14833 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
14834 </pre></blockquote>
14836 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
14837 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
14838 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
14839 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14843 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14845 objectclass: dnsdomain
14846 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14849 associateddomain: tjener.intern
14851 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14853 objectclass: dnsdomain2
14854 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14856 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
14857 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
14858 </pre></blockquote>
14860 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
14861 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
14862 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
14863 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
14864 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
14865 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
14866 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
14867 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
14868 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
14869 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
14870 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
14873 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
14877 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14878 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14879 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14880 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14881 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14882 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14884 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14885 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
14886 </pre></blockquote>
14888 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
14889 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
14890 reverse lookups.
</p>
14892 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
14893 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
14894 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
14895 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
14897 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
14898 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
14899 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
14901 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
14902 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
14903 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
14904 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
14905 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
14907 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
14908 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
14909 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
14910 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
14911 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
14913 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
14914 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
14915 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
14916 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
14917 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
14918 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
14921 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
14924 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
14925 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
14926 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
14927 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
14928 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
14930 </pre></blockquote>
14932 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
14933 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
14934 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
14935 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
14936 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
14937 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
14939 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
14941 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
14942 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
14943 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
14944 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
14945 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
14947 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
14948 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
14949 stored. These are the relevant entries from
14950 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
14953 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
14954 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
14955 </pre></blockquote>
14957 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
14958 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
14959 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
14960 search result is this entry:
</p>
14963 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14966 objectClass: dhcpServer
14967 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14968 </pre></blockquote>
14970 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
14971 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
14972 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
14973 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
14974 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
14975 The search result is this entry:
</p>
14978 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14981 objectClass: dhcpService
14982 objectClass: dhcpOptions
14983 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14984 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
14985 dhcpStatements: authoritative
14986 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
14987 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
14988 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
14989 </pre></blockquote>
14991 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
14992 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
14993 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
14994 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
14995 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
14996 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
14997 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
14998 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
14999 related computer objects.
</p>
15001 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
15002 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
15003 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
15004 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
15005 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
15009 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15012 objectClass: dhcpHost
15013 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
15014 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
15015 </pre></blockquote>
15017 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
15018 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
15019 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
15020 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
15021 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
15022 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
15023 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
15024 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
15025 structural object class.
15027 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
15029 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
15030 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
15031 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
15032 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
15033 in the configuration.
</p>
15035 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
15036 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
15037 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
15038 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
15039 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
15042 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
15043 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
15047 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
15048 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
15049 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15050 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15051 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15052 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15053 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15054 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15055 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
15056 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
15057 </pre></blockquote>
15059 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
15060 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
15061 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
15062 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
15064 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
15068 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15071 objectClass: dhcpHost
15072 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15073 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
15074 associateddomain: hostname.intern
15075 arecord:
10.11.12.13
15076 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
15077 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
15078 </pre></blockquote>
15080 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
15081 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
15082 auxiliary object class.
</p>
15088 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>.
15093 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15095 <div class=
"entry">
15096 <div class=
"title">
15097 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
15103 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
15104 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
15105 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
15106 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
15107 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
15109 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
15110 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
15112 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
15113 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
15114 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
15115 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
15116 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
15117 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
15119 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
15120 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
15121 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
15122 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
15123 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
15126 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
15127 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
15128 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
15132 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15134 objectClass: dhcphost
15135 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15136 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
15137 associateddomain: hostname.intern
15138 arecord:
10.11.12.13
15139 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
15140 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
15142 </pre></blockquote>
15144 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
15145 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
15146 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
15147 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
15149 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
15150 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
15151 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
15152 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
15153 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
15154 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
15155 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
15156 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
15158 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15159 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
15165 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>.
15170 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15172 <div class=
"entry">
15173 <div class=
"title">
15174 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
15180 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
15181 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
15182 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
15183 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
15185 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
15186 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
15187 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
15188 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
15191 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
15192 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
15193 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
15195 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
15196 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
15197 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
15200 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
15202 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
15204 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
15205 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
15206 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
15208 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
15209 # existence of attribute names.
15211 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
15212 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
15213 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
15215 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
15216 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
15218 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
15221 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
15223 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
15224 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
15225 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
15226 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
15227 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
15228 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
15229 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
15230 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
15231 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
15232 # bass value on to clients
15233 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
15237 </pre></blockquote>
15239 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
15240 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
15241 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
15242 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
15243 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
15245 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15246 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
15248 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
15249 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
15250 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
15251 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
15252 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
15253 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
15259 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>.
15264 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15266 <div class=
"entry">
15267 <div class=
"title">
15268 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
15275 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
15276 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
15277 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
15278 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
15279 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
15280 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
15281 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
15282 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
15283 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
15284 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
15285 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
15286 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
15287 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
15293 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>.
15298 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15300 <div class=
"entry">
15301 <div class=
"title">
15302 <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>
15308 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
15309 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
15310 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
15311 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
15312 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
15313 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
15314 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
15315 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
15317 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
15318 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
15319 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
15320 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
15321 publish the difference.
</p>
15323 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
15326 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
15327 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
15328 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
15329 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
15330 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
15331 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15332 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
15333 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
15336 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
15339 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
15340 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
15341 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
15342 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
15343 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
15344 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
15345 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
15346 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
15347 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
15348 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
15349 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
15350 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
15351 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
15352 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
15353 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
15354 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
15355 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
15356 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
15357 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
15358 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
15361 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
15364 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
15365 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
15366 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15367 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15368 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
15369 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
15370 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
15371 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15372 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15373 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15374 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15375 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
15376 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
15377 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
15378 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
15379 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
15380 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
15381 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
15382 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
15383 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
15384 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
15387 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
15390 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
15391 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
15392 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
15395 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
15396 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
15397 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
15398 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
15399 the difference somewhat.
15405 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>.
15410 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15412 <div class=
"entry">
15413 <div class=
"title">
15414 <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>
15420 <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
15421 a bit troubling. Laptops are typically used also when not connected
15422 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
15423 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
15424 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
15425 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
15426 in Debian. Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
15427 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
15428 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.
</p>
15430 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
15432 This is the traditional method with a twist. The password caching is
15433 provided by libpam-ccreds (version
10-
4 or later is needed on
15434 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd. The directory
15435 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP. If one want to use
15436 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
15437 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal. If one is happy having a
15438 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
15439 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
15440 using libpam-mklocaluser. A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
15441 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
15442 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #
568577</a> is in the
15443 archive. Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
15444 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
15445 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/. This
15446 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.
</p>
15448 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured
</p>
15451 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
15452 </pre></blockquote>
15454 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
15455 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site. Make sure the
15456 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
15457 sent in clear text to the LDAP server. I've been unable to get TLS
15458 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
15459 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
15460 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
15461 on how to get this working.
</p>
15463 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
15464 caching until
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #
485282</a>
15465 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
15466 currently in /etc/nscd.conf. The changes are in the fields
15467 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
15468 instructions I found in the
15469 <a href=
"http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops
</a>
15470 instructions by Flyn Computing.
</p>
15474 reload-count unlimited
15477 enable-cache passwd yes
15478 positive-time-to-live passwd
2592000
15479 negative-time-to-live passwd
20
15480 suggested-size passwd
211
15481 check-files passwd yes
15482 persistent passwd yes
15484 max-db-size passwd
33554432
15485 auto-propagate passwd yes
15487 enable-cache group yes
15488 positive-time-to-live group
2592000
15489 negative-time-to-live group
20
15490 suggested-size group
211
15491 check-files group yes
15492 persistent group yes
15494 max-db-size group
33554432
15495 auto-propagate group yes
15497 enable-cache hosts no
15498 positive-time-to-live hosts
2592000
15499 negative-time-to-live hosts
20
15500 suggested-size hosts
211
15501 check-files hosts yes
15502 persistent hosts yes
15504 max-db-size hosts
33554432
15506 enable-cache services yes
15507 positive-time-to-live services
2592000
15508 negative-time-to-live services
20
15509 suggested-size services
211
15510 check-files services yes
15511 persistent services yes
15512 shared services yes
15513 max-db-size services
33554432
15514 </pre></blockquote>
15516 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
15517 automatically like the one provided in
15518 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #
496915</a>, the file
15519 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
15520 directory service on the machine. /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
15521 look like this:
</p>
15527 hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
15533 netgroup: files ldap
15534 </pre></blockquote>
15536 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
15537 shadow and netgroup.
</p>
15539 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
15540 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
15541 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
15544 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
15545 libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
15547 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
15548 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
15549 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
15550 LDAP database is available. I have not tested such setup, because I
15551 discovered sssd.
</p>
15553 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser
</h2>
15555 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
15556 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
15557 <a href=
"https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd
</a> package from Redhat.
15558 It is part of the
<a href=
"http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA
</A> project
15559 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
15560 machines. The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
15561 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
15562 libpam-ccreds. It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS. Version
15563 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
15564 in version
1.5 expected to show up later in
2010. Because the
15565 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package
</a>
15566 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
15567 version
1.2 is now in testing.
15569 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
15570 roaming setup I want
</p>
15573 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
15574 </pre></blockquote>
15576 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
15577 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf
</tt>.
15581 config_file_version =
2
15582 reconnection_retries =
3
15584 services = nss, pam
15588 filter_groups = root
15589 filter_users = root
15590 reconnection_retries =
3
15593 reconnection_retries =
3
15597 cache_credentials = true
15600 auth_provider = ldap
15601 chpass_provider = ldap
15603 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
15604 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15605 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
15606 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
15607 </pre></blockquote>
15609 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking. Had to set
15610 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.
</p>
15612 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
15613 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
15614 modify it manually.
</p>
15616 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15617 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
15623 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>.
15628 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15630 <div class=
"entry">
15631 <div class=
"title">
15632 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
15638 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
15639 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
15640 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
15641 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
15642 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
15643 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
15644 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
15645 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
15646 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
15647 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
15649 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
15650 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
15651 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
15652 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
15655 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
15656 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
15657 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
15658 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
15660 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
15661 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
15663 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
15664 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
15665 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
15666 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
15667 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
15673 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>.
15678 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15680 <div class=
"entry">
15681 <div class=
"title">
15682 <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>
15689 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
15690 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
15691 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
15692 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
15694 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
15695 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
15696 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
15697 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
15699 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
15700 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
15701 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
15704 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
15706 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
15707 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
15708 available today from IETF.
</p>
15711 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
15712 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
15713 @@ -
376,
7 +
376,
7 @@
15714 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
15716 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
15718 + SUP top AUXILIARY
15720 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
15721 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
15724 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
15725 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
15726 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
15728 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15729 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
15735 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>.
15740 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15742 <div class=
"entry">
15743 <div class=
"title">
15744 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output
</a>
15750 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
15751 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
15752 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
15753 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
15754 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
15758 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15759 tasksel --new-install
15760 </pre></blockquote>
15762 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
15763 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
15764 any output what so ever.
15766 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
15767 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
15768 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
15769 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
15770 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
15771 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
15775 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15776 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
15778 </pre></blockquote>
15780 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
15781 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
15782 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
15783 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
15784 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
15785 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
15788 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
15789 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
15796 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
15801 <div class="padding
"></div>
15803 <div class="entry
">
15804 <div class="title
">
15805 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html
">Officeshots taking shape</a>
15811 <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
15812 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/
">OfficeShots</a>
15813 is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
15814 <a href="http://browsershots.org/
">BrowserShots</a> is for web
15817 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
15818 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
15819 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
15820 interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
15821 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
15822 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
15823 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
15824 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
15825 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
15826 see how the project is doing.</p>
15828 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
15829 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
15830 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
15831 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
15832 Windows. This is great.</p>
15838 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
15843 <div class="padding
"></div>
15845 <div class="entry
">
15846 <div class="title
">
15847 <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>
15854 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
15855 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
15856 finally made the upgrade logs available from
15857 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
15858 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
15859 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
15860 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
15862 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
15863 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
15864 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
15865 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
15866 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
15867 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
15868 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
15869 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
15871 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
15872 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
15873 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
15874 too surprising.</p>
15876 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
15877 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
15878 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
15879 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
15880 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
15881 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
15882 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
15885 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
15886 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
15887 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
15888 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
15889 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
15890 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
15891 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
15892 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15893 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15894 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15895 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15896 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15897 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15898 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15899 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15900 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15901 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15902 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15903 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15904 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15905 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15906 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15907 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15908 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15909 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15910 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15911 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15912 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15913 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
15914 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
15916 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
15918 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
15919 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
15920 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
15921 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
15922 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15923 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
15924 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
15925 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
15926 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
15927 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
15928 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15929 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
15930 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
15931 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
15932 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
15933 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
15934 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
15935 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
15936 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
15937 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
15938 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
15939 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
15940 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
15941 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
15942 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15943 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
15944 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
15945 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
15946 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
15947 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15948 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15951 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
15953 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
15954 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
15955 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
15956 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
15957 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
15958 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
15959 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15960 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15961 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15962 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15963 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15964 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15965 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15966 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15967 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15968 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15969 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15970 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15971 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15972 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15973 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15974 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15975 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15976 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15977 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15978 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15979 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15980 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
15982 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
15983 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
15984 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
15985 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
15986 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
15987 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
15988 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
15989 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
15990 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
15991 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
15992 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
15993 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
15994 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
15995 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
15996 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
15997 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
15998 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
15999 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16000 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16001 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16002 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
16003 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16004 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
16005 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
16006 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16007 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16008 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
16009 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
16010 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
16011 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
16012 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
16013 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
16014 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
16015 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
16016 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
16017 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16018 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16026 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>.
16031 <div class="padding
"></div>
16033 <div class="entry
">
16034 <div class="title
">
16035 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
16041 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
16042 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
16043 have been discovered and reported in the process
16044 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
16045 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
16046 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
16047 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
16048 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
16050 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
16051 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
16052 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
16053 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
16054 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
16055 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
16057 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
16058 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
16059 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16060 is created. The bug report
16061 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
16062 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
16063 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
16064 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
16065 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
16066 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
16067 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
16068 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
16069 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
16070 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
16071 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
16072 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
16073 Debian Squeeze.</p>
16075 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
16076 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
16092 exec
< /dev/null
16094 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
16095 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
16097 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
16098 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16099 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
16103 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
16105 umount $tmpdir/proc
16107 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
16108 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
16109 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
16111 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
16113 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
16114 # to return the correct answers.
16115 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
16116 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
16118 # Include the desktop and laptop task
16119 for test in desktop laptop ; do
16120 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
16124 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
16127 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16128 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
16129 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
16130 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
16132 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
16133 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16134 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16135 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
16137 </pre></blockquote>
16139 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
16140 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
16141 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
16142 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
16143 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
16144 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
16146 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
16147 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
16148 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
16149 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
16150 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
16151 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
16152 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
16154 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
16155 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
16156 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
16157 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
16158 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
16165 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>.
16170 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16172 <div class=
"entry">
16173 <div class=
"title">
16174 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it
</a>
16180 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
16181 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
16182 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
16183 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
16184 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
16185 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
16186 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
16188 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
16189 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
16198 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
16200 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
16201 </pre></blockquote>
16203 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
16207 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
16212 </pre></blockquote>
16214 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
16215 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
16216 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
16218 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
16219 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
16226 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16231 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16233 <div class=
"entry">
16234 <div class=
"title">
16235 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
16242 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
16243 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
16244 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
16245 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
16246 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
16252 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>.
16257 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16259 <div class=
"entry">
16260 <div class=
"title">
16261 <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>
16267 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
16268 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
16269 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
16270 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
16271 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
16274 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
16276 Dell Computer Corporation
1
16279 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
16283 </pre></blockquote>
16285 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
16286 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
16287 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
16288 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
16289 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
16291 <p>A larger list is
16292 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
16293 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
16294 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
16295 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
16296 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
16297 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
16304 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>.
16309 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16311 <div class=
"entry">
16312 <div class=
"title">
16313 <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>
16319 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
16320 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
16321 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
16322 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
16325 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
16326 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
16327 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
16328 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
16329 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
16330 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
16332 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
16333 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
16334 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
16335 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
16336 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
16337 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
16338 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
16339 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
16341 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
16347 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>.
16352 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16354 <div class=
"entry">
16355 <div class=
"title">
16356 <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>
16362 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
16363 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
16364 issues are known and should be solved:
16368 <li>The wicd package seen to
16369 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
16370 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
16371 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
16372 seem to be on the case.
</li>
16374 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
16375 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
16376 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
16377 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
16379 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
16380 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
16381 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
16382 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
16383 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
16384 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
16385 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
16386 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
16390 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
16391 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
16392 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
16393 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
16395 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16396 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16397 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16398 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
16400 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
16406 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>.
16411 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16413 <div class=
"entry">
16414 <div class=
"title">
16415 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
16421 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
16422 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
16423 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
16424 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
16426 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
16427 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
16428 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
16429 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
16430 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
16431 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
16432 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
16433 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
16434 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
16435 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
16436 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
16437 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
16438 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
16441 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
16442 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
16443 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
16444 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
16445 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
16446 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
16447 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
16448 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
16449 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
16450 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
16453 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
16454 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
16455 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
16456 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
16457 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
16458 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
16460 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
16461 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
16467 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>.
16472 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16474 <div class=
"entry">
16475 <div class=
"title">
16476 <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>
16482 <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
16483 Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
16484 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser
</a>
16485 package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
16487 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python
</a>
16488 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
16489 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd
</a> package
16490 passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
16491 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
16492 package we need is in experimental (version
10-
4) since Saturday, and
16493 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.
</p>
16495 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
16496 roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
16497 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
16498 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
16499 for nscd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
16500 #
485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
16501 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
16502 care of the caching of passwords and group information.
</p>
16504 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
16505 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
16506 problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
16507 package to version
1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
16508 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
16509 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
16510 and I am sure we will find a good solution.
</p>
16512 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
16513 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
16514 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
16515 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
16516 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
16517 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
16518 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
16519 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
16520 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
16521 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
16522 on the home directory servers.
</p>
16524 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
16525 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
16526 is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
16527 message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
16528 a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
16529 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.
</p>
16531 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16532 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
16538 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>.
16543 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16545 <div class=
"entry">
16546 <div class=
"title">
16547 <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>
16553 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
16554 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
16555 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
16556 expected, if I am to believe the
16557 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16558 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
16559 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
16560 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
16561 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
16562 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
16565 More information about
16566 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16567 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
16568 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
16569 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
16573 </pre></blockquote>
16575 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16576 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16577 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16578 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
16584 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>.
16589 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16591 <div class=
"entry">
16592 <div class=
"title">
16593 <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>
16599 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
16600 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
16601 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
16602 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
16603 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
16604 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
16605 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
16606 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
16608 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
16609 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
16610 this on the collector host:
</p>
16613 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
16614 </pre></blockquote>
16616 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
16617 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
16619 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
16620 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
16621 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
16622 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
16629 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>.
16634 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16636 <div class=
"entry">
16637 <div class=
"title">
16638 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
16644 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
16645 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
16647 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
16649 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
16650 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
16651 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
16652 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
16653 based boot system. Tollef is
16654 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
16655 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
16656 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
16657 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
16658 at the moment do not.
</p>
16660 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
16661 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
16662 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
16663 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
16664 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
16667 <p>In the mean time, based on the
16668 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16669 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
16670 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
16671 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
16672 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
16673 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
16674 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
16675 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
16681 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
16686 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16688 <div class=
"entry">
16689 <div class=
"title">
16690 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing
</a>
16696 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
16697 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
16698 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
16699 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
16700 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16701 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
16702 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
16705 CONCURRENCY=makefile
16706 </pre></blockquote>
16708 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
16709 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
16710 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
16711 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
16712 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
16713 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
16714 make this happen.
</p>
16716 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
16717 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
16718 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
16719 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
16720 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
16722 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
16723 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
16724 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
16725 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
16727 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16728 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16729 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16730 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
16736 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16741 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16743 <div class=
"entry">
16744 <div class=
"title">
16745 <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>
16751 <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
16752 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
16753 change the password on the first login attempt.
</p>
16755 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
16756 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account. The account
16757 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
16758 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
16759 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.
</p>
16761 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
16762 settings in /etc/shadow:
</p>
16765 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
16766 Last password change : May
02,
2010
16767 Password expires : never
16768 Password inactive : never
16769 Account expires : never
16770 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
16771 Maximum number of days between password change :
99999
16772 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
16774 </pre></blockquote>
16776 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
16777 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
16778 lowest value possible (January
1th
1970), and the maximum password age
16779 to the difference in days between that date and today. To make it
16780 simple, I went for
30 years (
30 *
365 =
10950) and January
2th (to
16781 avoid testing if
0 is a valid value).
</p>
16783 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
16787 root@tjener:~# chage -d
1 test; chage -M
10950 test
16788 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
16789 Last password change : Jan
02,
1970
16790 Password expires : never
16791 Password inactive : never
16792 Account expires : never
16793 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
16794 Maximum number of days between password change :
10950
16795 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
16797 </pre></blockquote>
16799 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
16800 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
16801 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).
</p>
16803 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
16804 sure only the user itself have the account password?
</p>
16806 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
16807 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
16809 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02 17:
20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
16810 shadow(
8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
16811 last password change to zero (
0) will force the password to be changed
16812 on the first login. This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
16813 I did not notice this in my initial testing. I have tested it on
16814 Squeeze, and '
<tt>chage -d
0 username
</tt>' do work there. I have not
16815 tested it on Lenny yet.
</p>
16817 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02-
19:
05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
16818 equivalent command to expire a password is '
<tt>passwd -e
16819 username
</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
16826 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>.
16831 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16833 <div class=
"entry">
16834 <div class=
"title">
16835 <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>
16841 <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
16842 Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
16843 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
16846 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
16847 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
16848 example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
16849 The setup would consist of the following:
</p>
16853 <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
16854 the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
16855 the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
16856 server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
16857 central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
16858 request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
16859 automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
16860 and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
16861 hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
16862 request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
16863 can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
16864 the fish protocol in KDE?
</li>
16866 <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
16867 authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
16868 to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
16869 to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
16870 <a href=
"http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
16871 or the Fedora developed
16872 <a href=
"https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
16873 Security Services Daemon
</a> packages.
</li>
16875 <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
16876 using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
16877 directory, using unison.
</li>
16879 <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
16880 their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
16881 the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
16882 system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
16885 <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
16886 sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.
</li>
16888 <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
16889 cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
16890 local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.
</li>
16894 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
16895 the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
16896 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
16897 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
16898 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#
566718</a>) and nslcd (or
16899 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
16900 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
16901 when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
16902 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.
</p>
16904 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16905 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
16911 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>.
16916 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16918 <div class=
"entry">
16919 <div class=
"title">
16920 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"
</a>
16926 <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
16927 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
16928 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
16929 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
16930 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
16931 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
16932 restrictions on the web, for example from
16933 <a href=
"http://craphound.com/content/">his own site
</a>. I read the
16935 <a href=
"http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks
</a> using
16936 <a href=
"http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader
</a> and my N810. I
16937 strongly recommend this book.
</p>
16943 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
16948 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16950 <div class=
"entry">
16951 <div class=
"title">
16952 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?
</a>
16958 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
16959 NUUG presentation
</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
16960 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a
16961 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
16962 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
16963 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
16964 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
16965 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
16966 users and cryptographic keys instead.
</p>
16968 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a
16969 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
16970 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the
16971 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
16972 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.
</p>
16974 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
16975 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?
</p>
16977 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
16978 Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We
16979 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
16980 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
16981 to work properly.
</p>
16983 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
16984 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
16985 configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be
16986 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
16987 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
16990 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
16991 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
16992 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show
16993 up in a few days.
</p>
16999 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>.
17004 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17006 <div class=
"entry">
17007 <div class=
"title">
17008 <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>
17014 <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
17015 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
17016 when the user log out. A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
17017 package in
2004 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#
230422</a>),
17018 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
17019 Today, this finally paid off.
</p>
17021 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
17022 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
17023 been updated to use this framework. Next on my agenda is to make sure
17024 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.
</p>
17026 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
17027 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
17028 after a user. With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
17029 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
17030 framework. My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
17031 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.
<p>
17037 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>.
17042 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17044 <div class=
"entry">
17045 <div class=
"title">
17046 <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>
17052 <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
17053 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> was finally
17054 shipped. This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
17055 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up. Work on the first
17056 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
17057 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
17058 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.
</p>
17060 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?
</p>
17062 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
17063 next major release, based on Squeeze. We will try to get as many of
17064 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
17065 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.
</p>
17071 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>.
17076 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17078 <div class=
"entry">
17079 <div class=
"title">
17080 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration
</a>
17086 <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
17087 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
17088 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
17089 Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
17090 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
17093 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
17094 configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
17095 configured to be a server for the
17096 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
17097 system
</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
17098 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
17099 work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
17100 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
17101 computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
17102 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
17103 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
17104 packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
17105 and Nagios configuration.
</p>
17107 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
17108 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
17109 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
17110 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.
</p>
17112 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
17113 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
17114 services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
17115 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
17116 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
17117 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
17120 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
17121 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
17122 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
17123 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.
</p>
17125 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
17126 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
17127 administrator need to run "
<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
17128 nagiosadmin
</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
17129 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
17130 everything is taken care of.</p>
17136 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>.
17141 <div class="padding
"></div>
17143 <div class="entry
">
17144 <div class="title
">
17145 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html
">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
17151 <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
17152 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
17153 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage. I searched using
17154 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
17157 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17158 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
17159 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
17160 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
17163 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
17164 got these numbers:</p>
17167 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17168 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
17169 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299 </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
17170 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187 </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
17173 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
17175 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
17176 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
17177 they are conduced in another country. Because of this, I did the same
17178 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
17179 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
17183 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17184 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
17185 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
17186 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
17189 <p>And with 'site:no':
17192 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17193 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
17194 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
17195 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186 </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
17198 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
17205 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
17210 <div class="padding
"></div>
17212 <div class="entry
">
17213 <div class="title
">
17214 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html
">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
17221 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/
2009/
08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html
">a
17222 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
17223 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages. His interesting point is that the
17224 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
17225 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
17226 can be fixed in ISO. Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
17227 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
17228 close to solving the problems. I was part of the Norwegian committee
17229 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
17230 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
17232 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
17233 with the future ahead of it. We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
17234 seminar this autumn.</p>
17240 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
17245 <div class="padding
"></div>
17247 <div class="entry
">
17248 <div class="title
">
17249 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html
">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
17255 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
17256 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
17257 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
17258 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
17259 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
17260 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
17261 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
17263 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
17264 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
17265 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
17271 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
17276 <div class="padding
"></div>
17278 <div class="entry
">
17279 <div class="title
">
17280 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html
">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
17286 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
17287 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
17288 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
17289 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
17290 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
17291 the package up to date.</p>
17293 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
17294 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
17295 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
17296 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
17297 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
17298 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
17299 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
17300 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/
">Savannah</a>, and continue
17301 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
17302 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
17303 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
17304 working on the future release.</p>
17306 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
17307 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
17313 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
17318 <div class="padding
"></div>
17320 <div class="entry
">
17321 <div class="title
">
17322 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html
">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
17328 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
17329 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
17330 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
17332 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint
">developer
17333 gathering</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
17334 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
17335 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
17336 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
17337 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.</p>
17339 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
17340 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
17345 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
17347 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
17348 clock is in UTC.</li>
17350 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
17351 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot
">dependency
17352 based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
17356 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
17357 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/
">Carlos
17360 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
17361 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
17362 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
17363 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
17364 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
17367 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
17368 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
17369 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
17370 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
17371 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
17372 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
17373 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
17379 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
17384 <div class="padding
"></div>
17386 <div class="entry
">
17387 <div class="title
">
17388 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html
">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
17394 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
17395 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
17396 do not yet know them.</p>
17398 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/
">valgrind</a>, a
17399 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
17400 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
17401 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
17402 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
17403 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
17404 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
17405 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
17406 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
17407 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
17408 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
17410 <p>The second one is
17411 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity
">Coverity</a> which is
17412 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
17413 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
17414 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
17415 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
17416 and the company behind it is running
17417 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/
">a community service</a> for the
17418 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
17419 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
17420 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
17421 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
17422 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
17423 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
17424 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
17426 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
17427 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
17428 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
17429 surrounded by today.</p>
17435 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
17440 <div class="padding
"></div>
17442 <div class="entry
">
17443 <div class="title
">
17444 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html
">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
17451 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/
2009/
04/
12/
214">claim that no
17452 patch is better than a useless patch</a>. I completely disagree, as a
17453 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
17454 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
17455 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
17462 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
17467 <div class="padding
"></div>
17469 <div class="entry
">
17470 <div class="title
">
17471 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html
">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
17477 <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
17478 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net. The
17479 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
17480 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
17481 vlc. I finally found a way to do it today. I spent an hour or so
17482 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation. The
17483 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
17484 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
17486 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
17488 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
17489 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
17490 --intf=dummy
</pre></blockquote>
17492 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
17493 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
17494 dummy interface. The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
17495 sure no X interface is needed.
</p>
17497 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
17498 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
17499 the vlc process with SIGTERM. Here is a complete script
17500 <tt>vlc-record
</tt> to use from
<tt>at
</tt> or
<tt>cron
</tt>:
</p>
17502 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
17507 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
17508 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
17509 --intf=dummy < /dev/null
> /dev/null
2>&
1 &
17513 wait $pid
</pre></blockquote>
17519 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
17524 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17526 <div class=
"entry">
17527 <div class=
"title">
17528 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications
</a>
17534 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
17535 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
17536 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
17537 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
17538 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
17539 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
17540 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
17543 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
17544 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
17545 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
17546 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
17547 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
17548 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
17549 blocked from doing so.
</p>
17551 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
17552 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
17553 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
17554 requirements change.
</p>
17556 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
17557 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
17558 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
17564 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
17569 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17571 <div class=
"entry">
17572 <div class=
"title">
17573 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
17579 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
17580 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
17581 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
17582 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
17583 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
17584 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
17585 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
17586 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
17587 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
17588 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
17589 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
17590 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
17591 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
17592 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
17599 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>.
17604 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17606 <div class=
"entry">
17607 <div class=
"title">
17608 <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>
17614 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
17615 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
17616 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
17617 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
17618 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
17619 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
17621 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
17622 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
17623 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
17624 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
17625 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
17626 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
17627 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
17628 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
17629 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
17630 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
17631 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
17632 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
17633 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
17635 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
17636 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
17637 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
17638 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
17640 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
17641 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
17643 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
17644 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
17645 new IETF work group?
</p>
17651 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>.
17656 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17658 <div class=
"entry">
17659 <div class=
"title">
17660 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers
</a>
17666 <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
17667 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
17668 contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service)
17669 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
17670 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
17671 each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract
17672 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
17673 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
17674 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
17675 machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import
17676 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
17677 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
17678 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
17679 for the relevant machines. This make the support status information
17680 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
17681 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
17682 The result of this work documented that
27% of the machines in the
17683 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
17684 them.
27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
17685 using machines a bit longer than the
3 years a normal support contract
17686 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
17687 services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
17688 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
17689 them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
17690 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
17693 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
17694 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
17695 Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
17696 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
17697 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML
17698 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
17699 introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:
</p>
17704 use WWW::Mechanize;
17707 sub get_support_info {
17708 my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
17711 if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
17712 # fetch website from Dell support
17713 my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no
&cs=nodhs1
&l=no
&s=dhs
&ServiceTag=$serial";
17714 my $webpage = get($url);
17715 return undef unless ($webpage);
17718 my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
17719 foreach my $line (@lines) {
17720 next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
17721 $line =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
17722 $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$
1/;
17724 my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
17725 @f = @f[
13 .. $#f];
17727 while ($f[
3] eq "DELL") {
17728 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[
0,
5,
7,
10];
17730 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17731 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
17732 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17733 localtime(str2time($endstr)));
17734 $str .= "$type $start -
> $end ";
17735 @f = @f[
14 .. $#f];
17736 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
17738 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17739 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17740 if ($lastend lt $today);
17742 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
17743 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-
>new();
17745 'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
17748 'BODServiceID' =
> 'NA',
17749 'RegisteredPurchaseDate' =
> '',
17751 'productNumber' =
> $productnumber,
17752 'serialNumber1' =
> $serial,
17754 $mech-
>submit_form( form_number =
> 2,
17755 fields =
> $fields );
17756 # Next step is screen scraping
17757 my $content = $mech-
>content();
17759 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
17760 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
17761 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
17762 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
17764 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17766 while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
17767 my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
17768 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
17769 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
17770 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17771 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
17772 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17773 localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
17775 $str .= "$type ($status) $start -
> $end ";
17777 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17778 if ($end lt $today);
17780 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
17781 # This code ignore extended support contracts.
17782 my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{
4}).+\]-/;
17783 if ($producttype
&& $serial) {
17785 get("http://www-
947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty
&brandind=
5000008&Submit=Submit
&type=$producttype
&serial=$serial");
17787 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
17788 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
17789 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
17790 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
17792 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
17793 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
17795 $str .= "($status) -
> $end ";
17797 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17798 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17799 if ($end lt $today);
17807 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
17808 serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched
17809 from dmidecode.
</p>
17812 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "
1234567890"
17814 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge
2950", "
1234567");
17815 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries
345 -[
867061X]-",
17819 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
17820 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)
</p>
17822 <p>Update
2009-
03-
06: The IBM page do not include extended support
17823 contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do
17824 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
17831 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17836 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17838 <div class=
"entry">
17839 <div class=
"title">
17840 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center
</a>
17846 <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
17847 in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the
17848 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
17849 removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a
17850 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
17851 the "missing" computer.
</p>
17853 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
17854 <a href=
"http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx
</a> to write and read bar
17855 code blocks as defined in the
17856 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
17857 Standard
</a>. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
17858 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
17859 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard
17860 allow up to
2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project
17861 with
<a href=
"http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
17862 writer written in postscript
</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
17863 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
17866 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
17867 machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are
17868 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
17869 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
17870 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
17871 locations, and can detect movements and removals.
</p>
17873 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
17874 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I
17875 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
17876 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked
17877 fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
17878 side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space
17879 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
17880 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
17881 about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
17882 to
60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.
</p>
17884 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
17885 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
17886 easier automatic tracking of computers.
</p>
17892 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17897 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17899 <div class=
"entry">
17900 <div class=
"title">
17901 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...
</a>
17907 <p>As part of the work we do in
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no">NUUG
</a>
17908 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
17909 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording. Putting a
17910 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
17911 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy. I hope this
17912 will become easier when the
<video
> tag is implemented in all
17913 browsers, but I am not sure. We provide the recordings in several
17914 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H
.264 and Quicktime, and want the
17915 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
17916 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
17917 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
17918 <video
> tag, the
<object
> tag, the
<embed
> tag and
17919 the
<applet
> tag. All of these take a lot of options, and
17920 finding the best options is a major challenge.
</p>
17922 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from
<a
17923 href=
"http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com
</a>, to see how it handled
17924 a
<video
> tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
17925 I was not very impressed. The browser start by fetching a picture
17926 from the video stream. Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
17927 definitely very early in the recording. So far, so good. Next,
17928 instead of streaming the
76 MiB video file, it start to download all
17929 of it, but do not start to play the video. This mean I have to wait
17930 for several minutes for the downloading to finish. When the download
17931 is done, the playing of the video do not start! Waiting for the
17932 download, but I do not get to see the video? Some testing later, I
17933 discover that I have to add the
controls="true" attribute to be able
17934 to get a play button to pres to start the video. Adding
17935 autoplay="true" did not help. I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
17936 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
17937 <video
> tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
17938 playing when the download is done.
</p>
17940 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
17941 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
17942 from the nuug site
</a>. Will have to test it with the new Firefox
17945 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature. I was unable
17946 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
17947 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video. I
17948 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)
</p>
17954 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
17959 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17961 <div class=
"entry">
17962 <div class=
"title">
17963 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick
</a>
17969 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> is
17970 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
17971 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
17972 directly with the video stream. For this, we use the
17973 <a href=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch
</a> package from
17974 the Debian video team. As this require quite one computer per video
17975 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
17976 borrow laptops. And to avoid having to install extra software on
17977 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
17978 bootable USB stick. The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
17979 source, sink and mixer applications and
17980 <a href=
"http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab
</a>. To allow this setup to
17981 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
17982 <a href=
"http://www.avahi.org/">avahi
</a> to connect the various parts
17983 together. And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
17984 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
17985 with USB sources. We have not yet tested this setup in a production
17986 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
17987 video mixer in a very short time frame. We will need it for
17988 <a href=
"http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open
2009</a>.
</p>
17990 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
17991 USB image
</a> is for a
1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
17992 larger stick as well.
</p>
17998 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
18003 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18005 <div class=
"entry">
18006 <div class=
"title">
18007 <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>
18013 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
18014 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
18015 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
18016 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
18017 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
18018 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
18019 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
18020 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
18022 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
18023 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
18024 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
18025 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
18026 of these cards.
</p>
18032 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>.
18037 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18039 <div class=
"entry">
18040 <div class=
"title">
18041 <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>
18047 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
18048 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
18049 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
18050 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
18051 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
18052 notes are available on
18053 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
18054 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
18055 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
18056 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
18057 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
18058 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
18059 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
18060 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
18061 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
18063 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
18064 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
18070 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>.
18075 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18077 <p style=
"text-align: right;"><a href=
"english.rss"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
"RSS Feed" width=
"36" height=
"14" /></a></p>
18088 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (
11)
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18090 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (
9)
</a></li>
18092 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (
9)
</a></li>
18094 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (
6)
</a></li>
18096 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (
9)
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18098 <li><a href=
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10)
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18100 <li><a href=
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7)
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18102 <li><a href=
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3)
</a></li>
18104 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (
5)
</a></li>
18106 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (
7)
</a></li>
18108 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (
6)
</a></li>
18115 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
18117 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (
10)
</a></li>
18119 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (
17)
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18121 <li><a href=
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12)
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18123 <li><a href=
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12)
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18125 <li><a href=
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20)
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18127 <li><a href=
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17)
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18129 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (
6)
</a></li>
18131 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (
9)
</a></li>
18133 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (
17)
</a></li>
18135 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (
10)
</a></li>
18137 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
18144 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (
16)
</a></li>
18146 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (
6)
</a></li>
18148 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (
6)
</a></li>
18150 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (
7)
</a></li>
18152 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (
3)
</a></li>
18154 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (
2)
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18156 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (
7)
</a></li>
18158 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (
6)
</a></li>
18160 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (
4)
</a></li>
18162 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
18164 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
18166 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (
1)
</a></li>
18173 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
18175 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (
1)
</a></li>
18177 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (
3)
</a></li>
18179 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (
3)
</a></li>
18181 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
18183 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (
14)
</a></li>
18185 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (
12)
</a></li>
18187 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (
13)
</a></li>
18189 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (
7)
</a></li>
18191 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
18193 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (
13)
</a></li>
18195 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (
12)
</a></li>
18202 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (
8)
</a></li>
18204 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (
8)
</a></li>
18206 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (
12)
</a></li>
18208 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (
10)
</a></li>
18210 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
18212 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (
3)
</a></li>
18214 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (
4)
</a></li>
18216 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
18218 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
18220 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
18222 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
18224 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
18231 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (
5)
</a></li>
18233 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
18244 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (
13)
</a></li>
18246 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (
1)
</a></li>
18248 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (
1)
</a></li>
18250 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (
4)
</a></li>
18252 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (
7)
</a></li>
18254 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (
13)
</a></li>
18256 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (
2)
</a></li>
18258 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (
90)
</a></li>
18260 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (
142)
</a></li>
18262 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (
10)
</a></li>
18264 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (
10)
</a></li>
18266 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (
4)
</a></li>
18268 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (
228)
</a></li>
18270 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (
21)
</a></li>
18272 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (
12)
</a></li>
18274 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (
12)
</a></li>
18276 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (
5)
</a></li>
18278 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (
11)
</a></li>
18280 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (
37)
</a></li>
18282 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (
7)
</a></li>
18284 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (
18)
</a></li>
18286 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (
8)
</a></li>
18288 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (
6)
</a></li>
18290 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (
1)
</a></li>
18292 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (
5)
</a></li>
18294 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (
25)
</a></li>
18296 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (
237)
</a></li>
18298 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (
159)
</a></li>
18300 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (
9)
</a></li>
18302 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (
2)
</a></li>
18304 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (
45)
</a></li>
18306 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (
67)
</a></li>
18308 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (
1)
</a></li>
18310 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (
11)
</a></li>
18312 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (
2)
</a></li>
18314 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
9)
</a></li>
18316 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
18318 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (
4)
</a></li>
18320 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (
2)
</a></li>
18322 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (
33)
</a></li>
18324 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (
4)
</a></li>
18326 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (
4)
</a></li>
18328 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (
43)
</a></li>
18330 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (
3)
</a></li>
18332 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (
9)
</a></li>
18334 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (
21)
</a></li>
18336 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (
1)
</a></li>
18338 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (
8)
</a></li>
18340 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (
39)
</a></li>
18342 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (
4)
</a></li>
18344 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (
28)
</a></li>
18350 <p style=
"text-align: right">
18351 Created by
<a href=
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