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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         14th March 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
  32 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
  33 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
  34 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
  35 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
  36 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
  37 release (0.2).</p>
  38
  39 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
  40 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
  41 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
  42 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
  43 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
  44 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
  45 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
  46 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
  47 and build using
  48 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
  49 with a user with sudo access to become root:
  50
  51 <pre>
  52 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
  53   freedom-maker
  54 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
  55   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
  56   u-boot-tools
  57 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
  58 </pre>
  59
  60 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
  61 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
  62 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
  63 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
  64 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
  65 kpartx call.</p>
  66
  67 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
  68 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
  69 the preseed values:</p>
  70
  71 <pre>
  72 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
  73 </pre>
  74
  75 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
  76 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
  77 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
  78 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
  79 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
  80 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
  81
  82 Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
  83 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
  84 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
  85 irc.debian.org)</a> and
  86 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
  87 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
  88
  89       </div>
  90       <div class="tags">
  91
  92
  93         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>.
  94
  95
  96       </div>
  97     </div>
  98     <div class="padding"></div>
  99
 100     <div class="entry">
 101       <div class="title">
 102         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
 103       </div>
 104       <div class="date">
 105         12th March 2014
 106       </div>
 107       <div class="body">
 108         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
 109 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
 110 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
 111 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
 112 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
 113 document this better when one of the customers of
 114 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
 115 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
 116 get this working are the following:</p>
 117
 118 <p><ol>
 119
 120 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
 121 example host here.</li>
 122
 123 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
 124 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
 125
 126 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
 127 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
 128
 129 </ol></p>
 130
 131 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
 132 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
 133 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
 134 started).</p>
 135
 136 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
 137 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
 138
 139 <p><blockquote><pre>
 140 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
 141 Export list for nas-server:
 142 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
 143 root@tjener:~#
 144 </pre></blockquote></p>
 145
 146 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
 147 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
 148 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
 149 NFS access.</p>
 150
 151 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
 152 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
 153 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
 154
 155 <p><blockquote><pre>
 156 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 157 </pre></blockquote></p>
 158
 159 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
 160 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
 161 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
 162 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
 163
 164 <p><blockquote><pre>
 165 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 166 objectClass: automount
 167 cn: nas-server
 168 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 169
 170 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 171 objectClass: top
 172 objectClass: automountMap
 173 ou: auto.nas-server
 174
 175 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 176 objectClass: automount
 177 cn: /
 178 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
 179 </pre></blockquote></p>
 180
 181 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
 182 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
 183 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
 184
 185 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
 186 the storage server directly by just visiting the
 187 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
 188 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
 189
 190       </div>
 191       <div class="tags">
 192
 193
 194         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>.
 195
 196
 197       </div>
 198     </div>
 199     <div class="padding"></div>
 200
 201     <div class="entry">
 202       <div class="title">
 203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
 204       </div>
 205       <div class="date">
 206         22nd February 2014
 207       </div>
 208       <div class="body">
 209         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
 210 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
 211 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
 212 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
 213 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
 214 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
 215 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
 216 proper home since then.</p>
 217
 218 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
 219 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
 220 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
 221 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
 222 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
 223
 224 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
 225 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
 226 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
 227 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
 228 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
 229 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
 230 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
 231 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
 232 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
 233
 234       </div>
 235       <div class="tags">
 236
 237
 238         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>.
 239
 240
 241       </div>
 242     </div>
 243     <div class="padding"></div>
 244
 245     <div class="entry">
 246       <div class="title">
 247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
 248       </div>
 249       <div class="date">
 250          3rd February 2014
 251       </div>
 252       <div class="body">
 253         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
 254 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
 255 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
 256 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
 257 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
 258 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
 259 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
 260 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
 261 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
 262
 263 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
 264 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
 265 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
 266 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
 267 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
 268 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
 269
 270 <p><blockquote><pre>
 271 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
 272 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
 273 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
 274 dhclient /dev/eth0
 275 </pre></blockquote></p>
 276
 277 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
 278 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
 279 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
 280
 281 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
 282 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
 283 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
 284 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
 285 side.</p>
 286
 287 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
 288 stuff:</p>
 289
 290 <p><blockquote><pre>
 291 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 292 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
 293 EOF
 294 apt-get update
 295 apt-get dist-upgrade
 296 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
 297     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
 298 update-alternatives --config runsystem
 299 </pre></blockquote></p>
 300
 301 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
 302 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
 303 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
 304 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
 305 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
 306 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
 307 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
 308 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
 309 ssh instead.
 310
 311 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
 312 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
 313 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
 314 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
 315 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
 316 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
 317
 318 <p><blockquote><pre>
 319 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 320 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
 321 EOF
 322 </pre></blockquote></p>
 323
 324 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
 325 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
 326 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
 327 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
 328
 329 <p><blockquote><pre>
 330 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
 331 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
 332 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
 333 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
 334 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
 335 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
 336 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
 337 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
 338 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
 339 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
 340 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
 341 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
 342 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
 343 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
 344 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
 345 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
 346 #
 347 </pre></blockquote></p>
 348
 349 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
 350 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
 351 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
 352 command line stuff.<p>
 353
 354       </div>
 355       <div class="tags">
 356
 357
 358         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>.
 359
 360
 361       </div>
 362     </div>
 363     <div class="padding"></div>
 364
 365     <div class="entry">
 366       <div class="title">
 367         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
 368       </div>
 369       <div class="date">
 370         29th January 2014
 371       </div>
 372       <div class="body">
 373         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
 374 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
 375 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
 376 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
 377 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
 378 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
 379 investigated in
 380 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
 381 from December 2013, in the article
 382 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
 383 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
 384 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
 385 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
 386 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
 387 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
 388 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
 389 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
 390
 391 <p><blockquote>
 392 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
 393 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
 394 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
 395 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
 396 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
 397 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
 398 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
 399 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
 400 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
 401 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
 402 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
 403 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
 404
 405 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
 406 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
 407 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
 408 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
 409 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
 410 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
 411 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
 412 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
 413 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
 414 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
 415 </blockquote><p>
 416
 417 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
 418 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
 419 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
 420 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
 421 summarized like this:</p>
 422
 423 <p><blockquote>
 424 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
 425 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
 426 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
 427 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
 428 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
 429 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
 430 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
 431 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
 432 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
 433 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
 434 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
 435 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
 436 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
 437 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
 438 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
 439 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
 440 </blockquote></p>
 441
 442 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
 443 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
 444 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
 445 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
 446
 447 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 448 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 449 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 450
 451       </div>
 452       <div class="tags">
 453
 454
 455         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>.
 456
 457
 458       </div>
 459     </div>
 460     <div class="padding"></div>
 461
 462     <div class="entry">
 463       <div class="title">
 464         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
 465       </div>
 466       <div class="date">
 467         14th January 2014
 468       </div>
 469       <div class="body">
 470         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
 471 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
 472 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
 473 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
 474 the source.  The company behind it provide
 475 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
 476 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
 477 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
 478 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
 479 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
 480 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
 481 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
 482 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
 483 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
 484 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
 485 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
 486 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
 487 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
 488 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
 489 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
 490 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
 491 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
 492 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
 493 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
 494
 495 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
 496
 497 <ul>
 498
 499   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
 500   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
 501   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
 502
 503 </ul>
 504
 505 <p>You can
 506 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 507 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 508 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 509 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 510 include a test suite check.</p>
 511
 512       </div>
 513       <div class="tags">
 514
 515
 516         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 517
 518
 519       </div>
 520     </div>
 521     <div class="padding"></div>
 522
 523     <div class="entry">
 524       <div class="title">
 525         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
 526       </div>
 527       <div class="date">
 528         25th December 2013
 529       </div>
 530       <div class="body">
 531         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 532 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
 533 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
 534 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
 535 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
 536 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
 537 George</a>.</p>
 538
 539 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
 540
 541 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 542
 543 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
 544 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
 545 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
 546 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
 547 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
 548 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
 549
 550 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
 551 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
 552 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
 553 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
 554 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
 555 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
 556 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
 557 to help building another school's informational education concept from
 558 scratch.</p>
 559
 560 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
 561 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
 562 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
 563
 564 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
 565 and cycling.</p>
 566
 567 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 568 project?</strong></p>
 569
 570 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
 571 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
 572 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
 573 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
 574 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
 575 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
 576
 577 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
 578 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
 579 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
 580 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
 581 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
 582 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
 583 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
 584 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
 585 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
 586
 587 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
 588 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
 589 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
 590 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
 591
 592 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 593 Edu?</strong></p>
 594
 595 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
 596 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
 597 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
 598 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
 599 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
 600 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
 601 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
 602 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
 603 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
 604 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
 605 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
 606 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
 607 that it rocks!</p>
 608
 609 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
 610 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
 611 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
 612 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
 613 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
 614 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
 615 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
 616
 617 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 618 Edu?</strong></p>
 619
 620 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
 621 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
 622 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
 623 can list a few points about that:</p>
 624
 625 <ul>
 626
 627  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
 628  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
 629  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
 630
 631 </ul>
 632
 633 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
 634
 635 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 636
 637 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
 638 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
 639 year.</p>
 640
 641 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
 642 run text tools. I use
 643 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
 644 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
 645 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
 646 based full-featured student management software with the two),
 647 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
 648 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
 649 coloured world called the WWW, I use
 650 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
 651 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
 652 e-mail.</p>
 653
 654 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
 655 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
 656 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
 657 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
 658 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
 659 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
 660 Facebook now ;).</p>
 661
 662 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 663 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 664
 665 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
 666 side is what I have experienced.</p>
 667
 668 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
 669 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
 670 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
 671 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
 672 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
 673 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
 674 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
 675 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
 676 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
 677 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
 678 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
 679 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
 680 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
 681 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
 682 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
 683 plain criminal.</p>
 684
 685 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
 686 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
 687 founded an association named
 688 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
 689 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
 690 area of free and open source software, for example the
 691 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
 692 Teckids and are the youth programme of
 693 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
 694 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
 695 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
 696 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
 697 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
 698 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
 699
 700 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
 701 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
 702 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
 703 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
 704 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
 705 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
 706 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
 707 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
 708 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
 709 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
 710 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
 711 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
 712
 713 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
 714 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
 715 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
 716 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
 717
 718 <!--
 719
 720 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
 721
 722 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
 723 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
 724
 725  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
 726    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
 727    of the decision makers above;
 728  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
 729    knowledge about free software
 730
 731 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
 732
 733 -->
 734
 735       </div>
 736       <div class="tags">
 737
 738
 739         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>.
 740
 741
 742       </div>
 743     </div>
 744     <div class="padding"></div>
 745
 746     <div class="entry">
 747       <div class="title">
 748         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
 749       </div>
 750       <div class="date">
 751          6th December 2013
 752       </div>
 753       <div class="body">
 754         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
 755 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 756 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
 757 had a new school administrator show up on
 758 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
 759 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
 760 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
 761 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
 762 Germany a few years ago.</p>
 763
 764 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 765
 766 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
 767 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
 768 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
 769 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
 770
 771 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
 772 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
 773 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
 774 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
 775 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
 776 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
 777 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
 778 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
 779 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
 780
 781 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 782 project?</strong></p>
 783
 784 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
 785 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
 786 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
 787 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
 788
 789 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 790 Edu?</strong></p>
 791
 792 <ul>
 793   <li>Quick installation,</li>
 794   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
 795   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
 796   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
 797     single company,</li>
 798   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
 799     experience and problem solutions.</li>
 800 </ul>
 801
 802 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 803 Edu?</strong></p>
 804
 805 <ul>
 806   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
 807   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
 808   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
 809   working again reliably.
 810
 811   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
 812   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
 813   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
 814   as their base.
 815
 816   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
 817   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
 818   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
 819   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
 820   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
 821   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
 822
 823   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
 824   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
 825   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
 826   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
 827   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
 828   schemes.</li>
 829
 830   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
 831   compared to Debian.</li>
 832
 833 </ul>
 834
 835 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
 836 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
 837 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
 838 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
 839
 840 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 841
 842 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
 843 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
 844 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
 845 programming languages for teaching.</p>
 846
 847 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 848 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 849
 850 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
 851
 852 <ul>
 853
 854   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
 855     teaching and learning.</li>
 856
 857   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
 858     home, and at their working place without running into license or
 859     conversion problems.</li>
 860
 861   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
 862     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
 863     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
 864     science, not products.</li>
 865
 866   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
 867     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
 868
 869 </ul>
 870
 871       </div>
 872       <div class="tags">
 873
 874
 875         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>.
 876
 877
 878       </div>
 879     </div>
 880     <div class="padding"></div>
 881
 882     <div class="entry">
 883       <div class="title">
 884         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
 885       </div>
 886       <div class="date">
 887         30th November 2013
 888       </div>
 889       <div class="body">
 890         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
 891 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
 892 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
 893 experiment with interesting network technology, the
 894 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
 895 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
 896 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
 897 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
 898 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
 899 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
 900 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
 901 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
 902 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
 903 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
 904 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
 905 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
 906 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
 907 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
 908 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
 909 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
 910
 911       </div>
 912       <div class="tags">
 913
 914
 915         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>.
 916
 917
 918       </div>
 919     </div>
 920     <div class="padding"></div>
 921
 922     <div class="entry">
 923       <div class="title">
 924         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
 925       </div>
 926       <div class="date">
 927         24th November 2013
 928       </div>
 929       <div class="body">
 930         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
 931 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
 932 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
 933 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
 934 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
 935 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
 936 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
 937 is working on.  I checked the
 938 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
 939 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
 940 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
 941 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
 942 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
 943 These are the release notes:</p>
 944
 945 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
 946
 947 <ul>
 948
 949   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
 950    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
 951    up.</li>
 952
 953   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
 954
 955   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
 956    Matthias Klose.</li>
 957
 958   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
 959    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
 960
 961   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
 962    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
 963    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
 964
 965 </ul>
 966
 967 <p>You can
 968 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 969 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 970 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 971 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 972 include a testsuite check.</p>
 973
 974       </div>
 975       <div class="tags">
 976
 977
 978         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 979
 980
 981       </div>
 982     </div>
 983     <div class="padding"></div>
 984
 985     <div class="entry">
 986       <div class="title">
 987         <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>
 988       </div>
 989       <div class="date">
 990         21st November 2013
 991       </div>
 992       <div class="body">
 993         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
 994 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
 995 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
 996 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
 997 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
 998 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
 999 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
1000 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
1001 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
1002 TED talk
1003 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
1004 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
1005 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
1006
1007 <blockquote>
1008
1009 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
1010 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
1011 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
1012 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
1013 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
1014 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
1015 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
1016 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
1017 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
1018 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
1019 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
1020
1021 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
1022 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
1023 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
1024
1025 </blockquote>
1026
1027 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
1028 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
1029 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
1030 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
1031 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
1032 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
1033 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
1034 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
1035 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
1036
1037       </div>
1038       <div class="tags">
1039
1040
1041         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>.
1042
1043
1044       </div>
1045     </div>
1046     <div class="padding"></div>
1047
1048     <div class="entry">
1049       <div class="title">
1050         <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>
1051       </div>
1052       <div class="date">
1053         13th November 2013
1054       </div>
1055       <div class="body">
1056         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
1057 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
1058 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
1059 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
1060 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
1061 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
1062 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
1063 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
1064 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
1065 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
1066 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
1067 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1068 right away. :)</p>
1069
1070       </div>
1071       <div class="tags">
1072
1073
1074         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>.
1075
1076
1077       </div>
1078     </div>
1079     <div class="padding"></div>
1080
1081     <div class="entry">
1082       <div class="title">
1083         <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>
1084       </div>
1085       <div class="date">
1086         10th November 2013
1087       </div>
1088       <div class="body">
1089         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
1090 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
1091 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
1092 MR3040 as a mesh node using
1093 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
1094
1095 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
1096 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
1097 and downloaded
1098 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
1099 recommended firmware image</a>
1100 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
1101 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
1102 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
1103 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
1104 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
1105
1106 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
1107 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
1108 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
1109 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
1110 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
1111 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
1112 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
1113 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
1114 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
1115 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
1116 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
1117 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
1118 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
1119
1120 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
1121 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
1122 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
1123 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
1124 them:</p>
1125
1126 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
1127
1128 <pre>
1129
1130 config interface 'loopback'
1131         option ifname 'lo'
1132         option proto 'static'
1133         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
1134         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
1135
1136 config globals 'globals'
1137         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
1138
1139 config interface 'lan'
1140         option ifname 'eth0'
1141         option type 'bridge'
1142         option proto 'dhcp'
1143         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
1144         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
1145         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
1146         option ip6assign '60'
1147
1148 config interface 'mesh'
1149         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1150         option mtu '1528'
1151         option proto 'batadv'
1152         option mesh 'bat0'
1153 </pre>
1154
1155 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
1156 <pre>
1157
1158 config wifi-device 'radio0'
1159         option type 'mac80211'
1160         option channel '11'
1161         option hwmode '11ng'
1162         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
1163         option htmode 'HT20'
1164         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
1165         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
1166         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
1167         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
1168         option disabled '0'
1169
1170 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
1171         option device 'radio0'
1172         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1173         option network 'mesh'
1174         option encryption 'none'
1175         option mode 'adhoc'
1176         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
1177         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
1178 </pre>
1179 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
1180 <pre>
1181
1182 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
1183         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
1184         option 'aggregated_ogms'
1185         option 'ap_isolation'
1186         option 'bonding'
1187         option 'fragmentation'
1188         option 'gw_bandwidth'
1189         option 'gw_mode'
1190         option 'gw_sel_class'
1191         option 'log_level'
1192         option 'orig_interval'
1193         option 'vis_mode'
1194         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
1195         option 'distributed_arp_table'
1196         option 'network_coding'
1197         option 'hop_penalty'
1198
1199 # yet another batX instance
1200 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
1201 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
1202 </pre>
1203
1204 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
1205 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
1206 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
1207
1208       </div>
1209       <div class="tags">
1210
1211
1212         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>.
1213
1214
1215       </div>
1216     </div>
1217     <div class="padding"></div>
1218
1219     <div class="entry">
1220       <div class="title">
1221         <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>
1222       </div>
1223       <div class="date">
1224          2nd November 2013
1225       </div>
1226       <div class="body">
1227         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
1228 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
1229 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
1230 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
1231 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
1232
1233 <p><pre>
1234 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
1235 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
1236 # Provides:          rsyslog
1237 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
1238 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
1239 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
1240 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
1241 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
1242 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
1243 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
1244 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
1245 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
1246 ### END INIT INFO
1247 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
1248 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
1249 </pre></p>
1250
1251 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
1252 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
1253 info/comments.</p>
1254
1255 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
1256 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
1257
1258 <p><pre>
1259 #!/bin/sh
1260
1261 # Define LSB log_* functions.
1262 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
1263 # and status_of_proc is working.
1264 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
1265
1266 #
1267 # Function that starts the daemon/service
1268
1269 #
1270 do_start()
1271 {
1272         # Return
1273         #   0 if daemon has been started
1274         #   1 if daemon was already running
1275         #   2 if daemon could not be started
1276         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
1277                 || return 1
1278         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
1279                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
1280                 || return 2
1281         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
1282         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
1283         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
1284 }
1285
1286 #
1287 # Function that stops the daemon/service
1288 #
1289 do_stop()
1290 {
1291         # Return
1292         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
1293         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
1294         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
1295         #   other if a failure occurred
1296         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1297         RETVAL="$?"
1298         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
1299         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
1300         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
1301         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
1302         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
1303         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
1304         # sleep for some time.
1305         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
1306         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
1307         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
1308         rm -f $PIDFILE
1309         return "$RETVAL"
1310 }
1311
1312 #
1313 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
1314 #
1315 do_reload() {
1316         #
1317         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
1318         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
1319         # then implement that here.
1320         #
1321         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1322         return 0
1323 }
1324
1325 SCRIPTNAME=$1
1326 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
1327 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
1328 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
1329     script="$1"
1330     shift
1331     . $script
1332 else
1333     exit 0
1334 fi
1335
1336 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
1337 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
1338
1339 # Exit if the package is not installed
1340 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
1341
1342 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
1343 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
1344
1345 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
1346 . /lib/init/vars.sh
1347
1348 case "$1" in
1349   start)
1350         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
1351         do_start
1352         case "$?" in
1353                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1354                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1355         esac
1356         ;;
1357   stop)
1358         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
1359         do_stop
1360         case "$?" in
1361                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1362                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1363         esac
1364         ;;
1365   status)
1366         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
1367         ;;
1368   #reload|force-reload)
1369         #
1370         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
1371         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
1372         #
1373         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
1374         #do_reload
1375         #log_end_msg $?
1376         #;;
1377   restart|force-reload)
1378         #
1379         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
1380         # 'force-reload' alias
1381         #
1382         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
1383         do_stop
1384         case "$?" in
1385           0|1)
1386                 do_start
1387                 case "$?" in
1388                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
1389                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
1390                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
1391                 esac
1392                 ;;
1393           *)
1394                 # Failed to stop
1395                 log_end_msg 1
1396                 ;;
1397         esac
1398         ;;
1399   *)
1400         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
1401         exit 3
1402         ;;
1403 esac
1404
1405 :
1406 </pre></p>
1407
1408 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
1409 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
1410 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
1411 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
1412
1413 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
1414 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
1415 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
1416 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
1417 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
1418
1419       </div>
1420       <div class="tags">
1421
1422
1423         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>.
1424
1425
1426       </div>
1427     </div>
1428     <div class="padding"></div>
1429
1430     <div class="entry">
1431       <div class="title">
1432         <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>
1433       </div>
1434       <div class="date">
1435          1st November 2013
1436       </div>
1437       <div class="body">
1438         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
1439 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
1440 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
1441 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
1442 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
1443 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
1444 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
1445 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
1446 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
1447 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
1448 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
1449 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
1450
1451 <p>The source is now available from
1452 <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>
1453
1454       </div>
1455       <div class="tags">
1456
1457
1458         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>.
1459
1460
1461       </div>
1462     </div>
1463     <div class="padding"></div>
1464
1465     <div class="entry">
1466       <div class="title">
1467         <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>
1468       </div>
1469       <div class="date">
1470         27th October 2013
1471       </div>
1472       <div class="body">
1473         <p>The
1474 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
1475 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
1476 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
1477 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
1478 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
1479 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
1480 of a plan to simplify the build system for
1481 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
1482 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
1483 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
1484 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
1485 Raspberry Pi.</p>
1486
1487 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
1488 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
1489 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
1490 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
1491 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
1492 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
1493 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
1494 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
1495 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
1496 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
1497 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
1498 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
1499 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
1500 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
1501 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
1502 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
1503 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
1504 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
1505 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
1506 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
1507 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
1508 available from
1509 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
1510 upstream project page</a>.</p>
1511
1512 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
1513 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
1514 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
1515 list:</p>
1516
1517 <p><pre>
1518 #!/bin/sh
1519 set -e # Exit on first error
1520 rootdir="$1"
1521 cd "$rootdir"
1522 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
1523 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
1524 EOF
1525 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
1526 # install a kernel somewhere too.
1527 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
1528     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1529 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1530 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
1531 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
1532 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
1533 </pre></p>
1534
1535 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
1536 to build the image:</p>
1537
1538 <pre>
1539 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
1540     --variant minbase \
1541     --arch armel \
1542     --distribution jessie \
1543     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
1544     --image test.img \
1545     --size 600M \
1546     --bootsize 64M \
1547     --boottype vfat \
1548     --log-level debug \
1549     --verbose \
1550     --no-kernel \
1551     --no-extlinux \
1552     --root-password raspberry \
1553     --hostname raspberrypi \
1554     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
1555     --customize `pwd`/customize \
1556     --package netbase \
1557     --package git-core \
1558     --package binutils \
1559     --package ca-certificates \
1560     --package wget \
1561     --package kmod
1562 </pre></p>
1563
1564 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
1565 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
1566 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
1567 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
1568 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
1569 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
1570 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
1571
1572 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
1573 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
1574 build dependency list.</p>
1575
1576 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
1577 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
1578 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
1579 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
1580
1581       </div>
1582       <div class="tags">
1583
1584
1585         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>.
1586
1587
1588       </div>
1589     </div>
1590     <div class="padding"></div>
1591
1592     <div class="entry">
1593       <div class="title">
1594         <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>
1595       </div>
1596       <div class="date">
1597         21st October 2013
1598       </div>
1599       <div class="body">
1600         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
1601 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
1602 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
1603 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
1604 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
1605 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
1606 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
1607 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
1608
1609 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
1610 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
1611 instead, I started playing with a
1612 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
1613 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
1614 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
1615 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
1616 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
1617 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
1618 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
1619 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
1620 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
1621 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
1622 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
1623 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
1624 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
1625 every client on the local network.</p>
1626
1627 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
1628 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
1629 and a script
1630 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
1631 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
1632 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
1633 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
1634 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
1635 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
1636 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
1637 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
1638 support.</p>
1639
1640 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
1641 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
1642
1643 <p><pre>
1644 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
1645     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
1646 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
1647 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
1648 %
1649 </pre></p>
1650
1651 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
1652 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
1653 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
1654 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
1655 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
1656 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
1657
1658 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
1659 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
1660 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
1661
1662 <p><table>
1663
1664 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
1665 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
1666 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
1667 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
1668 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
1669 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
1670
1671 </table></p>
1672
1673 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
1674 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
1675 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
1676 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
1677 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
1678 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
1679 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
1680
1681       </div>
1682       <div class="tags">
1683
1684
1685         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>.
1686
1687
1688       </div>
1689     </div>
1690     <div class="padding"></div>
1691
1692     <div class="entry">
1693       <div class="title">
1694         <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>
1695       </div>
1696       <div class="date">
1697         19th October 2013
1698       </div>
1699       <div class="body">
1700         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
1701 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
1702 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
1703 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
1704 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
1705 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
1706 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
1707 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
1708
1709       </div>
1710       <div class="tags">
1711
1712
1713         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>.
1714
1715
1716       </div>
1717     </div>
1718     <div class="padding"></div>
1719
1720     <div class="entry">
1721       <div class="title">
1722         <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>
1723       </div>
1724       <div class="date">
1725         15th October 2013
1726       </div>
1727       <div class="body">
1728         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
1729 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
1730 these. :)</p>
1731
1732 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
1733 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
1734 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
1735 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
1736 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
1737 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
1738 hope you will to. :)</p>
1739
1740 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
1741 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
1742 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
1743 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
1744 donated.  Are you next?</p>
1745
1746 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
1747 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
1748 statement under the heading
1749 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
1750 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
1751 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
1752 too.</p>
1753
1754       </div>
1755       <div class="tags">
1756
1757
1758         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>.
1759
1760
1761       </div>
1762     </div>
1763     <div class="padding"></div>
1764
1765     <div class="entry">
1766       <div class="title">
1767         <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>
1768       </div>
1769       <div class="date">
1770         11th October 2013
1771       </div>
1772       <div class="body">
1773         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
1774 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
1775 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
1776 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
1777 successful examples like
1778 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
1779 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
1780 (see
1781 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
1782 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
1783 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
1784 can be seen from their
1785 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
1786 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
1787 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
1788 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
1789 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
1790
1791 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
1792 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
1793 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
1794 my recent involvement in
1795 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
1796 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
1797 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
1798 when possible, given that most communication between people are
1799 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
1800 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
1801 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
1802 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
1803 important over the years.</p>
1804
1805 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
1806 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
1807 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
1808 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
1809 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
1810 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
1811 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
1812 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
1813 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
1814 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
1815 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
1816 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
1817 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
1818 speakers about this talk (from
1819 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
1820
1821 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
1822
1823 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
1824 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
1825 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
1826 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
1827 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
1828 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
1829 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
1830 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
1831 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
1832 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
1833 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
1834 that project (from
1835 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
1836
1837 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
1838
1839 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
1840 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
1841 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
1842 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
1843 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
1844 based community mesh networks.</p>
1845
1846 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
1847 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
1848 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
1849 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
1850 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
1851 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
1852 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
1853 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
1854 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
1855
1856 <p><table>
1857 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
1858 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
1859 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
1860 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
1861 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
1862 </table></p>
1863
1864 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
1865 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
1866 VillageTelco about
1867 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
1868 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
1869 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
1870 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
1871 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
1872 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
1873
1874 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
1875 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
1876 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
1877 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
1878
1879 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
1880 us on IRC, either channel
1881 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
1882 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
1883 irc.freenode.net.</p>
1884
1885 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
1886 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
1887 and Innovation called
1888 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
1889 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
1890 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
1891 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
1892 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
1893 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
1894 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
1895 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
1896
1897 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
1898 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
1899 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
1900 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
1901 mesh system.</p>
1902
1903       </div>
1904       <div class="tags">
1905
1906
1907         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>.
1908
1909
1910       </div>
1911     </div>
1912     <div class="padding"></div>
1913
1914     <div class="entry">
1915       <div class="title">
1916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="date">
1919          8th October 2013
1920       </div>
1921       <div class="body">
1922         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
1923 Salvador had published a
1924 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
1925 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
1926 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
1927 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
1928 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
1929 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
1930 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
1931 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
1932 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
1933 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
1934 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
1935 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
1936 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
1937 computers without hard drives by installing one central
1938 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
1939
1940 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
1941
1942 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1943
1944 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
1945 me know. :)</p>
1946
1947       </div>
1948       <div class="tags">
1949
1950
1951         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>.
1952
1953
1954       </div>
1955     </div>
1956     <div class="padding"></div>
1957
1958     <div class="entry">
1959       <div class="title">
1960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
1961       </div>
1962       <div class="date">
1963         29th September 2013
1964       </div>
1965       <div class="body">
1966         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
1967 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
1968 complete announcement text can be found at
1969 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
1970 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
1971
1972 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
1973 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
1974 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
1975 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
1976
1977       </div>
1978       <div class="tags">
1979
1980
1981         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>.
1982
1983
1984       </div>
1985     </div>
1986     <div class="padding"></div>
1987
1988     <div class="entry">
1989       <div class="title">
1990         <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>
1991       </div>
1992       <div class="date">
1993         27th September 2013
1994       </div>
1995       <div class="body">
1996         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
1997 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
1998 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
1999 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
2000
2001 <ul>
2002
2003 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
2004 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
2005
2006 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
2007 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2008
2009 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
2010 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
2011 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
2012 (Youtube)</li>
2013
2014 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
2015 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
2016
2017 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
2018 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2019
2020 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
2021 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
2022 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
2023
2024 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
2025 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
2026 (Youtube)</li>
2027
2028 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
2029 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
2030
2031 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
2032 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
2033
2034 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
2035 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
2036 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
2037
2038 </ul>
2039
2040 <p>A larger list is available from
2041 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
2042 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
2043
2044 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
2045 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
2046 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
2047 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
2048 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
2049 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
2050 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
2051 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
2052 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
2053 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2054 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2055
2056       </div>
2057       <div class="tags">
2058
2059
2060         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>.
2061
2062
2063       </div>
2064     </div>
2065     <div class="padding"></div>
2066
2067     <div class="entry">
2068       <div class="title">
2069         <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>
2070       </div>
2071       <div class="date">
2072         16th September 2013
2073       </div>
2074       <div class="body">
2075         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2076 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
2077
2078 <blockquote>
2079 <p>Hi,</p>
2080
2081 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
2082 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2083 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
2084
2085 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
2086 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
2087 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
2088 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
2089
2090 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
2091 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
2092
2093 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
2094 compared to beta1:</p>
2095
2096 <ul>
2097
2098 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
2099 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
2100 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
2101 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
2102 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
2103 main server.</li>
2104 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
2105 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
2106 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
2107 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
2108 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
2109
2110 </ul>
2111
2112 <p>Where to get it:</p>
2113
2114 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2115
2116 <ul>
2117 <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>
2118 <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>
2119 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
2120 </ul>
2121
2122 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
2123
2124 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
2125 <ul>
2126 <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>
2127 <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>
2128 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
2129 </ul>
2130
2131 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
2132
2133 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
2134 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
2135 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
2136 as the other isos.</p>
2137
2138 <p>How to report bugs</p>
2139
2140 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
2141 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
2142
2143
2144 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
2145
2146 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
2147 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2148 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2149 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2150 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2151 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2152 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2153 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
2154 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2155 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2156 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2157 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
2158 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2159
2160 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2161 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2162 Squeeze release.</p>
2163
2164 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
2165
2166 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2167 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2168 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2169 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2170 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
2171 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
2172 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
2173 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
2174 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
2175 directory.</p>
2176
2177
2178 <p>cheers,
2179 <br>        Holger</p>
2180 </blockquote>
2181
2182       </div>
2183       <div class="tags">
2184
2185
2186         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>.
2187
2188
2189       </div>
2190     </div>
2191     <div class="padding"></div>
2192
2193     <div class="entry">
2194       <div class="title">
2195         <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>
2196       </div>
2197       <div class="date">
2198         10th September 2013
2199       </div>
2200       <div class="body">
2201         <p>I was introduced to the
2202 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
2203 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2204 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2205 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
2206 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2207 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
2208 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2209 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
2210
2211 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2212 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2213 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
2214 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2215 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
2216
2217 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
2218 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2219 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2220 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2221 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
2222 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
2223 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
2224 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2225 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
2226 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
2227 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2228 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2229 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2230 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2231 missing in Debian).</p>
2232
2233 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2234 scripts
2235 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
2236 and a administrative web interface
2237 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
2238 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2239 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
2240 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2241 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
2242 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2243 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
2244 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2245 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
2246 this is really working yet, see
2247 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
2248 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
2249 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2250 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2251 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2252 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2253 with lots of half baked features.</p>
2254
2255 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2256 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2257 at.</p>
2258
2259 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
2260
2261 <ol>
2262
2263 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
2264 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
2265 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2266 to the Debian installer:<p>
2267 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
2268
2269 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2270 install on.</li>
2271
2272 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2273 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
2274
2275 </ol>
2276
2277 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
2278
2279 <ol>
2280
2281 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
2282 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
2283 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
2284 <pre>
2285 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
2286 </pre></li>
2287 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
2288 <pre>
2289 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2290    apt-key add -
2291 apt-get update
2292 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2293 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2294 </pre></li>
2295 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
2296
2297 </ol>
2298
2299 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2300 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2301 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2302 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
2303 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
2304
2305 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2306 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2307 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2308 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
2309
2310 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2311 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
2312 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
2313 irc.debian.org and the
2314 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
2315 mailing list</a>.</p>
2316
2317 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2318 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
2319 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2320 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
2321 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
2322 default password is 'secret'.</p>
2323
2324       </div>
2325       <div class="tags">
2326
2327
2328         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>.
2329
2330
2331       </div>
2332     </div>
2333     <div class="padding"></div>
2334
2335     <div class="entry">
2336       <div class="title">
2337         <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>
2338       </div>
2339       <div class="date">
2340         22nd August 2013
2341       </div>
2342       <div class="body">
2343         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2344 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
2345 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
2346
2347 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
2348
2349 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2350 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2351
2352 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2353
2354 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2355 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2356 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2357 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2358 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2359 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2360 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2361 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
2362 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2363 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2364 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2365 desktop contains
2366 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2367 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2368 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2369 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2370
2371 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
2372 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
2373 release.</p>
2374
2375 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2376 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2377 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2378 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2379 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
2380 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
2381 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
2382 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
2383 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
2384 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
2385 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
2386
2387 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2388
2389 <ul>
2390
2391 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
2392     work also without a attached tty.</li>
2393 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
2394     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
2395     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
2396     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
2397     required).</li>
2398
2399 </ul>
2400
2401 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2402
2403 <ul>
2404
2405 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
2406 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
2407 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
2408 stick ISO image.</li>
2409 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
2410 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
2411 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
2412     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
2413     cope with this.</li>
2414 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
2415 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
2416     empty password hashes.</li>
2417 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
2418     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
2419     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
2420
2421 </ul>
2422
2423 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2424
2425 <ul>
2426
2427 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2428     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2429 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
2430     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
2431
2432 </ul>
2433
2434 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2435
2436 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2437
2438 <ul>
2439
2440 <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>
2441
2442 <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>
2443
2444 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
2445
2446 </ul>
2447
2448 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
2449 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
2450
2451 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2452
2453 <ul>
2454
2455 <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>
2456 <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>
2457 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
2458
2459 </ul>
2460
2461 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
2462 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
2463
2464
2465 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2466
2467 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2468
2469       </div>
2470       <div class="tags">
2471
2472
2473         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>.
2474
2475
2476       </div>
2477     </div>
2478     <div class="padding"></div>
2479
2480     <div class="entry">
2481       <div class="title">
2482         <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>
2483       </div>
2484       <div class="date">
2485         18th August 2013
2486       </div>
2487       <div class="body">
2488         <p>Earlier, I reported about
2489 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
2490 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
2491 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
2492 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2493 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2494 currently on the disk.</p>
2495
2496 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2497 <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>
2498 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2499 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2500 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2501 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
2502 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2503 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
2504 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2505 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
2506 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
2507 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2508 the broken disks.</p>
2509
2510       </div>
2511       <div class="tags">
2512
2513
2514         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>.
2515
2516
2517       </div>
2518     </div>
2519     <div class="padding"></div>
2520
2521     <div class="entry">
2522       <div class="title">
2523         <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>
2524       </div>
2525       <div class="date">
2526          2nd August 2013
2527       </div>
2528       <div class="body">
2529         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
2530 have worked on a Norwegian
2531 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2532 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2533 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
2534 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
2535 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
2536 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
2537 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
2538 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
2539 progress of the translation:</p>
2540
2541 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
2542
2543 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
2544 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
2545 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
2546 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
2547 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
2548 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
2549 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
2550 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
2551 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
2552 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
2553 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
2554
2555 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2556 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2557 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2558 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
2559 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
2560 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
2561 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
2562 project files currently available from
2563 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2564
2565 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2566 the updated
2567 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2568 and
2569 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2570 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2571 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2572 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2573
2574       </div>
2575       <div class="tags">
2576
2577
2578         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>.
2579
2580
2581       </div>
2582     </div>
2583     <div class="padding"></div>
2584
2585     <div class="entry">
2586       <div class="title">
2587         <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>
2588       </div>
2589       <div class="date">
2590         27th July 2013
2591       </div>
2592       <div class="body">
2593         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2594 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2595
2596 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
2597 2013-07-27</strong></p>
2598
2599 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2600 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2601
2602 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2603
2604 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2605 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2606 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2607 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2608 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2609 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2610 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2611 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2612 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2613 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2614 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2615 desktop contains
2616 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2617 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2618 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2619 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2620
2621 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2622 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2623 Squeeze release.</p>
2624
2625 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2626 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2627 release.</p>
2628
2629 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2630
2631 <ul>
2632
2633 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
2634    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
2635 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
2636    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
2637    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
2638    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
2639    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
2640 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
2641 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
2642 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
2643    crash bugs.</li>
2644
2645 </ul>
2646
2647 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2648
2649 <ul>
2650
2651 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
2652    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
2653 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
2654    netinst CD.</li>
2655 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
2656    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
2657 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
2658    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
2659    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
2660 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
2661    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
2662    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
2663 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
2664    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
2665    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
2666 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
2667    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
2668 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
2669
2670 </ul>
2671
2672 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2673
2674 <ul>
2675
2676 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
2677 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2678     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2679 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
2680
2681 </ul>
2682
2683 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2684
2685 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2686
2687 <ul>
2688
2689 <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>
2690
2691 <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>
2692
2693 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
2694
2695 </ul>
2696
2697 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
2698 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
2699
2700 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2701
2702 <ul>
2703
2704 <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>
2705 <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>
2706 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
2707
2708 </ul>
2709
2710 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
2711 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
2712
2713
2714 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2715
2716 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2717
2718       </div>
2719       <div class="tags">
2720
2721
2722         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>.
2723
2724
2725       </div>
2726     </div>
2727     <div class="padding"></div>
2728
2729     <div class="entry">
2730       <div class="title">
2731         <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>
2732       </div>
2733       <div class="date">
2734         17th July 2013
2735       </div>
2736       <div class="body">
2737         <p>Today I switched to
2738 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
2739 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
2740 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2741 <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
2742 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
2743 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2744 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2745 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2746 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
2747 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2748 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2749 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2750 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2751 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2752 station from now on.</p>
2753
2754 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2755 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2756 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
2757 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2758 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2759 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
2760 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
2761 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
2762 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2763 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2764 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2765 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
2766
2767 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2768 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
2769 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2770 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2771 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
2772 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
2773 parameters are tuned:</p>
2774
2775 <ul>
2776
2777 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2778     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
2779
2780 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2781     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2782     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
2783
2784 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2785     systems.</li>
2786
2787 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
2788     /etc/fstab.</li>
2789
2790 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
2791
2792 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2793     cron.daily).</li>
2794
2795 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2796     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
2797
2798 </ul>
2799
2800 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2801 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2802 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2803 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2804 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2805 from getting the data on the disk (see
2806 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
2807 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2808 right thing to do.</p>
2809
2810 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2811 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2812 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
2813
2814 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
2815 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2816 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2817 instead of during my work.</p>
2818
2819 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2820 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
2821
2822 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
2823 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2824 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
2825
2826 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2827 there.</p>
2828
2829 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
2830 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
2831 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
2832 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
2833 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
2834 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
2835 back.</p>
2836
2837       </div>
2838       <div class="tags">
2839
2840
2841         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>.
2842
2843
2844       </div>
2845     </div>
2846     <div class="padding"></div>
2847
2848     <div class="entry">
2849       <div class="title">
2850         <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>
2851       </div>
2852       <div class="date">
2853         10th July 2013
2854       </div>
2855       <div class="body">
2856         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
2857 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
2858 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
2859 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2860 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
2861 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
2862 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
2863 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
2864
2865 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2866 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
2867 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
2868 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2869 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2870 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
2871 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
2872 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
2873 lock up when I download a new
2874 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
2875 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2876 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
2877
2878 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2879 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
2880 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2881 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
2882 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2883 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2884
2885 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2886 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
2887 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2888 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
2889 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2890 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2891
2892 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
2893 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
2894 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
2895 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
2896 exist).</p>
2897
2898       </div>
2899       <div class="tags">
2900
2901
2902         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>.
2903
2904
2905       </div>
2906     </div>
2907     <div class="padding"></div>
2908
2909     <div class="entry">
2910       <div class="title">
2911         <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>
2912       </div>
2913       <div class="date">
2914          9th July 2013
2915       </div>
2916       <div class="body">
2917         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
2918 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2919 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
2920 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
2921 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2922 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2923 Bitraf</a>.</p>
2924
2925 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
2926 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
2927 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
2928 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2929 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
2930
2931       </div>
2932       <div class="tags">
2933
2934
2935         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>.
2936
2937
2938       </div>
2939     </div>
2940     <div class="padding"></div>
2941
2942     <div class="entry">
2943       <div class="title">
2944         <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>
2945       </div>
2946       <div class="date">
2947          5th July 2013
2948       </div>
2949       <div class="body">
2950         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
2951 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
2952 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
2953 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
2954 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
2955 ended up picking a
2956 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
2957 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
2958 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
2959 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
2960 on that below.</p>
2961
2962 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2963 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2964 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2965 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2966 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2967 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
2968 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
2969 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
2970 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
2971
2972 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
2973 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
2974 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
2975 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
2976 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
2977 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
2978 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
2979
2980 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
2981 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
2982
2983 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
2984 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
2985 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
2986 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
2987 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
2988 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
2989 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
2990 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
2991 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
2992 kernel developers as
2993 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
2994 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
2995 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
2996 Lenovo forums, both for
2997 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
2998 2012-11-10</a> and for
2999 <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
3000 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3001 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3002 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3003 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3004 There is even a
3005 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3006 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3007 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3008
3009 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3010 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3011 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3012 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3013 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3014 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3015 fixed. :)</p>
3016
3017       </div>
3018       <div class="tags">
3019
3020
3021         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>.
3022
3023
3024       </div>
3025     </div>
3026     <div class="padding"></div>
3027
3028     <div class="entry">
3029       <div class="title">
3030         <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>
3031       </div>
3032       <div class="date">
3033          4th July 2013
3034       </div>
3035       <div class="body">
3036         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3037 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3038 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3039 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3040 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3041 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3042 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3043 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3044 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3045
3046 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3047 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3048 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3049 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3050 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3051 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3052 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3053
3054 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3055 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3056 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3057 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3058 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3059 new laptop now. :)</p>
3060
3061 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3062
3063       </div>
3064       <div class="tags">
3065
3066
3067         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>.
3068
3069
3070       </div>
3071     </div>
3072     <div class="padding"></div>
3073
3074     <div class="entry">
3075       <div class="title">
3076         <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>
3077       </div>
3078       <div class="date">
3079          3rd July 2013
3080       </div>
3081       <div class="body">
3082         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3083 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3084
3085 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
3086 2013-07-03</strong></p>
3087
3088 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3089 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3090
3091 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3092
3093 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3094 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3095 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3096 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3097 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3098 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3099 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3100 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3101 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3102 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3103 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3104 desktop contains
3105 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3106 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3107 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3108 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3109
3110 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3111 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3112 Squeeze release.</p>
3113
3114 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3115 <ul>
3116   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
3117   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
3118     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
3119     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
3120   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
3121     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
3122     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
3123   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
3124     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
3125     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
3126     too.</li>
3127   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
3128     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
3129 </ul>
3130 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3131 <ul>
3132   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
3133   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
3134   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
3135     up for some language options.</li>
3136   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
3137   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
3138   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
3139     d-i is doing it.</li>
3140   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
3141     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
3142   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
3143     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
3144     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
3145   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
3146     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
3147   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
3148   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
3149     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
3150   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
3151     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
3152 </ul>
3153 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3154 <ul>
3155   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3156     available yet (698840).</li>
3157   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
3158 </ul>
3159 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3160
3161 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3162 <ul>
3163   <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>
3164   <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>
3165   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
3166 </ul>
3167
3168 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
3169 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
3170
3171 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3172 <ul>
3173   <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>
3174   <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>
3175   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
3176 </ul>
3177
3178 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
3179 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
3180
3181 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3182
3183 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3184
3185       </div>
3186       <div class="tags">
3187
3188
3189         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>.
3190
3191
3192       </div>
3193     </div>
3194     <div class="padding"></div>
3195
3196     <div class="entry">
3197       <div class="title">
3198         <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>
3199       </div>
3200       <div class="date">
3201         25th June 2013
3202       </div>
3203       <div class="body">
3204         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3205 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3206 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3207 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3208 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3209 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3210 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3211 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3212 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3213 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3214 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3215
3216 <p><pre>
3217 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3218 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3219 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3220 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3221 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3222 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3223 firmware-ipw2x00
3224 firmware-ipw2x00
3225 Preconfiguring packages ...
3226 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3227 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3228 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3229 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3230 #
3231 </pre></p>
3232
3233 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3234 printed instead:</p>
3235
3236 <p><pre>
3237 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3238 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3239 #
3240 </pre></p>
3241
3242 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3243 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3244
3245 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3246 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3247 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3248 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3249 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3250 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3251 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3252 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3253 machine.</p>
3254
3255 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3256 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3257 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3258 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3259 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3260 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3261
3262       </div>
3263       <div class="tags">
3264
3265
3266         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>.
3267
3268
3269       </div>
3270     </div>
3271     <div class="padding"></div>
3272
3273     <div class="entry">
3274       <div class="title">
3275         <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>
3276       </div>
3277       <div class="date">
3278         22nd June 2013
3279       </div>
3280       <div class="body">
3281         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3282 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
3283 which check that services are running, working, and return the
3284 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
3285 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
3286 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
3287 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
3288 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
3289 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
3290
3291 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
3292 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
3293 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
3294 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
3295 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
3296 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
3297 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
3298 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
3299 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
3300 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
3301 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
3302 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
3303 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
3304 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
3305
3306 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
3307 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
3308 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
3309 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
3310 the problem.</p>
3311
3312 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
3313 please join us on
3314 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3315 irc.debian.org</a> and the
3316 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
3317 list.</p>
3318
3319       </div>
3320       <div class="tags">
3321
3322
3323         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>.
3324
3325
3326       </div>
3327     </div>
3328     <div class="padding"></div>
3329
3330     <div class="entry">
3331       <div class="title">
3332         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
3333       </div>
3334       <div class="date">
3335         17th June 2013
3336       </div>
3337       <div class="body">
3338         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
3339 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
3340 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
3341 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
3342 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
3343 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
3344 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
3345 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
3346
3347 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3348
3349 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
3350 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
3351 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
3352 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
3353 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
3354 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
3355 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
3356 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
3357 field.</p>
3358
3359 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
3360 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
3361 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
3362 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
3363 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
3364 the only one we have in our country.</p>
3365
3366 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3367 project?</strong></p>
3368
3369 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
3370 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
3371 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
3372 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
3373 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
3374 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
3375 ways to contribute.</p>
3376
3377 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
3378 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
3379 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
3380 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
3381 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
3382 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
3383 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
3384 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
3385 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
3386 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
3387
3388 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3389 Edu?</strong></p>
3390
3391 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
3392 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
3393 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
3394 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
3395 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
3396 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
3397 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
3398 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
3399
3400 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
3401 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
3402 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
3403 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
3404 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
3405 project.</p>
3406
3407 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3408 Edu?</strong></p>
3409
3410 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
3411 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
3412 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
3413 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
3414 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
3415 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
3416 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
3417 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
3418 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
3419
3420 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
3421 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
3422 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
3423 on.</p>
3424
3425 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3426
3427 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
3428 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
3429 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
3430 Enlightenment project a lot!),
3431 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
3432 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
3433 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
3434 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
3435 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
3436
3437 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3438 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3439
3440 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
3441 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
3442 that:</p>
3443
3444 <ul>
3445
3446 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
3447
3448 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
3449     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
3450     of teenagers more?</li>
3451
3452 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
3453     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
3454     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
3455     them!)</li>
3456
3457 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
3458     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
3459     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
3460
3461 </ul>
3462
3463 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
3464 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
3465 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
3466 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
3467 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
3468
3469       </div>
3470       <div class="tags">
3471
3472
3473         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>.
3474
3475
3476       </div>
3477     </div>
3478     <div class="padding"></div>
3479
3480     <div class="entry">
3481       <div class="title">
3482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
3483       </div>
3484       <div class="date">
3485         12th June 2013
3486       </div>
3487       <div class="body">
3488         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
3489 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3490 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
3491 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
3492 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
3493 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
3494
3495 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3496
3497 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
3498 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
3499 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
3500
3501 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
3502 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
3503 each other.</p>
3504
3505 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3506 project?</strong></p>
3507
3508 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
3509 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
3510 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
3511 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
3512 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
3513 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
3514 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
3515 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
3516 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
3517 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
3518 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
3519 we'll get there one day.</p>
3520
3521 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3522 Edu?</strong></p>
3523
3524 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
3525 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
3526 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
3527 very high quality work.</p>
3528
3529 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
3530 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
3531 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
3532 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
3533 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
3534
3535 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3536 Edu?</strong></p>
3537
3538 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
3539 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
3540 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
3541
3542 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
3543 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
3544 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
3545 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
3546 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
3547 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
3548 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
3549 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
3550 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
3551 currently.</p>
3552
3553 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
3554 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
3555 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
3556 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
3557 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
3558 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
3559 autonomous.</p>
3560
3561 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3562
3563 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
3564 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
3565 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
3566 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
3567 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
3568
3569 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
3570 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
3571 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
3572 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
3573 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
3574 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
3575 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
3576 X.</p>
3577
3578 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
3579 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
3580 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
3581 it :p)
3582
3583 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3584 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3585
3586 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
3587 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
3588 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
3589 that.</p>
3590
3591 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
3592 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
3593 advantage of that.</p>
3594
3595 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
3596 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
3597 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
3598 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
3599 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
3600 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
3601 best solution for them.</p>
3602
3603 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
3604 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
3605 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
3606
3607       </div>
3608       <div class="tags">
3609
3610
3611         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>.
3612
3613
3614       </div>
3615     </div>
3616     <div class="padding"></div>
3617
3618     <div class="entry">
3619       <div class="title">
3620         <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>
3621       </div>
3622       <div class="date">
3623         11th June 2013
3624       </div>
3625       <div class="body">
3626         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3627 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3628 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
3629 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
3630 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3631 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
3632 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3633 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
3634 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3635 i915 driver used by the
3636 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3637 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
3638
3639 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
3640 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3641 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3642 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3643 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
3644
3645 <pre>
3646 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3647 update-initramfs -u -k all
3648 </pre>
3649
3650 <p>Since March 2012 there is
3651 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
3652 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
3653 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3654 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
3655 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
3656 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
3657 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
3658 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
3659 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3660 number.</p>
3661
3662 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
3663 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
3664
3665 <p><pre>
3666 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
3667     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
3668     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
3669  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
3670  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
3671     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
3672  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
3673     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
3674  Latency: 0
3675  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
3676  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
3677  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
3678  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
3679  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
3680  Capabilities: <access denied>
3681  Kernel driver in use: i915
3682 </pre></p>
3683
3684 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
3685
3686 <p><pre>
3687 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
3688        ...
3689         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
3690         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
3691        ...
3692 }
3693 </pre></p>
3694
3695 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
3696 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
3697 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
3698 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
3699 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
3700 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
3701 yet shown up in
3702 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
3703 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
3704 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
3705 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
3706 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
3707 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
3708
3709 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
3710 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
3711 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
3712 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
3713 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
3714 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
3715 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
3716 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
3717 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
3718 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
3719 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
3720 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
3721
3722 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
3723 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
3724 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
3725 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
3726 backlight.</p>
3727
3728       </div>
3729       <div class="tags">
3730
3731
3732         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>.
3733
3734
3735       </div>
3736     </div>
3737     <div class="padding"></div>
3738
3739     <div class="entry">
3740       <div class="title">
3741         <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>
3742       </div>
3743       <div class="date">
3744         10th June 2013
3745       </div>
3746       <div class="body">
3747         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3748 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3749
3750 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
3751 2013-06-10</strong></p>
3752
3753 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
3754 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3755
3756 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3757
3758 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3759 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3760 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3761 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3762 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3763 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3764 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3765 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3766 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3767 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3768 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3769 desktop contains
3770 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3771 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3772 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3773 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3774
3775 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3776 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3777 Squeeze release.</p>
3778
3779 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3780
3781 <ul>
3782
3783 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
3784 <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).
3785 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
3786 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
3787 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
3788
3789 </ul>
3790
3791 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3792
3793 <ul>
3794
3795 <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.
3796 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
3797 <li>New Romanian translation.
3798 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
3799 <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).
3800 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
3801 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
3802 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
3803 <li>More testsuite tests.
3804 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
3805 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
3806
3807 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
3808 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
3809
3810 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
3811 them up with GOsa².</li>
3812
3813 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
3814
3815 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
3816 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
3817 entered password). </li>
3818
3819 </ul>
3820
3821 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3822
3823 <ul>
3824
3825 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
3826
3827 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3828 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
3829 missing import feature).</li>
3830
3831 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
3832
3833 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
3834 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
3835 unfixed.</li>
3836
3837 </ul>
3838
3839 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3840
3841 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3842
3843 <ul>
3844
3845 <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>
3846
3847 <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>
3848
3849 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
3850
3851 </ul>
3852
3853 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
3854 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
3855
3856 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3857
3858 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3859
3860       </div>
3861       <div class="tags">
3862
3863
3864         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>.
3865
3866
3867       </div>
3868     </div>
3869     <div class="padding"></div>
3870
3871     <div class="entry">
3872       <div class="title">
3873         <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>
3874       </div>
3875       <div class="date">
3876          5th June 2013
3877       </div>
3878       <div class="body">
3879         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
3880 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
3881 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
3882 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
3883 the project:
3884
3885 <ol>
3886
3887 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
3888   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
3889   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
3890   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
3891   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
3892
3893 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
3894   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
3895   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
3896   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
3897   #698840</a>.</li>
3898
3899 </ol>
3900
3901 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
3902 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3903 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
3904
3905       </div>
3906       <div class="tags">
3907
3908
3909         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>.
3910
3911
3912       </div>
3913     </div>
3914     <div class="padding"></div>
3915
3916     <div class="entry">
3917       <div class="title">
3918         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
3919       </div>
3920       <div class="date">
3921          4th June 2013
3922       </div>
3923       <div class="body">
3924         <p>It has been a while since my last English
3925 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3926 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
3927 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
3928 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
3929 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
3930
3931 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3932
3933 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
3934 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
3935 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
3936 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
3937
3938 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
3939 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
3940 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
3941
3942 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3943 project?</strong></p>
3944
3945 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
3946 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
3947 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
3948 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
3949 manual.
3950
3951 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
3952 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
3953 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
3954 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
3955
3956 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
3957 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
3958 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
3959 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
3960 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
3961 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
3962 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
3963 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
3964 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
3965 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
3966
3967 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
3968 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
3969 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
3970 beautiful project.</p>
3971
3972 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3973 Edu?</strong></p>
3974
3975 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
3976 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
3977 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
3978
3979 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
3980 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
3981 of educational free software.</p>
3982
3983 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3984 Edu?</strong></p>
3985
3986 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
3987 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
3988 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
3989 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
3990 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
3991
3992 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
3993 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
3994 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
3995 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
3996 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
3997 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
3998 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
3999 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
4000
4001 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4002
4003 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
4004 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
4005 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
4006 also using the mathematical software
4007 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
4008 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
4009 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
4010
4011 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
4012 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
4013 statistics?</strong></p>
4014
4015 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
4016 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
4017 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
4018 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
4019
4020 <ul>
4021
4022 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
4023 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
4024 constructions in planar geometry
4025
4026 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
4027 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
4028 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
4029
4030 </ul>
4031
4032 <p>I like also
4033 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
4034 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
4035 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
4036
4037 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4038 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4039
4040 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
4041
4042 <ul>
4043
4044 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
4045
4046 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
4047     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
4048     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
4049
4050 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
4051
4052 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
4053     system.</li>
4054
4055 </ul>
4056
4057       </div>
4058       <div class="tags">
4059
4060
4061         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>.
4062
4063
4064       </div>
4065     </div>
4066     <div class="padding"></div>
4067
4068     <div class="entry">
4069       <div class="title">
4070         <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>
4071       </div>
4072       <div class="date">
4073          1st June 2013
4074       </div>
4075       <div class="body">
4076         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4077 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
4078 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
4079 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
4080 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
4081 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
4082 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
4083 program.</p>
4084
4085 <!-- 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 -->
4086
4087 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
4088 <p>
4089 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
4090 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
4091 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
4092 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
4093 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4094 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
4095 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
4096 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
4097 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
4098 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
4099 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
4100 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
4101 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
4102 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
4103 </p>
4104
4105 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
4106 <p>
4107 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
4108 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
4109 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
4110 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
4111 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
4112 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
4113 </p>
4114
4115 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
4116 <p>
4117 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
4118 </p>
4119
4120 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
4121 <p>
4122 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
4123 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
4124 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
4125 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
4126 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
4127 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
4128 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
4129 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
4130 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
4131 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
4132 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
4133 </p>
4134
4135 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
4136 <p>
4137 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4138 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
4139 </p>
4140
4141 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
4142 <p>
4143 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
4144 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
4145 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
4146 </p>
4147
4148 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
4149 <p>
4150 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4151 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
4152 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
4153 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
4154 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
4155 </p>
4156
4157 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
4158 <p>
4159 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
4160 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
4161 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4162 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
4163 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
4164 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
4165 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
4166 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
4167 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
4168 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
4169 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
4170 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
4171 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
4172 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
4173 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
4174 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
4175 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
4176 </p>
4177
4178 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
4179 <p>
4180 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4181 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
4182 </p>
4183
4184 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
4185 <p>
4186 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
4187 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
4188 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
4189 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4190 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
4191 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
4192 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
4193 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
4194 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
4195 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
4196 </p>
4197
4198 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
4199 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
4200 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
4201 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
4202 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
4203 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
4204 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
4205
4206       </div>
4207       <div class="tags">
4208
4209
4210         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>.
4211
4212
4213       </div>
4214     </div>
4215     <div class="padding"></div>
4216
4217     <div class="entry">
4218       <div class="title">
4219         <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>
4220       </div>
4221       <div class="date">
4222         27th May 2013
4223       </div>
4224       <div class="body">
4225         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4226 <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
4227 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4228 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4229 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4230 and Windows 8.</p>
4231
4232 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4233 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4234 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4235 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4236 enough to tell.</p>
4237
4238 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4239 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4240 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4241 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4242 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4243 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4244 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4245 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4246 to follow.</p>
4247
4248 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4249 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4250 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4251 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4252 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4253 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4254 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4255 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4256
4257 <p>I've updated the
4258 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4259 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4260 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4261 machine.</p>
4262
4263 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4264 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4265
4266       </div>
4267       <div class="tags">
4268
4269
4270         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>.
4271
4272
4273       </div>
4274     </div>
4275     <div class="padding"></div>
4276
4277     <div class="entry">
4278       <div class="title">
4279         <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>
4280       </div>
4281       <div class="date">
4282         25th May 2013
4283       </div>
4284       <div class="body">
4285         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4286 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4287 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4288 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4289 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4290 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4291
4292 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4293 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4294 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4295 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4296 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4297 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4298 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4299 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4300 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4301 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4302
4303 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4304 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4305 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4306 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4307 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4308 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4309
4310 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4311 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4312 on new Laptops?</p>
4313
4314       </div>
4315       <div class="tags">
4316
4317
4318         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>.
4319
4320
4321       </div>
4322     </div>
4323     <div class="padding"></div>
4324
4325     <div class="entry">
4326       <div class="title">
4327         <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>
4328       </div>
4329       <div class="date">
4330         17th May 2013
4331       </div>
4332       <div class="body">
4333         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4334 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4335 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4336 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4337 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4338 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4339 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4340 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4341 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4342 donate some money</a>.
4343
4344 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4345 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4346 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4347 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4348 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4349
4350 <p>The script,
4351 <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/>
4352 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4353 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4354 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4355
4356 <ol>
4357
4358 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4359 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4360 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4361     our configuration.</li>
4362 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4363     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4364     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4365     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4366 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4367     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4368 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4369
4370 </ol>
4371
4372 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4373 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4374 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4375 the needed packages.</p>
4376
4377 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4378 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4379 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4380 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4381 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4382 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4383
4384 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4385 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4386 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4387
4388 <p><pre>
4389 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4390 DESKTOP="lxde"
4391 </pre></p>
4392
4393 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4394 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4395 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4396 boot.</p>
4397
4398       </div>
4399       <div class="tags">
4400
4401
4402         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>.
4403
4404
4405       </div>
4406     </div>
4407     <div class="padding"></div>
4408
4409     <div class="entry">
4410       <div class="title">
4411         <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>
4412       </div>
4413       <div class="date">
4414         14th May 2013
4415       </div>
4416       <div class="body">
4417         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4418 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
4419 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4420
4421 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
4422 2013-05-14</strong></p>
4423
4424 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
4425 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
4426 codename "Wheezy".</p>
4427
4428 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4429
4430 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
4431 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
4432 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
4433 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
4434 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
4435 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
4436 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
4437 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
4438
4439 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4440 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4441 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4442
4443 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4444 <ul>
4445   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
4446     default.</li>
4447   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
4448   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
4449   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
4450     ibus-anthy.</li>
4451 </ul>
4452
4453 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4454 <ul>
4455
4456   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
4457     reliability improvements.</li>
4458   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
4459     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
4460   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
4461     problems.</li>
4462   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
4463     direct:// URL.</li>
4464   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
4465   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
4466   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
4467   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
4468     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
4469   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
4470     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
4471 </ul>
4472
4473 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4474 <ul>
4475
4476   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
4477     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
4478     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
4479   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
4480   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4481     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
4482   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
4483   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
4484   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
4485     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
4486   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
4487     password submission problem
4488     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
4489
4490 </ul>
4491
4492 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4493
4494 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4495 <ul>
4496
4497   <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>
4498   <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>
4499   <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>
4500
4501 </ul>
4502
4503 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
4504
4505 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
4506
4507 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4508
4509 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4510
4511       </div>
4512       <div class="tags">
4513
4514
4515         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>.
4516
4517
4518       </div>
4519     </div>
4520     <div class="padding"></div>
4521
4522     <div class="entry">
4523       <div class="title">
4524         <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>
4525       </div>
4526       <div class="date">
4527         11th May 2013
4528       </div>
4529       <div class="body">
4530         <P>In January,
4531 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4532 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4533 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4534 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4535 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4536 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4537 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4538 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4539 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4540 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4541 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4542 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4543
4544 <p><table>
4545 <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>
4546 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4547 <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>
4548 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4549 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4550 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4551 <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>
4552 <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>
4553 <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>
4554 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4555 </table></p>
4556
4557 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4558 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4559 available in experimental.</p>
4560
4561 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4562 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4563 for LEGO designers.</p>
4564
4565       </div>
4566       <div class="tags">
4567
4568
4569         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>.
4570
4571
4572       </div>
4573     </div>
4574     <div class="padding"></div>
4575
4576     <div class="entry">
4577       <div class="title">
4578         <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>
4579       </div>
4580       <div class="date">
4581          5th May 2013
4582       </div>
4583       <div class="body">
4584         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4585 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4586 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4587 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4588 soon.</p>
4589
4590 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4591 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4592 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4593 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4594 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4595 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4596 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4597 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4598 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4599 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4600 Edu.</a>
4601
4602 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4603 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4604 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4605 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4606 follow.<p>
4607
4608       </div>
4609       <div class="tags">
4610
4611
4612         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>.
4613
4614
4615       </div>
4616     </div>
4617     <div class="padding"></div>
4618
4619     <div class="entry">
4620       <div class="title">
4621         <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>
4622       </div>
4623       <div class="date">
4624         26th April 2013
4625       </div>
4626       <div class="body">
4627         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
4628 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
4629 announcement:</p>
4630
4631 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
4632 2013-04-26</strong></p>
4633
4634 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
4635 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4636
4637 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4638
4639 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4640 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4641 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4642 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
4643 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4644 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4645 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4646 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4647 installed via the network.</p>
4648
4649 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4650 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4651 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4652
4653 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4654
4655 <ul>
4656 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
4657   <ul>
4658      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
4659      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
4660          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
4661          manual.)</li>
4662      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
4663      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
4664      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
4665      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
4666      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
4667      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
4668      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
4669      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
4670      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
4671      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
4672      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
4673      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
4674          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
4675          manual</a> for more details.</li>
4676      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
4677          installation.</li>
4678      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
4679          <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>
4680   </ul></li>
4681 </ul>
4682
4683 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
4684 <ul>
4685 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
4686     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
4687     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
4688 </ul>
4689
4690 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
4691 <ul>
4692 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
4693     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
4694     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
4695 </ul>
4696
4697 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4698 <ul>
4699 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
4700     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
4701     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
4702 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
4703     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
4704     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
4705 </ul>
4706
4707 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
4708 <ul>
4709 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
4710     yet.</li>
4711 </ul>
4712
4713 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
4714
4715 <ul>
4716 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
4717     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
4718     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
4719 </ul>
4720
4721 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4722
4723 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
4724 <ul>
4725 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
4726 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
4727 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
4728 </ul>
4729
4730 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
4731
4732 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
4733
4734 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4735
4736 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4737
4738       </div>
4739       <div class="tags">
4740
4741
4742         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>.
4743
4744
4745       </div>
4746     </div>
4747     <div class="padding"></div>
4748
4749     <div class="entry">
4750       <div class="title">
4751         <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>
4752       </div>
4753       <div class="date">
4754         16th April 2013
4755       </div>
4756       <div class="body">
4757         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
4758 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
4759 Details about the gathering can be found
4760 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
4761 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
4762 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
4763 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
4764 weekend.</p>
4765
4766 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
4767 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
4768 Edu release.</p>
4769
4770 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
4771
4772       </div>
4773       <div class="tags">
4774
4775
4776         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>.
4777
4778
4779       </div>
4780     </div>
4781     <div class="padding"></div>
4782
4783     <div class="entry">
4784       <div class="title">
4785         <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>
4786       </div>
4787       <div class="date">
4788          3rd April 2013
4789       </div>
4790       <div class="body">
4791         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4792 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4793 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4794 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4795
4796 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4797 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4798 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4799 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4800 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4801 BTS. :)</p>
4802
4803       </div>
4804       <div class="tags">
4805
4806
4807         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>.
4808
4809
4810       </div>
4811     </div>
4812     <div class="padding"></div>
4813
4814     <div class="entry">
4815       <div class="title">
4816         <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>
4817       </div>
4818       <div class="date">
4819         26th March 2013
4820       </div>
4821       <div class="body">
4822         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
4823 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
4824 font you use when printing.</p>
4825
4826 <p>Three years ago,
4827 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
4828 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
4829 changed their default front from
4830 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
4831 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
4832 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
4833 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
4834 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
4835 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
4836 prints.</p>
4837
4838 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
4839 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
4840 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
4841 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
4842 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
4843 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
4844 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
4845 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
4846 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
4847 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
4848 depend on the documents printed.</p>
4849
4850 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
4851 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
4852 and save some money in the process.</p>
4853
4854 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
4855 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
4856 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
4857 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
4858 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
4859 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
4860 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
4861 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
4862 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
4863
4864       </div>
4865       <div class="tags">
4866
4867
4868         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4869
4870
4871       </div>
4872     </div>
4873     <div class="padding"></div>
4874
4875     <div class="entry">
4876       <div class="title">
4877         <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>
4878       </div>
4879       <div class="date">
4880         24th March 2013
4881       </div>
4882       <div class="body">
4883         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
4884 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
4885 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
4886 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
4887 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
4888 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
4889 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
4890 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
4891 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
4892 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
4893 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
4894 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
4895
4896 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
4897 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
4898 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
4899 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
4900 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
4901 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
4902 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
4903 all I had to do was to use the
4904 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
4905 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
4906 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
4907 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
4908 xsltproc/fop (aka
4909 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
4910 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
4911 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
4912 technical detail.</p>
4913
4914 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
4915 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
4916 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
4917 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
4918 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
4919 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
4920
4921 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
4922 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
4923 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
4924 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
4925 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
4926 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
4927 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
4928 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
4929 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
4930
4931 <p><blockquote><pre>
4932 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4933 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4934   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
4935     &lt;hr/&gt;
4936   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4937 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4938 </pre></blockquote></p>
4939
4940 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
4941
4942 <p><blockquote><pre>
4943 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4944 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4945   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
4946     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
4947       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
4948     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
4949   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4950 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4951 </pre></blockquote></p>
4952
4953 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
4954 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
4955 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
4956 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
4957 enough.</p>
4958
4959 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
4960 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
4961 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
4962 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
4963 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
4964 look like this:</p>
4965
4966 <p><blockquote><pre>
4967 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4968 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4969   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
4970     &lt;br/&gt;
4971   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4972 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4973 </pre></blockquote></p>
4974
4975 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
4976
4977 <p><blockquote><pre>
4978 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4979 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
4980   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
4981   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
4982     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
4983   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4984 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4985 </pre></blockquote></p>
4986
4987 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
4988 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
4989 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
4990 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
4991 page.</p>
4992
4993 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
4994 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
4995 github</a>
4996 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
4997 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
4998 days.</p>
4999
5000       </div>
5001       <div class="tags">
5002
5003
5004         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>.
5005
5006
5007       </div>
5008     </div>
5009     <div class="padding"></div>
5010
5011     <div class="entry">
5012       <div class="title">
5013         <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>
5014       </div>
5015       <div class="date">
5016         17th March 2013
5017       </div>
5018       <div class="body">
5019         <p>Via
5020 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
5021 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
5022 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
5023 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
5024 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
5025 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
5026 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
5027
5028 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
5029 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
5030
5031 <blockquote>
5032 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
5033 </blockquote>
5034
5035 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
5036
5037 <blockquote>
5038 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
5039 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
5040 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
5041 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
5042 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
5043 </blockquote>
5044
5045 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
5046 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
5047 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
5048 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
5049
5050 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
5051 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
5052
5053 <blockquote>
5054 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
5055 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
5056 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
5057 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
5058 </blockquote>
5059
5060 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
5061 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
5062 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
5063 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
5064 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
5065
5066 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
5067 embedding:</p>
5068
5069 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
5070
5071       </div>
5072       <div class="tags">
5073
5074
5075         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>.
5076
5077
5078       </div>
5079     </div>
5080     <div class="padding"></div>
5081
5082     <div class="entry">
5083       <div class="title">
5084         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
5085       </div>
5086       <div class="date">
5087          8th March 2013
5088       </div>
5089       <div class="body">
5090         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
5091 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5092 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
5093 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
5094 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
5095 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
5096 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
5097
5098 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
5099
5100 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
5101 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
5102
5103 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
5104 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
5105 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
5106 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
5107 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
5108 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
5109
5110 <p>Images are available for download at
5111 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
5112
5113 <p>md5sums:
5114 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5115 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5116 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5117
5118 <p>sha1sums:
5119 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5120 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5121 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5122
5123 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
5124
5125 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
5126 2013-03-03:</p>
5127
5128 <ul>
5129   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
5130   <ul>
5131         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
5132         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
5133   </ul></li>
5134   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
5135   <ul>
5136         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
5137         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
5138   </ul></li>
5139   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
5140      <ul>
5141         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
5142         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
5143         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
5144                 Closes: #664596</li>
5145         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
5146                 Closes: #664976</li>
5147         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
5148            <ul>
5149                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
5150                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
5151            </ul></li>
5152         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
5153            <ul>
5154                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
5155                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
5156                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
5157                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
5158                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
5159            </ul></li>
5160         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
5161     </ul>
5162   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
5163     <ul>
5164         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
5165     </ul></li>
5166 </ul>
5167
5168 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
5169 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
5170 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
5171 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
5172
5173 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
5174 mailinglist
5175 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
5176 </p></blockquote>
5177
5178 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
5179
5180       </div>
5181       <div class="tags">
5182
5183
5184         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>.
5185
5186
5187       </div>
5188     </div>
5189     <div class="padding"></div>
5190
5191     <div class="entry">
5192       <div class="title">
5193         <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>
5194       </div>
5195       <div class="date">
5196          3rd March 2013
5197       </div>
5198       <div class="body">
5199         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
5200 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
5201 support using
5202 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
5203 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
5204 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
5205 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
5206 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
5207 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
5208 using the GNU LGPL, and
5209 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
5210
5211 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
5212 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
5213 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
5214 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
5215 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
5216 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
5217
5218 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
5219 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
5220 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
5221 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
5222 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
5223 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
5224 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
5225 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
5226 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
5227 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
5228 signal distribution is handled using
5229 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
5230 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
5231 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
5232 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
5233 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
5234 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
5235 them up a bit more first.</p>
5236
5237 <p>The development is coordinated on the
5238 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
5239 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
5240 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
5241 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
5242 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
5243 development.</p>
5244
5245       </div>
5246       <div class="tags">
5247
5248
5249         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>.
5250
5251
5252       </div>
5253     </div>
5254     <div class="padding"></div>
5255
5256     <div class="entry">
5257       <div class="title">
5258         <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>
5259       </div>
5260       <div class="date">
5261         27th February 2013
5262       </div>
5263       <div class="body">
5264         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
5265 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
5266 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
5267 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
5268 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
5269 (where I am the chair of the board) and
5270 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
5271 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
5272 GNU», with this description:
5273
5274 <p><blockquote>
5275 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
5276 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
5277 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
5278 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
5279 </blockquote></p>
5280
5281 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
5282 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
5283 am really curious how many will show up.  See
5284 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
5285 page</a> for the location details.</p>
5286
5287       </div>
5288       <div class="tags">
5289
5290
5291         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>.
5292
5293
5294       </div>
5295     </div>
5296     <div class="padding"></div>
5297
5298     <div class="entry">
5299       <div class="title">
5300         <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>
5301       </div>
5302       <div class="date">
5303         15th February 2013
5304       </div>
5305       <div class="body">
5306         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
5307 now a great source of free maps available from
5308 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
5309 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
5310 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
5311 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
5312 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
5313 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
5314 page for descriptions).</p>
5315
5316 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
5317 map you can just edit the
5318 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
5319 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
5320
5321       </div>
5322       <div class="tags">
5323
5324
5325         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>.
5326
5327
5328       </div>
5329     </div>
5330     <div class="padding"></div>
5331
5332     <div class="entry">
5333       <div class="title">
5334         <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>
5335       </div>
5336       <div class="date">
5337         12th February 2013
5338       </div>
5339       <div class="body">
5340         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
5341 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
5342 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
5343 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
5344 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
5345 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
5346 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
5347 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
5348 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
5349 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
5350 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
5351 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
5352 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
5353 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
5354 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
5355 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
5356
5357 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
5358 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
5359 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
5360 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
5361 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
5362 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
5363 fields:</p>
5364
5365 <p><pre>
5366 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
5367 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
5368 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
5369 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
5370 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
5371 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
5372 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
5373 </pre></p>
5374
5375 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
5376 answer regarding
5377 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
5378 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
5379 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
5380 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
5381
5382 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
5383
5384 <p><pre>
5385 BEGIN:VCARD
5386 VERSION:2.1
5387 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
5388 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
5389 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
5390 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
5391 REV:20130212T095000Z
5392 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
5393 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
5394 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
5395 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
5396 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
5397 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
5398 END:VCARD
5399 </pre></p>
5400
5401 <p>The resulting QR code created using
5402 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
5403 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
5404 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
5405 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
5406 system.</p>
5407
5408 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
5409
5410 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
5411 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
5412 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
5413 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
5414
5415 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
5416 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
5417
5418       </div>
5419       <div class="tags">
5420
5421
5422         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>.
5423
5424
5425       </div>
5426     </div>
5427     <div class="padding"></div>
5428
5429     <div class="entry">
5430       <div class="title">
5431         <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>
5432       </div>
5433       <div class="date">
5434         10th February 2013
5435       </div>
5436       <div class="body">
5437         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
5438
5439 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
5440 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
5441 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
5442 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
5443 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
5444 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
5445 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
5446 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
5447 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
5448 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
5449 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
5450
5451 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
5452 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
5453 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
5454 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
5455 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
5456 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
5457 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
5458 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
5459 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
5460 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
5461 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
5462 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
5463 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
5464 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
5465 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
5466 ones own
5467 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
5468 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
5469 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
5470 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
5471 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
5472 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
5473 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
5474 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
5475 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
5476 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
5477 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
5478
5479 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
5480 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
5481 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
5482 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
5483 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
5484 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
5485
5486 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
5487 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
5488 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
5489
5490       </div>
5491       <div class="tags">
5492
5493
5494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5495
5496
5497       </div>
5498     </div>
5499     <div class="padding"></div>
5500
5501     <div class="entry">
5502       <div class="title">
5503         <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>
5504       </div>
5505       <div class="date">
5506          2nd February 2013
5507       </div>
5508       <div class="body">
5509         <p>My
5510 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
5511 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
5512 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
5513 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
5514 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
5515 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
5516 version too.</p>
5517
5518 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
5519 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
5520 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
5521 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
5522 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
5523 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
5524 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
5525 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
5526
5527 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
5528 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
5529 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
5530 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
5531 it. :)</p>
5532
5533 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5534 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5535 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5536
5537       </div>
5538       <div class="tags">
5539
5540
5541         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>.
5542
5543
5544       </div>
5545     </div>
5546     <div class="padding"></div>
5547
5548     <div class="entry">
5549       <div class="title">
5550         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
5551       </div>
5552       <div class="date">
5553         22nd January 2013
5554       </div>
5555       <div class="body">
5556         <p>Yesterday, I
5557 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
5558 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
5559 pluggable hardware devices, which I
5560 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
5561 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
5562 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
5563 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
5564 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
5565 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
5566 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
5567 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
5568 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
5569 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
5570
5571 <pre>
5572 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
5573 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
5574 </pre>
5575
5576 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
5577 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
5578 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
5579 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
5580
5581 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
5582 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
5583 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
5584 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
5585 word.</p>
5586
5587 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
5588 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
5589 process.</p>
5590
5591 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
5592 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
5593
5594       </div>
5595       <div class="tags">
5596
5597
5598         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>.
5599
5600
5601       </div>
5602     </div>
5603     <div class="padding"></div>
5604
5605     <div class="entry">
5606       <div class="title">
5607         <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>
5608       </div>
5609       <div class="date">
5610         21st January 2013
5611       </div>
5612       <div class="body">
5613         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
5614 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
5615 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
5616 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
5617 it, fetch the
5618 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
5619 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
5620 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
5621 autostart script.</p>
5622
5623 <p>The design is simple:</p>
5624
5625 <ul>
5626
5627 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
5628 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
5629
5630 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
5631 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
5632 initially did.</li>
5633
5634 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
5635 the APT database, a database
5636 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
5637 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
5638
5639 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
5640 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
5641 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
5642 package or packages.</li>
5643
5644 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
5645 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
5646
5647 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
5648 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
5649
5650 </ul>
5651
5652 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
5653 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
5654 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
5655 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
5656
5657 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
5658 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
5659 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
5660 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
5661 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
5662
5663 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
5664 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
5665 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
5666 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
5667 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
5668 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
5669 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
5670 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
5671
5672 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
5673 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
5674 '<tt>svn checkout
5675 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
5676 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
5677 devscripts package.</p>
5678
5679 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
5680 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
5681 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
5682 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
5683 instructions</a> for details.</p>
5684
5685       </div>
5686       <div class="tags">
5687
5688
5689         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>.
5690
5691
5692       </div>
5693     </div>
5694     <div class="padding"></div>
5695
5696     <div class="entry">
5697       <div class="title">
5698         <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>
5699       </div>
5700       <div class="date">
5701         19th January 2013
5702       </div>
5703       <div class="body">
5704         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
5705 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
5706 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
5707 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
5708 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
5709 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
5710 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
5711 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
5712 not a durable solution.
5713
5714 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
5715 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
5716
5717 <ul>
5718
5719 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
5720   than A4).</li>
5721 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
5722 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
5723 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
5724 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
5725 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
5726 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
5727 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
5728 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
5729 size).</li>
5730 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
5731   X.org packages.</li>
5732 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
5733   the time).
5734
5735 </ul>
5736
5737 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
5738 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
5739 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
5740 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
5741 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
5742 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
5743 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
5744 still be useful.</p>
5745
5746 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
5747 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
5748 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
5749 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
5750 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
5751 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
5752
5753       </div>
5754       <div class="tags">
5755
5756
5757         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>.
5758
5759
5760       </div>
5761     </div>
5762     <div class="padding"></div>
5763
5764     <div class="entry">
5765       <div class="title">
5766         <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>
5767       </div>
5768       <div class="date">
5769         18th January 2013
5770       </div>
5771       <div class="body">
5772         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
5773 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
5774 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
5775 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
5776 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
5777 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
5778 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
5779
5780 <pre>
5781 #!/usr/bin/python
5782 import sys
5783 import apt
5784 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5785     cache = apt.Cache()
5786     cache.open(None)
5787     thepkgs = []
5788     for pkg in cache:
5789         version = pkg.candidate
5790         if version is None:
5791             version = pkg.installed
5792         if version is None:
5793             continue
5794         record = version.record
5795         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
5796             continue
5797         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
5798         for t in mime_types:
5799             t = t.rstrip().strip()
5800             if t == mimetype:
5801                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
5802     return thepkgs
5803 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
5804 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
5805     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
5806 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
5807 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5808     print "  %s" %pkg
5809 </pre>
5810
5811 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
5812
5813 <pre>
5814 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
5815 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
5816   gecko-mediaplayer
5817 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
5818 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
5819   browser-plugin-gnash
5820 %
5821 </pre>
5822
5823 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
5824 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
5825 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
5826 anyone working on adding it?</p>
5827
5828 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
5829 request for icweasel support for this feature is
5830 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
5831 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
5832 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
5833 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
5834
5835       </div>
5836       <div class="tags">
5837
5838
5839         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>.
5840
5841
5842       </div>
5843     </div>
5844     <div class="padding"></div>
5845
5846     <div class="entry">
5847       <div class="title">
5848         <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>
5849       </div>
5850       <div class="date">
5851         16th January 2013
5852       </div>
5853       <div class="body">
5854         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
5855 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
5856 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
5857 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
5858 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
5859 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
5860 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
5861 downloaded by the browser.</p>
5862
5863 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
5864 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
5865 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
5866 can be found on the
5867 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
5868 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
5869 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
5870 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
5871 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
5872
5873 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
5874
5875 <pre>
5876   count MIME type
5877   ----- -----------------------
5878      32 text/plain
5879      30 audio/mpeg
5880      29 image/png
5881      28 image/jpeg
5882      27 application/ogg
5883      26 audio/x-mp3
5884      25 image/tiff
5885      25 image/gif
5886      22 image/bmp
5887      22 audio/x-wav
5888      20 audio/x-flac
5889      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5890      18 video/x-ms-asf
5891      18 audio/x-musepack
5892      18 audio/x-mpeg
5893      18 application/x-ogg
5894      17 video/mpeg
5895      17 audio/x-scpls
5896      17 audio/ogg
5897      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5898 </pre>
5899
5900 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
5901
5902 <pre>
5903   count MIME type
5904   ----- -----------------------
5905      33 text/plain
5906      32 image/png
5907      32 image/jpeg
5908      29 audio/mpeg
5909      27 image/gif
5910      26 image/tiff
5911      26 application/ogg
5912      25 audio/x-mp3
5913      22 image/bmp
5914      21 audio/x-wav
5915      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5916      19 audio/x-mpeg
5917      18 video/mpeg
5918      18 audio/x-scpls
5919      18 audio/x-flac
5920      18 application/x-ogg
5921      17 video/x-ms-asf
5922      17 text/html
5923      17 audio/x-musepack
5924      16 image/x-xbitmap
5925 </pre>
5926
5927 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
5928
5929 <pre>
5930   count MIME type
5931   ----- -----------------------
5932      31 text/plain
5933      31 image/png
5934      31 image/jpeg
5935      29 audio/mpeg
5936      28 application/ogg
5937      27 image/gif
5938      26 image/tiff
5939      26 audio/x-mp3
5940      23 audio/x-wav
5941      22 image/bmp
5942      21 audio/x-flac
5943      20 audio/x-mpegurl
5944      19 audio/x-mpeg
5945      18 video/x-ms-asf
5946      18 video/mpeg
5947      18 audio/x-scpls
5948      18 application/x-ogg
5949      17 audio/x-musepack
5950      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5951      16 video/x-msvideo
5952 </pre>
5953
5954 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
5955 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
5956 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
5957 issues.</p>
5958
5959 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
5960 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
5961
5962       </div>
5963       <div class="tags">
5964
5965
5966         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>.
5967
5968
5969       </div>
5970     </div>
5971     <div class="padding"></div>
5972
5973     <div class="entry">
5974       <div class="title">
5975         <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>
5976       </div>
5977       <div class="date">
5978         15th January 2013
5979       </div>
5980       <div class="body">
5981         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
5982 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
5983 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
5984 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
5985 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
5986 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
5987 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
5988 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
5989 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5990 packages.</p>
5991
5992 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5993 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5994 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5995 modalias.</p>
5996
5997 <p><blockquote>
5998 Package: package-name
5999 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
6000 </blockquote></p>
6001
6002 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
6003 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
6004
6005 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
6006 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
6007
6008 <p><blockquote>
6009 Package: cheese
6010 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
6011 </blockquote></p>
6012
6013 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
6014 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
6015
6016 <p><blockquote>
6017 Package: pcmciautils
6018 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
6019 </blockquote></p>
6020
6021 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
6022 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
6023
6024 <p><blockquote>
6025 Package: colorhug-client
6026 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
6027 </blockquote></p>
6028
6029 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
6030 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
6031 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
6032
6033 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
6034 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
6035 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
6036 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
6037 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
6038 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
6039 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
6040 Raring.</p>
6041
6042 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
6043 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
6044 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
6045 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
6046 try the
6047 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
6048 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
6049 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
6050 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
6051
6052 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
6053 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
6054
6055 <p><blockquote>
6056 % ./hw-support-lookup
6057 <br>yubikey-personalization
6058 <br>%
6059 </blockquote></p>
6060
6061 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
6062 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
6063
6064 <p><blockquote>
6065 % ./hw-support-lookup
6066 <br>pcmciautils
6067 <br>%
6068 </blockquote></p>
6069
6070 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
6071 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
6072 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
6073
6074 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
6075 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
6076 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
6077 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
6078 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
6079 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
6080 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
6081 see if it work.</p>
6082
6083 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6084 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6085 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6086 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6087
6088       </div>
6089       <div class="tags">
6090
6091
6092         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>.
6093
6094
6095       </div>
6096     </div>
6097     <div class="padding"></div>
6098
6099     <div class="entry">
6100       <div class="title">
6101         <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>
6102       </div>
6103       <div class="date">
6104         14th January 2013
6105       </div>
6106       <div class="body">
6107         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
6108 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
6109 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
6110 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
6111 in
6112 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6113 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
6114
6115 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
6116
6117 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
6118 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
6119 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
6120 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
6121 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
6122 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
6123
6124 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
6125 this shell script:</p>
6126
6127 <pre>
6128 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
6129 </pre>
6130
6131 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
6132 using modinfo:</p>
6133
6134 <pre>
6135 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
6136 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
6137 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
6138 %
6139 </pre>
6140
6141 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
6142
6143 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
6144 Bridge memory controller:</p>
6145
6146 <p><blockquote>
6147 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
6148 </blockquote></p>
6149
6150 <p>This represent these values:</p>
6151
6152 <pre>
6153  v   00008086  (vendor)
6154  d   00002770  (device)
6155  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
6156  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
6157  bc  06        (bus class)
6158  sc  00        (bus subclass)
6159  i   00        (interface)
6160 </pre>
6161
6162 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
6163 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
6164 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
6165 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
6166
6167 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
6168 means.</p>
6169
6170 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
6171
6172 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
6173 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
6174
6175 <p><blockquote>
6176 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
6177 </blockquote></p>
6178
6179 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
6180
6181 <pre>
6182  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
6183  p    0001  (device product)
6184  d    0206  (bcddevice)
6185  dc     09  (device class)
6186  dsc    00  (device subclass)
6187  dp     00  (device protocol)
6188  ic     09  (interface class)
6189  isc    00  (interface subclass)
6190  ip     00  (interface protocol)
6191 </pre>
6192
6193 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
6194 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
6195 these alias entries show up:</p>
6196
6197 <p><blockquote>
6198 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
6199 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
6200 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
6201 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
6202 </blockquote></p>
6203
6204 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
6205 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
6206 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
6207
6208 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
6209
6210 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
6211 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
6212
6213 <p><blockquote>
6214 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6215 </blockquote></p>
6216
6217 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
6218
6219 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
6220
6221 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
6222 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
6223 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
6224
6225 <p><blockquote>
6226 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
6227 </blockquote></p>
6228
6229 <p>The values present are</p>
6230
6231 <pre>
6232  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
6233  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
6234  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
6235  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
6236  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
6237  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
6238  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
6239  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
6240  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
6241  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
6242  ct   10             (chassis type)
6243  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
6244 </pre>
6245
6246 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
6247 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
6248
6249 <pre>
6250   3 Desktop
6251   4 Low Profile Desktop
6252   5 Pizza Box
6253   6 Mini Tower
6254   7 Tower
6255   8 Portable
6256   9 Laptop
6257  10 Notebook
6258  11 Hand Held
6259  12 Docking Station
6260  13 All In One
6261  14 Sub Notebook
6262  15 Space-saving
6263  16 Lunch Box
6264  17 Main Server Chassis
6265  18 Expansion Chassis
6266  19 Sub Chassis
6267  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
6268  21 Peripheral Chassis
6269  22 RAID Chassis
6270  23 Rack Mount Chassis
6271  24 Sealed-case PC
6272  25 Multi-system
6273  26 CompactPCI
6274  27 AdvancedTCA
6275  28 Blade
6276  29 Blade Enclosing
6277 </pre>
6278
6279 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
6280 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
6281 claim it is a desktop.</p>
6282
6283 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
6284
6285 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
6286 test machine:</p>
6287
6288 <p><blockquote>
6289 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
6290 </blockquote></p>
6291
6292 <p>The values present are</p>
6293
6294 <pre>
6295   ty  01  (type)
6296   pr  00  (prototype)
6297   id  00  (id)
6298   ex  00  (extra)
6299 </pre>
6300
6301 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
6302 the valid values are.</p>
6303
6304 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
6305
6306 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
6307 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
6308 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
6309 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
6310 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
6311 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
6312 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
6313
6314 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
6315
6316 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
6317 one can use the following shell script:</p>
6318
6319 <pre>
6320   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
6321     echo "$id" ; \
6322     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
6323   done
6324 </pre>
6325
6326 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
6327 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
6328
6329 <pre>
6330   acpi:ACPI0003:
6331     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
6332   acpi:device:
6333   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
6334   acpi:IBM0068:
6335     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
6336     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
6337     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
6338     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
6339   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6340     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
6341     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
6342     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
6343   [...]
6344 </pre>
6345
6346 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6347 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6348 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6349 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6350
6351 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
6352 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
6353 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
6354
6355       </div>
6356       <div class="tags">
6357
6358
6359         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>.
6360
6361
6362       </div>
6363     </div>
6364     <div class="padding"></div>
6365
6366     <div class="entry">
6367       <div class="title">
6368         <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>
6369       </div>
6370       <div class="date">
6371         10th January 2013
6372       </div>
6373       <div class="body">
6374         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
6375 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
6376 Launcher and updated the Debian package
6377 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
6378 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
6379 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
6380 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
6381 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
6382 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
6383 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
6384 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
6385 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
6386 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
6387 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
6388 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
6389 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
6390 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
6391 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
6392
6393       </div>
6394       <div class="tags">
6395
6396
6397         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>.
6398
6399
6400       </div>
6401     </div>
6402     <div class="padding"></div>
6403
6404     <div class="entry">
6405       <div class="title">
6406         <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>
6407       </div>
6408       <div class="date">
6409          9th January 2013
6410       </div>
6411       <div class="body">
6412         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
6413 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
6414 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
6415 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
6416 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
6417 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
6418 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
6419 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
6420 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
6421 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
6422 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
6423
6424 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
6425 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
6426 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
6427 simple:
6428
6429 <ul>
6430
6431 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
6432   starting when a user log in.</li>
6433
6434 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
6435   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
6436
6437 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
6438   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
6439   packages.</li>
6440
6441 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
6442   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
6443
6444 </ul>
6445
6446 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
6447 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
6448 discover database to find packages and
6449 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
6450 packages.</p>
6451
6452 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
6453 draft package is now checked into
6454 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6455 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
6456 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
6457 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
6458 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
6459 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
6460 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
6461 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
6462 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
6463 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
6464 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
6465 because of the freeze).</p>
6466
6467 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
6468 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
6469 inserted):</p>
6470
6471 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
6472
6473 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
6474 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
6475 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
6476
6477 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
6478 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
6479 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
6480 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
6481 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
6482 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
6483 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
6484
6485 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
6486 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
6487 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
6488 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
6489 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
6490 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
6491 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
6492 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
6493 not be installed?</p>
6494
6495 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
6496 please send me an email. :)</p>
6497
6498       </div>
6499       <div class="tags">
6500
6501
6502         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>.
6503
6504
6505       </div>
6506     </div>
6507     <div class="padding"></div>
6508
6509     <div class="entry">
6510       <div class="title">
6511         <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>
6512       </div>
6513       <div class="date">
6514          2nd January 2013
6515       </div>
6516       <div class="body">
6517         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
6518 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
6519 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
6520 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
6521 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
6522 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
6523 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
6524 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
6525 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
6526 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
6527
6528 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
6529 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
6530 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
6531
6532       </div>
6533       <div class="tags">
6534
6535
6536         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>.
6537
6538
6539       </div>
6540     </div>
6541     <div class="padding"></div>
6542
6543     <div class="entry">
6544       <div class="title">
6545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6546       </div>
6547       <div class="date">
6548         28th December 2012
6549       </div>
6550       <div class="body">
6551         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
6552 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6553 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
6554 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
6555 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
6556 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
6557 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
6558 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
6559 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
6560 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
6561 followed by many others. :)</p>
6562
6563 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
6564 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
6565 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
6566 you want to donate to the project.</p>
6567
6568       </div>
6569       <div class="tags">
6570
6571
6572         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>.
6573
6574
6575       </div>
6576     </div>
6577     <div class="padding"></div>
6578
6579     <div class="entry">
6580       <div class="title">
6581         <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>
6582       </div>
6583       <div class="date">
6584         25th December 2012
6585       </div>
6586       <div class="body">
6587         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
6588 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
6589
6590 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
6591 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
6592 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
6593 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
6594 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
6595 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
6596 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
6597 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
6598 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
6599 name.</p>
6600
6601 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
6602 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
6603 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
6604
6605 <blockquote><pre>
6606 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
6607 cd bitcoin
6608 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
6609 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
6610 </pre></blockquote>
6611
6612 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
6613 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
6614 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
6615 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
6616 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
6617 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
6618 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
6619 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
6620 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
6621
6622 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6623 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6624 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6625
6626       </div>
6627       <div class="tags">
6628
6629
6630         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>.
6631
6632
6633       </div>
6634     </div>
6635     <div class="padding"></div>
6636
6637     <div class="entry">
6638       <div class="title">
6639         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
6640       </div>
6641       <div class="date">
6642         21st December 2012
6643       </div>
6644       <div class="body">
6645         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
6646 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
6647 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
6648 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
6649 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
6650 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
6651 is now maintained by a
6652 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
6653 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
6654 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
6655 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
6656 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
6657 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
6658 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
6659 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
6660 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
6661 Corallo in a
6662 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
6663 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
6664 Debian package.</p>
6665
6666 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
6667 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
6668 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
6669 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
6670 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
6671 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
6672 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
6673 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
6674 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
6675 new version to unstable.
6676
6677 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
6678 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
6679 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
6680 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
6681 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
6682 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
6683 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
6684 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
6685 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
6686 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
6687 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
6688 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
6689 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
6690 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
6691 have not tested them.</p>
6692
6693 <p>My
6694 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
6695 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
6696 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
6697 years ago, as can be
6698 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
6699 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
6700 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
6701 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
6702 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
6703 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
6704 the same address as last time,
6705 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6706
6707       </div>
6708       <div class="tags">
6709
6710
6711         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>.
6712
6713
6714       </div>
6715     </div>
6716     <div class="padding"></div>
6717
6718     <div class="entry">
6719       <div class="title">
6720         <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>
6721       </div>
6722       <div class="date">
6723         18th December 2012
6724       </div>
6725       <div class="body">
6726         <p>A few days ago I came across
6727 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
6728 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
6729 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
6730 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
6731 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
6732 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
6733 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
6734 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
6735 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
6736
6737 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
6738 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
6739 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
6740 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
6741
6742 <blockquote><pre>
6743 2004-05-27 Book Store
6744       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
6745       Liabilities:Visa
6746 </pre></blockquote>
6747
6748 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
6749 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
6750 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
6751 Spang</a>,
6752 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
6753 Keen</a>,
6754 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
6755 Cantino</a> and
6756 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
6757 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
6758 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
6759 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
6760 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
6761
6762 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
6763 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
6764 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
6765 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
6766 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
6767
6768 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
6769 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
6770 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
6771 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
6772 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
6773 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
6774 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
6775 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
6776 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
6777
6778       </div>
6779       <div class="tags">
6780
6781
6782         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>.
6783
6784
6785       </div>
6786     </div>
6787     <div class="padding"></div>
6788
6789     <div class="entry">
6790       <div class="title">
6791         <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>
6792       </div>
6793       <div class="date">
6794          6th December 2012
6795       </div>
6796       <div class="body">
6797         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
6798 Oslo</a>, we use the
6799 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
6800 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
6801 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
6802 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
6803 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
6804 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
6805 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
6806 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
6807 Python.</p>
6808
6809 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
6810 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
6811 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
6812 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
6813 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
6814 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
6815
6816 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
6817 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
6818 user currently logged in:</p>
6819
6820 <blockquote><pre>
6821 #!/usr/bin/env python
6822 import getpass
6823 import xmlrpclib
6824 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
6825 username = getpass.getuser()
6826 password = getpass.getpass()
6827 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
6828 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
6829 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
6830 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
6831 result = server.logout(sessionid)
6832 print result
6833 </pre></blockquote>
6834
6835 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
6836 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
6837
6838       </div>
6839       <div class="tags">
6840
6841
6842         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>.
6843
6844
6845       </div>
6846     </div>
6847     <div class="padding"></div>
6848
6849     <div class="entry">
6850       <div class="title">
6851         <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>
6852       </div>
6853       <div class="date">
6854         17th November 2012
6855       </div>
6856       <div class="body">
6857         <p>While working on a
6858 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
6859 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
6860 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
6861 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
6862 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
6863 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
6864
6865 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
6866 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
6867 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
6868 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
6869 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
6870 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
6871 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
6872 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
6873 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
6874 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
6875 arguments.</p>
6876
6877 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
6878 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
6879 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
6880 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
6881 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
6882 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
6883 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
6884 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
6885
6886 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
6887 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
6888 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
6889 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
6890 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
6891 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
6892 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
6893 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
6894 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
6895 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
6896 correct right holder.</p>
6897
6898 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
6899 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
6900 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
6901 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
6902 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
6903 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
6904 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
6905 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
6906 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
6907 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
6908 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
6909 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
6910 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
6911 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
6912
6913 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
6914 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
6915 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
6916
6917 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
6918 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
6919
6920       </div>
6921       <div class="tags">
6922
6923
6924         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>.
6925
6926
6927       </div>
6928     </div>
6929     <div class="padding"></div>
6930
6931     <div class="entry">
6932       <div class="title">
6933         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
6934       </div>
6935       <div class="date">
6936         14th November 2012
6937       </div>
6938       <div class="body">
6939         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
6940 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6941 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
6942 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
6943 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
6944 the people behind the German
6945 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
6946 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
6947 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
6948
6949 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6950
6951 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
6952 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
6953 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
6954
6955 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
6956 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
6957 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
6958 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
6959 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
6960 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
6961
6962 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
6963 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
6964 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
6965 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
6966 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
6967 relationship management and the communication processes in the
6968 project.</p>
6969
6970 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
6971 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
6972 and a yoga teacher.</p>
6973
6974 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6975 project?</strong></p>
6976
6977 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
6978
6979 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
6980 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
6981 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
6982 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
6983 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
6984 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
6985 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
6986 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
6987 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
6988 parents.</p>
6989
6990 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
6991 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
6992 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
6993 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
6994 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
6995 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
6996 Germany.</p>
6997
6998 <p>For information about our school project you can read
6999 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
7000 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
7001
7002 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7003 Edu?</strong></p>
7004
7005 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
7006 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
7007
7008 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
7009 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
7010 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
7011 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
7012 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
7013 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
7014 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
7015 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
7016 teachers, parents...</p>
7017
7018 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7019 Edu?</strong></p>
7020
7021 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
7022 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7023
7024 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
7025 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
7026 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
7027 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
7028 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7029
7030 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
7031 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
7032 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
7033 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
7034 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
7035 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
7036 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7037
7038 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7039
7040 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
7041 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
7042 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
7043 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
7044
7045 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7046 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7047
7048 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
7049 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
7050 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
7051 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
7052 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
7053
7054 <ul>
7055
7056 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
7057 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
7058 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
7059
7060 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
7061 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
7062 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
7063 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
7064 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
7065 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
7066 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
7067
7068 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
7069 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
7070 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
7071 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
7072
7073 </ul>
7074
7075       </div>
7076       <div class="tags">
7077
7078
7079         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>.
7080
7081
7082       </div>
7083     </div>
7084     <div class="padding"></div>
7085
7086     <div class="entry">
7087       <div class="title">
7088         <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>
7089       </div>
7090       <div class="date">
7091          4th November 2012
7092       </div>
7093       <div class="body">
7094         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
7095 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
7096 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
7097 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
7098 see how a member of the bitcoin community
7099 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
7100 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
7101 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
7102 competition.  My thoughts go to the
7103 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
7104 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
7105 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
7106 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
7107 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
7108
7109 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
7110 that the community already seem to have
7111 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
7112 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
7113 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
7114 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
7115 wealth is available.</p>
7116
7117       </div>
7118       <div class="tags">
7119
7120
7121         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>.
7122
7123
7124       </div>
7125     </div>
7126     <div class="padding"></div>
7127
7128     <div class="entry">
7129       <div class="title">
7130         <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>
7131       </div>
7132       <div class="date">
7133         26th October 2012
7134       </div>
7135       <div class="body">
7136         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
7137 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
7138 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
7139 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
7140 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
7141 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
7142 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
7143 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
7144 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
7145 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
7146 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
7147 it every time.</p>
7148
7149 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
7150 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
7151 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
7152 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
7153 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
7154 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
7155 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
7156 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
7157 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
7158 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
7159 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
7160 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
7161
7162 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
7163 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
7164 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
7165 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
7166 article: First the unplanned outage:
7167
7168 <blockquote><pre>
7169 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
7170 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
7171 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
7172 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
7173 Duration:    40 minutes
7174 Scope:       Exchange 2003
7175 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
7176              a cluster failover.
7177
7178 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
7179              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
7180 Technician:  [xxx]
7181 </pre></blockquote>
7182
7183 Next the planned outage:
7184
7185 <blockquote><pre>
7186 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
7187 Severity:    Major (Planned)
7188 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
7189 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
7190 Duration:    10 hours
7191 Scope:       H2 Transport
7192 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
7193              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
7194              4510s.
7195 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
7196              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
7197              connectivity.
7198 Technician:  [xxx]
7199 </pre></blockquote>
7200
7201 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
7202 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
7203 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
7204 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
7205 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
7206 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
7207 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
7208
7209 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
7210 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
7211 university too.  We do register
7212 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
7213 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
7214 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
7215 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
7216 for other sites to consider too?</p>
7217
7218       </div>
7219       <div class="tags">
7220
7221
7222         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>.
7223
7224
7225       </div>
7226     </div>
7227     <div class="padding"></div>
7228
7229     <div class="entry">
7230       <div class="title">
7231         <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>
7232       </div>
7233       <div class="date">
7234         22nd October 2012
7235       </div>
7236       <div class="body">
7237         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
7238 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
7239 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
7240 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
7241 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
7242 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
7243 background information is available in Norwegian from
7244 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
7245 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
7246 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
7247 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
7248 willing to
7249 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
7250 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
7251 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
7252 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
7253 sounded like
7254 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
7255 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
7256 later.</p>
7257
7258 <p>And thought this action is
7259 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
7260 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
7261 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
7262 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
7263 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
7264 rights.</p>
7265
7266 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
7267 unacceptable terms.  For example
7268 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
7269 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
7270 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
7271 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
7272 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
7273
7274 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
7275 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
7276 restored the account of the user, as reported by
7277 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
7278 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
7279 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
7280 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
7281 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
7282 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
7283 reading two opinions from
7284 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
7285 Phipps</a> and
7286 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
7287 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
7288 details about the original story.</p>
7289
7290       </div>
7291       <div class="tags">
7292
7293
7294         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>.
7295
7296
7297       </div>
7298     </div>
7299     <div class="padding"></div>
7300
7301     <div class="entry">
7302       <div class="title">
7303         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
7304       </div>
7305       <div class="date">
7306         18th October 2012
7307       </div>
7308       <div class="body">
7309         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
7310 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
7311 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
7312 across a marvellous drawing by
7313 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
7314 visualising some of what is going on.
7315
7316 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
7317 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
7318
7319 <blockquote>
7320 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
7321 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
7322 </blockquote>
7323
7324 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
7325 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
7326 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
7327 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
7328 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
7329 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
7330
7331       </div>
7332       <div class="tags">
7333
7334
7335         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>.
7336
7337
7338       </div>
7339     </div>
7340     <div class="padding"></div>
7341
7342     <div class="entry">
7343       <div class="title">
7344         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
7345       </div>
7346       <div class="date">
7347         12th October 2012
7348       </div>
7349       <div class="body">
7350         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
7351 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
7352 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
7353 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
7354 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
7355 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
7356 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
7357 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
7358 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
7359 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
7360 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
7361 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
7362 matter".</p>
7363
7364 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
7365 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
7366 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
7367 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
7368 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
7369 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
7370 to argue its side.</p>
7371
7372 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
7373 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
7374 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
7375 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
7376
7377 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
7378 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
7379 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
7380
7381       </div>
7382       <div class="tags">
7383
7384
7385         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>.
7386
7387
7388       </div>
7389     </div>
7390     <div class="padding"></div>
7391
7392     <div class="entry">
7393       <div class="title">
7394         <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>
7395       </div>
7396       <div class="date">
7397          3rd October 2012
7398       </div>
7399       <div class="body">
7400         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
7401 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
7402 the computer science book collection available in his local
7403 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
7404 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
7405 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
7406 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
7407 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
7408 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
7409 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
7410 recently published books.</p>
7411
7412 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
7413 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
7414 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
7415 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
7416 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
7417 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
7418 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
7419 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
7420 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
7421 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
7422 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
7423 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
7424 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
7425 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
7426 for the library that evening.</p>
7427
7428 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
7429 going to know that for example
7430 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
7431 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
7432 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
7433 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
7434 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
7435 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
7436 book right away.</p>
7437
7438       </div>
7439       <div class="tags">
7440
7441
7442         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7443
7444
7445       </div>
7446     </div>
7447     <div class="padding"></div>
7448
7449     <div class="entry">
7450       <div class="title">
7451         <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>
7452       </div>
7453       <div class="date">
7454         23rd September 2012
7455       </div>
7456       <div class="body">
7457         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
7458 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
7459 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7460 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
7461 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
7462 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
7463
7464 When I started, I
7465 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
7466 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
7467 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
7468 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
7469 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
7470 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
7471 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
7472
7473 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
7474
7475 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
7476 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
7477 the project files currently available from
7478 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7479
7480 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7481 the updated
7482 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7483 and
7484 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7485 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7486 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7487 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7488
7489       </div>
7490       <div class="tags">
7491
7492
7493         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>.
7494
7495
7496       </div>
7497     </div>
7498     <div class="padding"></div>
7499
7500     <div class="entry">
7501       <div class="title">
7502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
7503       </div>
7504       <div class="date">
7505         17th September 2012
7506       </div>
7507       <div class="body">
7508         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
7509 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7510 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
7511 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
7512 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
7513 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
7514 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
7515
7516 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7517
7518 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
7519 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
7520 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
7521 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
7522 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
7523 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
7524 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
7525 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
7526 training is anyway very important</p>
7527
7528 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
7529 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
7530 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
7531 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
7532 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
7533
7534 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7535 project?</strong></p>
7536
7537 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
7538 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
7539 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
7540 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
7541 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
7542 hole.</p>
7543
7544 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7545 Edu?</strong></p>
7546
7547 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
7548 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
7549 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
7550 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
7551 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
7552 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
7553 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
7554 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
7555 hassle.</p>
7556
7557 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7558 Edu?</strong></p>
7559
7560 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
7561 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
7562 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
7563 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
7564 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
7565 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
7566 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
7567 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
7568
7569 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7570
7571 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
7572 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
7573 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
7574 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
7575 has the same...</p>
7576
7577 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
7578 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
7579 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
7580 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
7581
7582 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7583 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7584
7585 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
7586 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
7587 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
7588
7589 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
7590 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
7591 don't.</p>
7592
7593 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
7594 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
7595 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
7596 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
7597 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
7598 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
7599 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
7600
7601       </div>
7602       <div class="tags">
7603
7604
7605         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>.
7606
7607
7608       </div>
7609     </div>
7610     <div class="padding"></div>
7611
7612     <div class="entry">
7613       <div class="title">
7614         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
7615       </div>
7616       <div class="date">
7617         15th September 2012
7618       </div>
7619       <div class="body">
7620         <p>After the
7621 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
7622 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
7623 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
7624 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
7625 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
7626 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
7627 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
7628 was
7629 <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
7630 formal working group should be formed.</p>
7631
7632 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
7633 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
7634 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
7635 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
7636 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
7637 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
7638 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
7639 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
7640
7641 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
7642 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
7643 IETF.</p>
7644
7645       </div>
7646       <div class="tags">
7647
7648
7649         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>.
7650
7651
7652       </div>
7653     </div>
7654     <div class="padding"></div>
7655
7656     <div class="entry">
7657       <div class="title">
7658         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
7659       </div>
7660       <div class="date">
7661         12th September 2012
7662       </div>
7663       <div class="body">
7664         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
7665 publication of of
7666 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
7667 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
7668 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
7669 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
7670 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
7671 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
7672 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
7673 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
7674 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
7675 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
7676
7677 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
7678 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
7679 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
7680 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
7681
7682 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
7683 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
7684
7685       </div>
7686       <div class="tags">
7687
7688
7689         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>.
7690
7691
7692       </div>
7693     </div>
7694     <div class="padding"></div>
7695
7696     <div class="entry">
7697       <div class="title">
7698         <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>
7699       </div>
7700       <div class="date">
7701          7th September 2012
7702       </div>
7703       <div class="body">
7704         <p>As I
7705 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
7706 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
7707 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
7708 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
7709 repository for the project</a>.</p>
7710
7711 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
7712 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
7713 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
7714 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
7715
7716 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
7717 PostScript formats at
7718 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
7719 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
7720
7721       </div>
7722       <div class="tags">
7723
7724
7725         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>.
7726
7727
7728       </div>
7729     </div>
7730     <div class="padding"></div>
7731
7732     <div class="entry">
7733       <div class="title">
7734         <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>
7735       </div>
7736       <div class="date">
7737         23rd August 2012
7738       </div>
7739       <div class="body">
7740         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
7741 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
7742 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
7743 revisit the great site
7744 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
7745 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
7746 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
7747
7748       </div>
7749       <div class="tags">
7750
7751
7752         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>.
7753
7754
7755       </div>
7756     </div>
7757     <div class="padding"></div>
7758
7759     <div class="entry">
7760       <div class="title">
7761         <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>
7762       </div>
7763       <div class="date">
7764         17th August 2012
7765       </div>
7766       <div class="body">
7767         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
7768 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7769 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7770 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
7771 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
7772 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
7773 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
7774 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
7775 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
7776 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
7777 summer I
7778 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
7779 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
7780 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
7781
7782 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
7783 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
7784 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
7785 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
7786 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
7787 progress:</p>
7788
7789 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
7790
7791 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
7792 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
7793 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
7794 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
7795 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
7796 english version of the docbook source.</p>
7797
7798 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7799 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7800 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7801 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7802 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7803 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
7804 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
7805 project files currently available from <a
7806 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7807
7808 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7809 the updated
7810 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7811 and
7812 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7813 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7814 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7815 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7816
7817       </div>
7818       <div class="tags">
7819
7820
7821         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>.
7822
7823
7824       </div>
7825     </div>
7826     <div class="padding"></div>
7827
7828     <div class="entry">
7829       <div class="title">
7830         <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>
7831       </div>
7832       <div class="date">
7833         10th August 2012
7834       </div>
7835       <div class="body">
7836         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
7837 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
7838 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
7839 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
7840 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
7841 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
7842 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
7843 case for the language
7844 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
7845 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
7846
7847 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
7848 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
7849 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
7850 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
7851 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
7852
7853 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
7854 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
7855 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
7856 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
7857 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
7858 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
7859 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
7860 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
7861 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
7862 alias for 'nb'.</p>
7863
7864 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
7865 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
7866 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
7867 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
7868 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
7869 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
7870 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
7871 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
7872 at the same time. :(</p>
7873
7874 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
7875 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
7876 processors. :(</p>
7877
7878 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
7879
7880       </div>
7881       <div class="tags">
7882
7883
7884         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>.
7885
7886
7887       </div>
7888     </div>
7889     <div class="padding"></div>
7890
7891     <div class="entry">
7892       <div class="title">
7893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
7894       </div>
7895       <div class="date">
7896         31st July 2012
7897       </div>
7898       <div class="body">
7899         <p>I tried to send this text to the
7900 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
7901 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
7902 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
7903 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
7904 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
7905 out.</p>
7906
7907 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
7908 learning curve at the moment.</p>
7909
7910 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
7911 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
7912 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
7913 available from
7914 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
7915 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
7916 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
7917 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
7918 Squeeze.</p>
7919
7920 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
7921 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
7922 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
7923 problems.</p>
7924
7925 <ul>
7926
7927 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
7928    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
7929    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
7930    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
7931    index references spanning several pages (See
7932    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
7933    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
7934    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
7935
7936 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
7937    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
7938    #683163</a>).</li>
7939
7940 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
7941    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
7942    footnote and text body, see
7943    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
7944    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
7945    refs listed are not right).</li>
7946
7947 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
7948
7949 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
7950    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
7951
7952 </ul>
7953
7954 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
7955 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
7956 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
7957
7958 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
7959
7960       </div>
7961       <div class="tags">
7962
7963
7964         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>.
7965
7966
7967       </div>
7968     </div>
7969     <div class="padding"></div>
7970
7971     <div class="entry">
7972       <div class="title">
7973         <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>
7974       </div>
7975       <div class="date">
7976         21st July 2012
7977       </div>
7978       <div class="body">
7979         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
7980 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
7981 norwegian version</a> of the book
7982 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7983 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
7984 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
7985 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
7986 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7987
7988 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
7989 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
7990 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
7991 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
7992 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
7993 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
7994 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
7995 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
7996 print. :)</p>
7997
7998 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
7999 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
8000 language.</p>
8001
8002       </div>
8003       <div class="tags">
8004
8005
8006         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>.
8007
8008
8009       </div>
8010     </div>
8011     <div class="padding"></div>
8012
8013     <div class="entry">
8014       <div class="title">
8015         <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>
8016       </div>
8017       <div class="date">
8018         16th July 2012
8019       </div>
8020       <div class="body">
8021         <p>I am currently working on a
8022 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
8023 to translate</a> the book
8024 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
8025 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
8026 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
8027 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
8028 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
8029 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
8030 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8031
8032 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
8033 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
8034 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
8035 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
8036 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
8037 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
8038 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
8039 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
8040 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
8041
8042       </div>
8043       <div class="tags">
8044
8045
8046         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>.
8047
8048
8049       </div>
8050     </div>
8051     <div class="padding"></div>
8052
8053     <div class="entry">
8054       <div class="title">
8055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
8056       </div>
8057       <div class="date">
8058          9th July 2012
8059       </div>
8060       <div class="body">
8061         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8062 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
8063 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
8064 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
8065 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
8066 to adjust and scale the just released
8067 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8068 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
8069 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
8070
8071 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8072
8073 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
8074 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
8075 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
8076 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
8077 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
8078 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
8079 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
8080 perspective when working with IT.</p>
8081
8082 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8083 project?</strong></p>
8084
8085 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
8086 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
8087 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
8088 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
8089 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
8090 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
8091
8092 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8093 Edu?</strong></p>
8094
8095 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
8096 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
8097 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
8098 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
8099 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
8100 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
8101 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
8102 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
8103 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
8104 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
8105 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
8106 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
8107 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
8108 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
8109 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
8110 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
8111 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
8112 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
8113 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
8114 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
8115 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
8116 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
8117 quicker to update.
8118
8119 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8120 Edu?</strong></p>
8121
8122 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
8123 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
8124 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
8125 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
8126 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
8127 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
8128
8129 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
8130 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
8131 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
8132 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
8133 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
8134 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
8135 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
8136 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
8137 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
8138 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
8139 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
8140 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
8141 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
8142 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
8143 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
8144
8145 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
8146 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
8147 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
8148 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
8149 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
8150 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
8151 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
8152 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
8153
8154 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
8155 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
8156 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
8157 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
8158 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
8159 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
8160 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
8161 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
8162 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
8163 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
8164 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
8165 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
8166 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
8167 sound file.</p>
8168
8169 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
8170 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
8171 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
8172 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
8173 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
8174 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
8175 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
8176 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
8177 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
8178
8179 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8180
8181 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
8182 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
8183 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
8184 )</p>
8185
8186 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8187 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8188
8189 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
8190 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
8191 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
8192 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
8193 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
8194 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
8195 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
8196 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
8197 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
8198 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
8199 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
8200 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
8201 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
8202 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
8203 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
8204
8205 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
8206 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
8207 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
8208 management with Airtime</a>,
8209 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
8210 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
8211 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
8212 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
8213 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
8214
8215       </div>
8216       <div class="tags">
8217
8218
8219         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>.
8220
8221
8222       </div>
8223     </div>
8224     <div class="padding"></div>
8225
8226     <div class="entry">
8227       <div class="title">
8228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
8229       </div>
8230       <div class="date">
8231          8th July 2012
8232       </div>
8233       <div class="body">
8234         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
8235 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
8236 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
8237 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
8238 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
8239 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
8240 Steinberg in his blog post
8241 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
8242 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
8243 spending of your tax money.</p>
8244
8245 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
8246 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
8247 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
8248 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
8249 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
8250 purchases.</p>
8251
8252       </div>
8253       <div class="tags">
8254
8255
8256         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>.
8257
8258
8259       </div>
8260     </div>
8261     <div class="padding"></div>
8262
8263     <div class="entry">
8264       <div class="title">
8265         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
8266       </div>
8267       <div class="date">
8268          7th July 2012
8269       </div>
8270       <div class="body">
8271         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8272 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
8273 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
8274 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
8275 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
8276 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
8277 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
8278 receive.  The software is
8279
8280 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
8281 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
8282 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
8283 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
8284 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
8285 Windows</a>.</p>
8286
8287 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
8288 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
8289
8290 <p><ul>
8291
8292   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
8293     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
8294
8295   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
8296     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
8297     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
8298     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
8299     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
8300     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
8301     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
8302     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
8303     </li>
8304
8305   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
8306     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
8307
8308   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
8309     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
8310
8311   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
8312     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
8313
8314   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
8315
8316   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
8317     formats </li>
8318
8319   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
8320     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
8321     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
8322     (as separate sets)</li>
8323
8324   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
8325     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
8326     percentage)</li>
8327
8328   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
8329     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
8330     memory):
8331     <ul>
8332       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
8333       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
8334       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
8335       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
8336       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
8337       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
8338       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
8339       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
8340       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
8341       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
8342           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
8343           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
8344           activity)</li>
8345       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
8346       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
8347     </ul></li>
8348
8349   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
8350     <ul>
8351       <li>Break periods</li>
8352       <li>For teacher(s):
8353         <ul>
8354           <li>Not available periods</li>
8355           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
8356           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
8357           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
8358           <li>Min hours daily</li>
8359           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
8360
8361           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
8362             days per week</li>
8363         </ul></li>
8364       <li>For students (sets):
8365         <ul>
8366           <li>Not available periods</li>
8367           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
8368           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
8369           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
8370           <li>Min hours daily</li>
8371           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
8372
8373           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
8374             days per week</li>
8375         </ul></li>
8376       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
8377         <ul>
8378           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
8379           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
8380           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
8381           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
8382           <li>End(s) students day</li>
8383           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
8384           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
8385             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
8386           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
8387           <li>Not overlapping</li>
8388           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
8389           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
8390         </ul></li>
8391     </ul></li>
8392
8393   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
8394     <ul>
8395       <li>Room not available periods</li>
8396       <li>For teacher(s):
8397         <ul>
8398           <li>Home room(s)</li>
8399           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
8400           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
8401         </ul>
8402       </li>
8403
8404       <li>For students (sets):
8405         <ul>
8406           <li>Home room(s)</li>
8407           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
8408           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
8409         </ul>
8410       </li>
8411       <li>Preferred room(s):
8412         <ul>
8413           <li>For a subject</li>
8414           <li>For an activity tag</li>
8415           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
8416           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
8417         </ul>
8418       </li>
8419
8420       <li>For a set of activities:
8421         <ul>
8422           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
8423         </ul>
8424       </li>
8425     </ul>
8426   </li>
8427 </ul></p>
8428
8429 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
8430 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
8431 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
8432 manually, check it out.
8433
8434 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
8435 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
8436 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
8437 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
8438 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
8439 section</a>.</p>
8440
8441       </div>
8442       <div class="tags">
8443
8444
8445         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>.
8446
8447
8448       </div>
8449     </div>
8450     <div class="padding"></div>
8451
8452     <div class="entry">
8453       <div class="title">
8454         <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>
8455       </div>
8456       <div class="date">
8457          3rd July 2012
8458       </div>
8459       <div class="body">
8460         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
8461 project (Norwegian version of
8462 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
8463 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
8464 a problem with the municipalities using
8465 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
8466 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
8467 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
8468 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
8469 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
8470 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
8471 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
8472 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
8473 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
8474 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
8475 the From: header.</p>
8476
8477 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
8478 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
8479 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
8480 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
8481 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
8482 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
8483 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
8484 behaviour.</p>
8485
8486 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
8487 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
8488 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
8489 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
8490 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
8491 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
8492 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
8493
8494       </div>
8495       <div class="tags">
8496
8497
8498         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>.
8499
8500
8501       </div>
8502     </div>
8503     <div class="padding"></div>
8504
8505     <div class="entry">
8506       <div class="title">
8507         <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>
8508       </div>
8509       <div class="date">
8510         26th June 2012
8511       </div>
8512       <div class="body">
8513         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
8514 another interview with the people behind
8515 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
8516 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
8517 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
8518 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
8519 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
8520 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8521 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8522
8523 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8524
8525 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
8526 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
8527 ICT in schools</p>
8528
8529 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8530 project?</strong></p>
8531
8532 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
8533 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
8534 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
8535 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
8536
8537 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8538 Edu?</strong></p>
8539
8540 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
8541 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
8542 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
8543 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
8544
8545 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8546 Edu?</strong></p>
8547
8548 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
8549 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
8550 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
8551 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
8552 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
8553 technologies in school.</p>
8554
8555 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8556
8557 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
8558 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
8559 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
8560
8561 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8562 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8563
8564 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
8565 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
8566 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
8567 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
8568
8569 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
8570 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
8571 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
8572
8573 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
8574 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
8575 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
8576 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
8577 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
8578 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
8579 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
8580 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
8581 working there.</p>
8582
8583       </div>
8584       <div class="tags">
8585
8586
8587         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>.
8588
8589
8590       </div>
8591     </div>
8592     <div class="padding"></div>
8593
8594     <div class="entry">
8595       <div class="title">
8596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
8597       </div>
8598       <div class="date">
8599         24th June 2012
8600       </div>
8601       <div class="body">
8602         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
8603 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
8604 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
8605 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
8606 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
8607 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
8608 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
8609 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
8610 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
8611 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
8612 missing in my book.</p>
8613
8614 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
8615 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
8616 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
8617 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
8618 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
8619 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
8620 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
8621
8622       </div>
8623       <div class="tags">
8624
8625
8626         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>.
8627
8628
8629       </div>
8630     </div>
8631     <div class="padding"></div>
8632
8633     <div class="entry">
8634       <div class="title">
8635         <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>
8636       </div>
8637       <div class="date">
8638         11th June 2012
8639       </div>
8640       <div class="body">
8641         <p>During my work on
8642 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
8643 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
8644 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
8645 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
8646 explanation.</p>
8647
8648 <p><ul>
8649
8650 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
8651 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
8652 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
8653 system depend on tasksel tasks in
8654 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
8655 installation.</li>
8656
8657 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
8658 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
8659 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
8660 at least try to enable it for these services:
8661 <ul>
8662
8663   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
8664     quotas.</li>
8665   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
8666   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
8667   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
8668   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
8669   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
8670
8671 </ul></li>
8672
8673 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
8674 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
8675 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
8676 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
8677
8678 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
8679 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
8680 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
8681
8682 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
8683 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
8684 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
8685 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
8686 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
8687 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
8688
8689 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
8690 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
8691 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
8692 in Wheezy.
8693
8694 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
8695 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
8696 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
8697
8698 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
8699 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
8700 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
8701 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
8702
8703 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
8704 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
8705 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
8706 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
8707
8708 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
8709 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
8710 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
8711
8712 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
8713 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
8714 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
8715
8716 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
8717 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
8718 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
8719 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
8720 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
8721
8722 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
8723 <ul>
8724
8725 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
8726 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
8727 <li>and probably more?</li>
8728 </ul></li>
8729
8730 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
8731 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
8732 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
8733 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
8734 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
8735 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
8736 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
8737 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
8738
8739
8740 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
8741 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
8742 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
8743 use.</li>
8744
8745 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
8746 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
8747 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
8748 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
8749 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
8750
8751 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
8752 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
8753 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
8754 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
8755 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
8756 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
8757
8758 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
8759 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
8760 There are at least three implementations,
8761 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
8762 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
8763 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
8764 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
8765 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
8766 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
8767 given room.</li>
8768
8769 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
8770 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
8771 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
8772 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
8773 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
8774 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
8775 investigated.</li>
8776
8777 </ul></p>
8778
8779 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
8780 version.</p>
8781
8782       </div>
8783       <div class="tags">
8784
8785
8786         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>.
8787
8788
8789       </div>
8790     </div>
8791     <div class="padding"></div>
8792
8793     <div class="entry">
8794       <div class="title">
8795         <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>
8796       </div>
8797       <div class="date">
8798          9th June 2012
8799       </div>
8800       <div class="body">
8801         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
8802 <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
8803 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
8804 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
8805 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
8806 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
8807 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
8808 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
8809 be willing to pay for.</p>
8810
8811 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
8812 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
8813 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
8814 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
8815 Orwell</a>.</p>
8816
8817       </div>
8818       <div class="tags">
8819
8820
8821         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>.
8822
8823
8824       </div>
8825     </div>
8826     <div class="padding"></div>
8827
8828     <div class="entry">
8829       <div class="title">
8830         <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>
8831       </div>
8832       <div class="date">
8833          6th June 2012
8834       </div>
8835       <div class="body">
8836         <p>A few days ago
8837 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
8838 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
8839 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
8840 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
8841 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
8842 code for HP, Dell and IBM
8843 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
8844 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
8845 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
8846 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
8847 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
8848
8849 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
8850 output:
8851
8852 <blockquote><pre>
8853 % 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>
8854 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": ""})
8855 %
8856 </pre></blockquote>
8857
8858 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
8859 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
8860 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
8861
8862       </div>
8863       <div class="tags">
8864
8865
8866         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>.
8867
8868
8869       </div>
8870     </div>
8871     <div class="padding"></div>
8872
8873     <div class="entry">
8874       <div class="title">
8875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
8876       </div>
8877       <div class="date">
8878          2nd June 2012
8879       </div>
8880       <div class="body">
8881         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
8882 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8883 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
8884 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
8885 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8886 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8887
8888 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8889
8890 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
8891 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
8892 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
8893 by Angela).</p>
8894
8895 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
8896 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
8897 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
8898 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
8899 becoming an osteopath.</p>
8900
8901 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
8902 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
8903 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
8904 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
8905 skills with communication skills.</p>
8906
8907 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8908 project?</strong></p>
8909
8910 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
8911 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
8912 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
8913 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
8914 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
8915
8916 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
8917 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
8918 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
8919 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
8920 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
8921 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
8922 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
8923 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
8924 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
8925
8926 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
8927 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
8928 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
8929
8930 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
8931
8932 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
8933 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
8934 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
8935 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
8936 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
8937 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
8938 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
8939 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
8940 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
8941 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
8942 point.</p>
8943
8944 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
8945 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
8946 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
8947 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
8948 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
8949 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
8950
8951 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
8952 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
8953 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
8954 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
8955 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
8956 spare time.</p>
8957
8958 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
8959 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
8960 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
8961 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
8962 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
8963
8964 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
8965 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
8966 avoidance do exist.</p>
8967
8968 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
8969 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
8970 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
8971 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
8972 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
8973 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
8974 and probably a gain for all.</p>
8975
8976 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8977 Edu?</strong></p>
8978
8979 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
8980 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
8981 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
8982 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
8983 project communication, honest communication within the group of
8984 developers, etc.</p>
8985
8986 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8987 Edu?</strong></p>
8988
8989 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
8990
8991 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
8992 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
8993 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
8994 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
8995 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
8996 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
8997 contribute).</p>
8998
8999 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
9000 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
9001 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
9002 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
9003 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
9004 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
9005 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
9006 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
9007 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
9008 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
9009
9010 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9011
9012 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
9013
9014 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
9015 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
9016 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
9017
9018 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
9019 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
9020 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
9021 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
9022
9023 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
9024 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
9025 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
9026 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
9027 whiteboard.</p>
9028
9029 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
9030
9031 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9032 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9033
9034 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
9035 enrol people.</p>
9036
9037       </div>
9038       <div class="tags">
9039
9040
9041         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>.
9042
9043
9044       </div>
9045     </div>
9046     <div class="padding"></div>
9047
9048     <div class="entry">
9049       <div class="title">
9050         <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>
9051       </div>
9052       <div class="date">
9053          1st June 2012
9054       </div>
9055       <div class="body">
9056         <p>A few years ago I wrote
9057 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
9058 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
9059 I have learned from colleges here at the
9060 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
9061 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
9062 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
9063 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
9064 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
9065
9066 <p><pre>
9067 use strict;
9068 use warnings;
9069 use SOAP::Lite;
9070 use Data::Dumper;
9071 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
9072 my $App = 'test';
9073 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
9074 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
9075 my $s = SOAP::Lite
9076     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
9077     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
9078     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
9079     ;
9080 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
9081     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
9082     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
9083     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
9084 );
9085 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
9086 </pre></p>
9087
9088 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
9089
9090 <p><pre>
9091 $VAR1 = {
9092           'Asset' => {
9093                      'Entitlements' => {
9094                                        'EntitlementData' => [
9095                                                             {
9096                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9097                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9098                                                               'Provider' => '',
9099                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9100                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9101                                                             },
9102                                                             {
9103                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9104                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9105                                                               'Provider' => '',
9106                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9107                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9108                                                             },
9109                                                             {
9110                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9111                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
9112                                                               'Provider' => '',
9113                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9114                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9115                                                             }
9116                                                           ]
9117                                      },
9118                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
9119                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
9120                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
9121                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
9122                                           'Buid' => '2323',
9123                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
9124                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
9125                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
9126                                         }
9127                    }
9128         };
9129 </pre></p>
9130
9131 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
9132 service outside the
9133 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
9134 documentation</a>, and according to
9135 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
9136 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
9137 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
9138
9139 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
9140 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
9141
9142       </div>
9143       <div class="tags">
9144
9145
9146         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>.
9147
9148
9149       </div>
9150     </div>
9151     <div class="padding"></div>
9152
9153     <div class="entry">
9154       <div class="title">
9155         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
9156       </div>
9157       <div class="date">
9158         31st May 2012
9159       </div>
9160       <div class="body">
9161         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
9162 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
9163 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
9164 running Debian Squeeze, where
9165 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
9166 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
9167 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
9168 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
9169 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
9170 another day.</p>
9171
9172 <p>After calibration, I get a
9173 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
9174 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
9175 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
9176 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
9177 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
9178 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
9179 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
9180 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
9181 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
9182 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
9183 and a simple</p>
9184
9185 <p><pre>
9186 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
9187 </pre></p>
9188
9189 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
9190 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
9191 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
9192 enough for now.</p>
9193
9194       </div>
9195       <div class="tags">
9196
9197
9198         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9199
9200
9201       </div>
9202     </div>
9203     <div class="padding"></div>
9204
9205     <div class="entry">
9206       <div class="title">
9207         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
9208       </div>
9209       <div class="date">
9210         27th May 2012
9211       </div>
9212       <div class="body">
9213         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
9214 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9215 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
9216 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
9217 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
9218 since then, helping to make sure the
9219 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9220 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
9221
9222 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9223
9224 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
9225 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
9226 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
9227 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
9228 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
9229 our computer network.</p>
9230
9231 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
9232 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
9233 (4 months).</p>
9234
9235 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9236 project?</strong></p>
9237
9238 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
9239 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
9240 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
9241 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
9242 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
9243 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
9244 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
9245 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
9246 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
9247 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
9248 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
9249 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
9250 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
9251 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
9252
9253 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9254 Edu?</strong></p>
9255
9256 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
9257 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
9258 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
9259 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
9260 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
9261 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
9262 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
9263 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
9264
9265 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9266 Edu?</strong></p>
9267
9268 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
9269 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
9270 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
9271 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
9272 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
9273 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
9274 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
9275 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
9276 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
9277 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
9278 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
9279 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
9280
9281 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9282
9283 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
9284 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
9285 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
9286
9287 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9288 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9289
9290 <p><ol>
9291
9292 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
9293 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
9294 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
9295 developing.</li>
9296
9297 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
9298 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
9299 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
9300 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
9301 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
9302
9303 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
9304 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
9305 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
9306
9307 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
9308 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
9309 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
9310 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
9311
9312 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
9313 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
9314 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
9315
9316 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
9317
9318 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
9319 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
9320 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
9321 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
9322
9323 </ol></p>
9324
9325       </div>
9326       <div class="tags">
9327
9328
9329         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>.
9330
9331
9332       </div>
9333     </div>
9334     <div class="padding"></div>
9335
9336     <div class="entry">
9337       <div class="title">
9338         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
9339       </div>
9340       <div class="date">
9341         26th May 2012
9342       </div>
9343       <div class="body">
9344         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
9345 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
9346 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
9347 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
9348 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
9349
9350 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
9351 <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>
9352 comment:</p>
9353
9354 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
9355 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
9356 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
9357 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
9358 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
9359 </blockquote></p>
9360
9361 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
9362 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
9363 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
9364 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
9365 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
9366 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
9367 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
9368 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
9369 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
9370 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
9371 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
9372 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
9373 of wasted effort.</p>
9374
9375 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
9376 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
9377 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
9378
9379 <p>See
9380 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
9381 and
9382 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
9383 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
9384 </blockquote></p>
9385
9386       </div>
9387       <div class="tags">
9388
9389
9390         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>.
9391
9392
9393       </div>
9394     </div>
9395     <div class="padding"></div>
9396
9397     <div class="entry">
9398       <div class="title">
9399         <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>
9400       </div>
9401       <div class="date">
9402         18th May 2012
9403       </div>
9404       <div class="body">
9405         <p>In january, I
9406 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
9407 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
9408 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
9409 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
9410 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
9411 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
9412 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
9413 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
9414 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
9415 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
9416
9417 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
9418 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
9419 drivers. :)</p>
9420
9421       </div>
9422       <div class="tags">
9423
9424
9425         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9426
9427
9428       </div>
9429     </div>
9430     <div class="padding"></div>
9431
9432     <div class="entry">
9433       <div class="title">
9434         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
9435       </div>
9436       <div class="date">
9437         13th May 2012
9438       </div>
9439       <div class="body">
9440         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
9441 publish another interview with the people behind
9442 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
9443 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
9444 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
9445 details get right before release.
9446
9447 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9448
9449 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
9450 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
9451 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
9452 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
9453 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
9454 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
9455 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
9456 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
9457
9458 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
9459 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
9460 home since 2006.</p>
9461
9462 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9463 project?</strong></p>
9464
9465 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
9466 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
9467 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
9468 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
9469 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
9470 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
9471
9472 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
9473 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
9474 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
9475 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
9476 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
9477 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
9478 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
9479 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
9480 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
9481 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
9482 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
9483 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
9484 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
9485 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
9486 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
9487 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
9488
9489 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9490 Edu?</strong></p>
9491
9492 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
9493 for me as today.</p>
9494
9495 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
9496
9497 <p><ul>
9498
9499 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
9500 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
9501
9502 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
9503 cost.</li>
9504
9505 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
9506 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
9507 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
9508 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
9509 server</li>
9510
9511 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
9512 school.</li>
9513
9514 </ul></p>
9515
9516 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
9517 came up in this way:</p>
9518
9519 <p><ul>
9520
9521 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
9522 now.</li>
9523
9524 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
9525 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
9526 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
9527
9528 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
9529 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
9530 interfaces used in the past.</li>
9531
9532 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
9533 different needs.</li>
9534
9535 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
9536
9537 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
9538 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
9539 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
9540
9541 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
9542 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
9543
9544 </ul></p>
9545
9546 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9547 Edu?</strong></p>
9548
9549 <p><ul>
9550
9551 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
9552 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
9553 whole municipality areas.</li>
9554
9555 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
9556 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
9557 politicians.</li>
9558
9559 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
9560
9561 </ul></p>
9562
9563 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9564
9565 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
9566 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
9567 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
9568 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
9569 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
9570 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
9571
9572 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
9573 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
9574 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
9575 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
9576 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
9577
9578 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9579 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9580
9581 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
9582 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
9583 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
9584
9585       </div>
9586       <div class="tags">
9587
9588
9589         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>.
9590
9591
9592       </div>
9593     </div>
9594     <div class="padding"></div>
9595
9596     <div class="entry">
9597       <div class="title">
9598         <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>
9599       </div>
9600       <div class="date">
9601         30th April 2012
9602       </div>
9603       <div class="body">
9604         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
9605 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
9606
9607 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
9608 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
9609 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
9610 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
9611 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
9612 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
9613 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
9614 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
9615 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
9616 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
9617 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
9618 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
9619 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
9620 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
9621 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
9622 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
9623
9624 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
9625 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
9626 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
9627 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
9628 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
9629 finally found a Danish supplier
9630 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
9631 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
9632 days ago.</p>
9633
9634 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
9635 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
9636 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
9637 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
9638 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
9639 toys.</p>
9640
9641       </div>
9642       <div class="tags">
9643
9644
9645         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9646
9647
9648       </div>
9649     </div>
9650     <div class="padding"></div>
9651
9652     <div class="entry">
9653       <div class="title">
9654         <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>
9655       </div>
9656       <div class="date">
9657         26th April 2012
9658       </div>
9659       <div class="body">
9660         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
9661 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
9662 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
9663 that the video editor application included with
9664 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
9665 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
9666 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
9667
9668 <p><blockquote>
9669 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
9670 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
9671 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
9672 </blockquote></p>
9673
9674 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
9675
9676 <p><blockquote>
9677 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
9678 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
9679 </blockquote></p>
9680
9681 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
9682 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
9683 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
9684 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
9685 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
9686 video.  AMR is
9687 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
9688 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
9689 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
9690 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
9691 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
9692 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
9693 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
9694
9695 <p>I know why I prefer
9696 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
9697 standards</a> also for video.</p>
9698
9699       </div>
9700       <div class="tags">
9701
9702
9703         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>.
9704
9705
9706       </div>
9707     </div>
9708     <div class="padding"></div>
9709
9710     <div class="entry">
9711       <div class="title">
9712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
9713       </div>
9714       <div class="date">
9715         19th April 2012
9716       </div>
9717       <div class="body">
9718         <p>Here in Norway, the
9719 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
9720 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
9721 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
9722 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
9723 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
9724 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
9725 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
9726 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
9727 on the same level.</p>
9728
9729 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
9730 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
9731 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
9732 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
9733 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
9734 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
9735 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
9736 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
9737 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
9738 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
9739 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
9740 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
9741 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
9742 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
9743 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
9744 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
9745 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
9746 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
9747
9748 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
9749 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
9750 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
9751 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
9752 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
9753 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
9754 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
9755 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
9756
9757 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
9758 from Simon Phipps
9759 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
9760 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
9761
9762 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
9763 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
9764 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
9765 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
9766 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
9767 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
9768 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
9769 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
9770 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
9771
9772       </div>
9773       <div class="tags">
9774
9775
9776         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>.
9777
9778
9779       </div>
9780     </div>
9781     <div class="padding"></div>
9782
9783     <div class="entry">
9784       <div class="title">
9785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
9786       </div>
9787       <div class="date">
9788         15th April 2012
9789       </div>
9790       <div class="body">
9791         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
9792 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
9793 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
9794 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
9795 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
9796 up in the recently released
9797 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
9798 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
9799
9800 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9801
9802 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
9803 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
9804 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
9805 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
9806 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
9807 information technology and science/technology.</p>
9808
9809 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9810 project?</strong></p>
9811
9812 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
9813 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
9814 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
9815 contributing.</p>
9816
9817 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9818 Edu?</strong></p>
9819
9820 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
9821 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
9822 Debian Project!</p>
9823
9824 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9825 Edu?</strong></p>
9826
9827 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
9828 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
9829 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
9830 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
9831 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
9832 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
9833 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
9834
9835 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
9836 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
9837
9838 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9839
9840 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
9841 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
9842 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
9843 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
9844
9845 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9846 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9847
9848 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
9849 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
9850 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
9851 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
9852 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
9853 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
9854 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
9855
9856 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
9857 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
9858 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
9859 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
9860 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
9861 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
9862 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
9863 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
9864
9865       </div>
9866       <div class="tags">
9867
9868
9869         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>.
9870
9871
9872       </div>
9873     </div>
9874     <div class="padding"></div>
9875
9876     <div class="entry">
9877       <div class="title">
9878         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
9879       </div>
9880       <div class="date">
9881          8th April 2012
9882       </div>
9883       <div class="body">
9884         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
9885 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
9886 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
9887 contributor to the
9888 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
9889 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
9890
9891 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9892
9893 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
9894 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
9895
9896 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9897 project?</strong></p>
9898
9899 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
9900 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
9901 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
9902 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
9903 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
9904 "localisation".</p>
9905
9906 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9907 Edu?</strong></p>
9908
9909 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9910 Edu?</strong></p>
9911
9912 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
9913 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
9914 education system.</p>
9915
9916 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
9917 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
9918 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
9919 money on the latest hardware.</p>
9920
9921 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9922
9923 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
9924 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
9925 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
9926
9927 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9928 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9929
9930 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
9931 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
9932 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
9933
9934       </div>
9935       <div class="tags">
9936
9937
9938         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>.
9939
9940
9941       </div>
9942     </div>
9943     <div class="padding"></div>
9944
9945     <div class="entry">
9946       <div class="title">
9947         <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>
9948       </div>
9949       <div class="date">
9950          6th April 2012
9951       </div>
9952       <div class="body">
9953         <p>Recently I have spent time with
9954 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
9955 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9956 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
9957 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
9958 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
9959 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
9960 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
9961 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
9962
9963 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
9964 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
9965 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
9966 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
9967 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
9968 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
9969 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
9970 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
9971
9972 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
9973 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
9974 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
9975 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
9976 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
9977 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
9978 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
9979 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
9980
9981 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
9982 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
9983 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
9984 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
9985 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
9986 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
9987 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
9988 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
9989 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
9990 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
9991
9992 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
9993 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
9994 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
9995 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
9996
9997 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
9998 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
9999
10000       </div>
10001       <div class="tags">
10002
10003
10004         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>.
10005
10006
10007       </div>
10008     </div>
10009     <div class="padding"></div>
10010
10011     <div class="entry">
10012       <div class="title">
10013         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
10014       </div>
10015       <div class="date">
10016          5th April 2012
10017       </div>
10018       <div class="body">
10019         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
10020 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
10021 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
10022 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
10023 for schools.  Check out his article
10024 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
10025 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
10026
10027       </div>
10028       <div class="tags">
10029
10030
10031         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>.
10032
10033
10034       </div>
10035     </div>
10036     <div class="padding"></div>
10037
10038     <div class="entry">
10039       <div class="title">
10040         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
10041       </div>
10042       <div class="date">
10043          1st April 2012
10044       </div>
10045       <div class="body">
10046         <p>Germany is a core area for the
10047 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10048 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
10049 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
10050
10051 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10052
10053 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
10054 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
10055 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
10056 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
10057 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
10058 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
10059 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
10060 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
10061
10062 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
10063 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
10064 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
10065 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
10066 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
10067 the end of April this year.</p>
10068
10069 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10070 project?</strong></p>
10071
10072 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
10073 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
10074 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
10075 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
10076 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
10077 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
10078 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
10079 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
10080 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
10081 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
10082 Skolelinux.</p>
10083
10084 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
10085 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
10086 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
10087 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
10088 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
10089 the admin teachers.</p>
10090
10091 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10092 Edu?</strong></p>
10093
10094 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
10095 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
10096 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
10097
10098 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
10099 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
10100 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
10101 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
10102 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
10103
10104 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10105 Edu?</strong></p>
10106
10107 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
10108
10109 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10110
10111 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
10112 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
10113 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
10114 LibreOffice.</p>
10115
10116 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10117 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10118
10119 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
10120 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
10121 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
10122
10123       </div>
10124       <div class="tags">
10125
10126
10127         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>.
10128
10129
10130       </div>
10131     </div>
10132     <div class="padding"></div>
10133
10134     <div class="entry">
10135       <div class="title">
10136         <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>
10137       </div>
10138       <div class="date">
10139         25th March 2012
10140       </div>
10141       <div class="body">
10142         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10143
10144 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
10145 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
10146 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
10147 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
10148 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
10149 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
10150 and download as a
10151 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
10152 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10153
10154 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10155   <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"' />
10156     <p>Download video as
10157       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10158 </video></p>
10159
10160       </div>
10161       <div class="tags">
10162
10163
10164         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>.
10165
10166
10167       </div>
10168     </div>
10169     <div class="padding"></div>
10170
10171     <div class="entry">
10172       <div class="title">
10173         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
10174       </div>
10175       <div class="date">
10176         19th March 2012
10177       </div>
10178       <div class="body">
10179         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10180 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
10181 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
10182 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
10183 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
10184
10185 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10186
10187 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
10188 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
10189 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
10190 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
10191 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
10192 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
10193 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
10194 installations.</p>
10195
10196 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10197 project?</strong></p>
10198
10199 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
10200 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
10201 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
10202 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
10203 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
10204 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
10205 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
10206 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
10207 these things we decided to try it.</p>
10208
10209 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10210 Edu?</strong></p>
10211
10212 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
10213 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
10214 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
10215 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
10216 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
10217 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
10218 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
10219 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
10220
10221 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10222 Edu?</strong></p>
10223
10224 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
10225 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
10226 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
10227 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
10228 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
10229
10230 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10231
10232 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
10233 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
10234 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
10235 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
10236 that counts...)</p>
10237
10238 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10239 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10240
10241 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
10242 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
10243 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
10244 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
10245 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
10246 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
10247 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
10248 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
10249 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
10250 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
10251 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
10252
10253 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
10254 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
10255 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
10256
10257       </div>
10258       <div class="tags">
10259
10260
10261         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>.
10262
10263
10264       </div>
10265     </div>
10266     <div class="padding"></div>
10267
10268     <div class="entry">
10269       <div class="title">
10270         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
10271       </div>
10272       <div class="date">
10273         16th March 2012
10274       </div>
10275       <div class="body">
10276         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
10277 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
10278 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
10279 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
10280
10281 <ol>
10282
10283 <li>The documentation is written in a
10284 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
10285 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
10286 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
10287 docbook XML.</li>
10288
10289 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
10290 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
10291 with the translated text.</li>
10292
10293 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
10294 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
10295 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
10296 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
10297 images.</li>
10298
10299 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
10300 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
10301
10302 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
10303 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
10304
10305 </ol>
10306
10307 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
10308 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
10309 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
10310 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
10311 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
10312
10313 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
10314 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
10315 package</a>.</p>
10316
10317       </div>
10318       <div class="tags">
10319
10320
10321         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>.
10322
10323
10324       </div>
10325     </div>
10326     <div class="padding"></div>
10327
10328     <div class="entry">
10329       <div class="title">
10330         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
10331       </div>
10332       <div class="date">
10333         11th March 2012
10334       </div>
10335       <div class="body">
10336         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
10337 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
10338 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10339 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
10340 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
10341 you have not done so already.</p>
10342
10343 <p>I plan to present the new version at
10344 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
10345 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
10346 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
10347
10348       </div>
10349       <div class="tags">
10350
10351
10352         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>.
10353
10354
10355       </div>
10356     </div>
10357     <div class="padding"></div>
10358
10359     <div class="entry">
10360       <div class="title">
10361         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
10362       </div>
10363       <div class="date">
10364          9th March 2012
10365       </div>
10366       <div class="body">
10367         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
10368 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
10369 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10370 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
10371 more international audience.</p>
10372
10373 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
10374 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
10375 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
10376 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
10377 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
10378 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
10379 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
10380
10381
10382 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10383
10384 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
10385 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
10386 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
10387 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
10388 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
10389 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
10390 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
10391 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
10392 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
10393 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
10394 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
10395
10396 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10397 project?</strong></p>
10398
10399 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
10400 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
10401 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
10402 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
10403 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
10404 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
10405 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
10406 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
10407 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
10408 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
10409 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
10410 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
10411 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
10412
10413 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10414 Edu?</strong></p>
10415
10416 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
10417 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
10418 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
10419 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
10420 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
10421 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
10422 Japan.</p>
10423
10424 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10425 Edu?</strong></p>
10426
10427 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
10428 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
10429 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
10430 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
10431 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
10432 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
10433 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
10434 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
10435 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
10436 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
10437 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
10438 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
10439 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
10440 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
10441 help.</p>
10442
10443 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10444
10445 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
10446 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
10447 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
10448 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
10449 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
10450 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
10451 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
10452 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
10453 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
10454 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
10455 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
10456
10457 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10458 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10459
10460 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
10461 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
10462 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
10463 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
10464 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
10465 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
10466 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
10467 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
10468 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
10469 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
10470 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
10471 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
10472
10473       </div>
10474       <div class="tags">
10475
10476
10477         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>.
10478
10479
10480       </div>
10481     </div>
10482     <div class="padding"></div>
10483
10484     <div class="entry">
10485       <div class="title">
10486         <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>
10487       </div>
10488       <div class="date">
10489          7th March 2012
10490       </div>
10491       <div class="body">
10492         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10493
10494 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
10495 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
10496 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
10497 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
10498 download as a
10499 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
10500 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10501
10502 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10503   <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"' />
10504     <p>Download video as
10505       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10506 </video></p>
10507
10508       </div>
10509       <div class="tags">
10510
10511
10512         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>.
10513
10514
10515       </div>
10516     </div>
10517     <div class="padding"></div>
10518
10519     <div class="entry">
10520       <div class="title">
10521         <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>
10522       </div>
10523       <div class="date">
10524          4th March 2012
10525       </div>
10526       <div class="body">
10527         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
10528 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10529 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10530 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
10531 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
10532 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10533
10534       </div>
10535       <div class="tags">
10536
10537
10538         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>.
10539
10540
10541       </div>
10542     </div>
10543     <div class="padding"></div>
10544
10545     <div class="entry">
10546       <div class="title">
10547         <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>
10548       </div>
10549       <div class="date">
10550          3rd March 2012
10551       </div>
10552       <div class="body">
10553         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
10554 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
10555 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
10556 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
10557 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
10558 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
10559 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
10560 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
10561 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
10562 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
10563 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
10564 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
10565 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
10566 year...</p>
10567
10568 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
10569 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
10570 name,
10571 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
10572 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
10573 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
10574 mean). I've been following
10575 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
10576 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
10577 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
10578 Check it out. :)</p>
10579
10580       </div>
10581       <div class="tags">
10582
10583
10584         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>.
10585
10586
10587       </div>
10588     </div>
10589     <div class="padding"></div>
10590
10591     <div class="entry">
10592       <div class="title">
10593         <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>
10594       </div>
10595       <div class="date">
10596         27th February 2012
10597       </div>
10598       <div class="body">
10599         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
10600 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10601 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
10602 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
10603 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
10604 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
10605 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10606
10607       </div>
10608       <div class="tags">
10609
10610
10611         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>.
10612
10613
10614       </div>
10615     </div>
10616     <div class="padding"></div>
10617
10618     <div class="entry">
10619       <div class="title">
10620         <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>
10621       </div>
10622       <div class="date">
10623         19th February 2012
10624       </div>
10625       <div class="body">
10626         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
10627 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
10628 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10629 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10630 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
10631 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
10632 solution for your school.</p>
10633
10634       </div>
10635       <div class="tags">
10636
10637
10638         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>.
10639
10640
10641       </div>
10642     </div>
10643     <div class="padding"></div>
10644
10645     <div class="entry">
10646       <div class="title">
10647         <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>
10648       </div>
10649       <div class="date">
10650         14th February 2012
10651       </div>
10652       <div class="body">
10653         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
10654 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
10655 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
10656 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
10657 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
10658 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
10659 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
10660 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
10661 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
10662
10663 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
10664 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
10665 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
10666 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
10667 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
10668
10669 <blockquote><pre>
10670 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
10671 do
10672     printf "Failed disk $d: "
10673     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
10674 done
10675 </blockquote></pre>
10676
10677 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
10678 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
10679
10680 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
10681
10682 <blockquote><pre>
10683 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
10684 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
10685 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
10686 </blockquote></pre>
10687
10688 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
10689 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
10690 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
10691 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
10692 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
10693 mounted inside my box.</p>
10694
10695 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
10696 Software RAID in the
10697 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
10698 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
10699 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
10700 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
10701 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
10702 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
10703
10704       </div>
10705       <div class="tags">
10706
10707
10708         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>.
10709
10710
10711       </div>
10712     </div>
10713     <div class="padding"></div>
10714
10715     <div class="entry">
10716       <div class="title">
10717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10718       </div>
10719       <div class="date">
10720         13th February 2012
10721       </div>
10722       <div class="body">
10723         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
10724 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
10725 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
10726 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
10727 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
10728 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
10729 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
10730 change the global proxy setting by editing
10731 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
10732 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
10733
10734 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
10735 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
10736 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
10737
10738 <blockquote><pre>
10739 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
10740 {
10741    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
10742        isPlainHostName(host) ||
10743        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
10744       return "DIRECT";
10745    else
10746       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
10747 }
10748 </pre></blockquote>
10749
10750 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
10751
10752 <blockquote><pre>
10753 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
10754 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
10755 </pre></blockquote>
10756
10757 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
10758 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
10759 would be used for
10760 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
10761 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
10762 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
10763 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
10764 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
10765 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
10766 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
10767 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
10768 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
10769 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
10770
10771 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
10772 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
10773 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
10774 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
10775 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
10776 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
10777
10778 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
10779 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
10780 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
10781 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
10782 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
10783 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
10784 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
10785 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
10786 the network setup changes.</p>
10787
10788 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
10789 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
10790 draft</a> and a
10791 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
10792 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
10793
10794       </div>
10795       <div class="tags">
10796
10797
10798         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>.
10799
10800
10801       </div>
10802     </div>
10803     <div class="padding"></div>
10804
10805     <div class="entry">
10806       <div class="title">
10807         <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>
10808       </div>
10809       <div class="date">
10810          5th February 2012
10811       </div>
10812       <div class="body">
10813         <p>Since the Lenny version of
10814 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
10815 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
10816 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
10817 in the morning.  This is done using the
10818 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
10819
10820 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
10821 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
10822 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
10823 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
10824 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
10825 the
10826 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
10827 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
10828 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
10829 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
10830 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
10831
10832 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
10833 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
10834 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
10835 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
10836 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
10837 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
10838 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
10839
10840 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
10841 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
10842 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
10843 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
10844 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
10845
10846       </div>
10847       <div class="tags">
10848
10849
10850         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>.
10851
10852
10853       </div>
10854     </div>
10855     <div class="padding"></div>
10856
10857     <div class="entry">
10858       <div class="title">
10859         <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>
10860       </div>
10861       <div class="date">
10862          4th February 2012
10863       </div>
10864       <div class="body">
10865         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
10866 publish the third beta version of
10867 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10868 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
10869 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
10870 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
10871 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
10872 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
10873 on the project announcement list.</p>
10874
10875 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
10876 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
10877
10878 <ul>
10879
10880 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
10881   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
10882   the installation.</li>
10883
10884 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
10885   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
10886
10887 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
10888   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
10889   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
10890
10891 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
10892   for the local system administrator is created during installation
10893   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
10894   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
10895   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
10896   up to date on the system.</li>
10897
10898 </ul>
10899
10900 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
10901 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
10902 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
10903 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
10904
10905 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
10906 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
10907 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
10908 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
10909 will see you there?</p>
10910
10911       </div>
10912       <div class="tags">
10913
10914
10915         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>.
10916
10917
10918       </div>
10919     </div>
10920     <div class="padding"></div>
10921
10922     <div class="entry">
10923       <div class="title">
10924         <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>
10925       </div>
10926       <div class="date">
10927         27th January 2012
10928       </div>
10929       <div class="body">
10930         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
10931 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
10932 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10933 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
10934 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
10935 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
10936 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
10937
10938 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
10939 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
10940 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
10941 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
10942 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
10943 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
10944 not taken care of by this.</p>
10945
10946 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
10947 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
10948 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
10949 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
10950 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
10951 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
10952 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
10953 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
10954 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
10955 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
10956 firmware packages.</p>
10957
10958 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
10959 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
10960 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
10961 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
10962 initrd with extra firmware, the
10963 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
10964 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
10965 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
10966
10967 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
10968 network cards working.  For this,
10969 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
10970 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
10971 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
10972
10973 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
10974 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
10975 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
10976
10977 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
10978 try.</p>
10979
10980       </div>
10981       <div class="tags">
10982
10983
10984         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>.
10985
10986
10987       </div>
10988     </div>
10989     <div class="padding"></div>
10990
10991     <div class="entry">
10992       <div class="title">
10993         <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>
10994       </div>
10995       <div class="date">
10996         25th January 2012
10997       </div>
10998       <div class="body">
10999         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
11000 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
11001 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
11002 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
11003 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
11004
11005 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
11006 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
11007 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
11008 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
11009 this is done, log on to the central server and run
11010 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
11011 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
11012 will look similar to this:</p>
11013
11014 <p><blockquote><pre>
11015 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
11016 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
11017 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.
11018
11019 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
11020
11021 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11022 enter password: *******
11023 %
11024 </pre></blockquote></p>
11025
11026 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
11027 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
11028 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
11029 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
11030 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
11031 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
11032 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
11033 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
11034 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
11035 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
11036 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
11037 automatically.</p>
11038
11039 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
11040 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
11041
11042 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
11043 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
11044 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
11045
11046       </div>
11047       <div class="tags">
11048
11049
11050         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>.
11051
11052
11053       </div>
11054     </div>
11055     <div class="padding"></div>
11056
11057     <div class="entry">
11058       <div class="title">
11059         <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>
11060       </div>
11061       <div class="date">
11062         10th January 2012
11063       </div>
11064       <div class="body">
11065         <p>In the Squeeze version of
11066 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
11067 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
11068 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
11069 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
11070 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
11071 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
11072 first time.</p>
11073
11074 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
11075 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
11076 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
11077 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
11078
11079 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
11080 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
11081 new setting.</p>
11082
11083 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
11084 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
11085 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
11086
11087       </div>
11088       <div class="tags">
11089
11090
11091         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>.
11092
11093
11094       </div>
11095     </div>
11096     <div class="padding"></div>
11097
11098     <div class="entry">
11099       <div class="title">
11100         <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>
11101       </div>
11102       <div class="date">
11103          7th January 2012
11104       </div>
11105       <div class="body">
11106         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
11107 the second beta version of
11108 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
11109 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
11110 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
11111 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
11112 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11113 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
11114 on the project announcement list.</p>
11115
11116       </div>
11117       <div class="tags">
11118
11119
11120         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>.
11121
11122
11123       </div>
11124     </div>
11125     <div class="padding"></div>
11126
11127     <div class="entry">
11128       <div class="title">
11129         <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>
11130       </div>
11131       <div class="date">
11132          3rd January 2012
11133       </div>
11134       <div class="body">
11135         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
11136 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
11137 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
11138 interesting.</p>
11139
11140 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
11141 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
11142 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
11143 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
11144 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
11145 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
11146 wrap up its tasks.</p>
11147
11148 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
11149 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
11150 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
11151 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
11152 because I was typing.</P>
11153
11154 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
11155 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
11156 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
11157 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
11158 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
11159 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
11160 generate entropy.</p>
11161
11162 <p>The fix is in
11163 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
11164 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
11165 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
11166 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
11167
11168       </div>
11169       <div class="tags">
11170
11171
11172         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>.
11173
11174
11175       </div>
11176     </div>
11177     <div class="padding"></div>
11178
11179     <div class="entry">
11180       <div class="title">
11181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
11182       </div>
11183       <div class="date">
11184         21st November 2011
11185       </div>
11186       <div class="body">
11187         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
11188 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
11189 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
11190 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
11191 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
11192 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
11193 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
11194 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
11195 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
11196 the tools to do so.</p>
11197
11198 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
11199 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
11200 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
11201 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
11202
11203 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
11204 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
11205 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
11206 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
11207 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
11208 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
11209 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
11210 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
11211
11212 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
11213 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
11214 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
11215
11216 <p><pre>
11217 #!/usr/bin/perl
11218 use strict;
11219 use warnings;
11220 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
11221 BEGIN {
11222     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
11223     my %rhelmodules = (
11224         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
11225         );
11226     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
11227         eval "use $module;";
11228         if ($@) {
11229             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
11230             system("yum install -y $pkg");
11231             eval "use $module;";
11232         }
11233     }
11234 }
11235 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
11236
11237 upgrade_dell();
11238
11239 exit 0;
11240
11241 sub run_firmware_script {
11242     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
11243     unless ($script) {
11244         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
11245         exit 1
11246     }
11247     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
11248
11249     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
11250         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
11251     } else {
11252         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
11253     }
11254 }
11255
11256 sub run_firmware_scripts {
11257     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
11258     # Run firmware packages
11259     for my $dir (@dirs) {
11260         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
11261         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
11262         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
11263             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
11264             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
11265         }
11266         closedir $dh;
11267     }
11268 }
11269
11270 sub download {
11271     my $url = shift;
11272     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
11273     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
11274 }
11275
11276 sub upgrade_dell {
11277     my @dirs;
11278     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11279     chomp $product;
11280
11281     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
11282
11283         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
11284         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
11285
11286         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
11287             CLEANUP => 1
11288             );
11289         chdir($tmpdir);
11290         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
11291         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
11292         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
11293         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
11294         my $fwopts = "-q";
11295         if (@paths) {
11296             for my $url (@paths) {
11297                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
11298             }
11299             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
11300         } else {
11301             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
11302             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
11303         }
11304         chdir('/');
11305     } else {
11306         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
11307         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
11308     }
11309 }
11310
11311 sub fetch_dell_fw {
11312     my $path = shift;
11313     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
11314     download($url);
11315 }
11316
11317 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
11318 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
11319 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
11320 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
11321     my $filename = shift;
11322
11323     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11324     chomp $product;
11325     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
11326
11327     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
11328
11329     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
11330     my @paths;
11331     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
11332         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
11333         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
11334         my $oscode;
11335         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
11336             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
11337         } else {
11338             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
11339         }
11340         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
11341         {
11342             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
11343         }
11344     }
11345     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
11346         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
11347
11348         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
11349         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
11350
11351         my $cpath = $component->{path};
11352         for my $path (@paths) {
11353             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
11354                 push(@paths, $cpath);
11355             }
11356         }
11357     }
11358     return @paths;
11359 }
11360 </pre>
11361
11362 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
11363 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
11364 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
11365 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
11366 outdated.</p>
11367
11368       </div>
11369       <div class="tags">
11370
11371
11372         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>.
11373
11374
11375       </div>
11376     </div>
11377     <div class="padding"></div>
11378
11379     <div class="entry">
11380       <div class="title">
11381         <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>
11382       </div>
11383       <div class="date">
11384          7th October 2011
11385       </div>
11386       <div class="body">
11387         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
11388 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
11389 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
11390 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
11391 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
11392 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
11393 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
11394 models.</p>
11395
11396 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
11397 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
11398 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
11399 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
11400
11401 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
11402 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
11403 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
11404 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
11405 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
11406 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
11407 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
11408 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
11409 distributed.</p>
11410
11411 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
11412
11413 <ul>
11414
11415 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
11416   other relevant equipment.</li>
11417
11418 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
11419
11420 </ul>
11421
11422 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
11423 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
11424 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
11425 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
11426 books available.</p>
11427
11428 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
11429 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
11430 libraries. :)</p>
11431
11432       </div>
11433       <div class="tags">
11434
11435
11436         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>.
11437
11438
11439       </div>
11440     </div>
11441     <div class="padding"></div>
11442
11443     <div class="entry">
11444       <div class="title">
11445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
11446       </div>
11447       <div class="date">
11448         17th September 2011
11449       </div>
11450       <div class="body">
11451         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
11452 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
11453 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
11454 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
11455 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
11456 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
11457 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
11458 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
11459
11460 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
11461
11462 <blockquote><pre>
11463 #!/bin/sh
11464 # apt-get install lsdvd
11465 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11466 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
11467 </pre></blockquote>
11468
11469 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
11470 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
11471 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
11472 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
11473
11474 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
11475 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
11476 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
11477 back as an ISO.
11478
11479 <blockquote><pre>
11480 #!/bin/sh
11481 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
11482 set -e
11483 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
11484 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11485 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
11486 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
11487 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
11488 </pre></blockquote>
11489
11490 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
11491
11492 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
11493 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
11494 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
11495 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
11496 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
11497
11498 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
11499 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
11500 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
11501 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
11502 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
11503 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
11504
11505       </div>
11506       <div class="tags">
11507
11508
11509         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>.
11510
11511
11512       </div>
11513     </div>
11514     <div class="padding"></div>
11515
11516     <div class="entry">
11517       <div class="title">
11518         <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>
11519       </div>
11520       <div class="date">
11521          4th August 2011
11522       </div>
11523       <div class="body">
11524         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
11525 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
11526 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
11527 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
11528 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
11529 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
11530 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
11531 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
11532 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
11533
11534 <p><blockquote>
11535 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
11536 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
11537 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
11538 </blockquote></p>
11539
11540 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
11541 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
11542 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
11543 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
11544 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
11545 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
11546 hard to explain.</p>
11547
11548 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
11549 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
11550 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
11551 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
11552 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
11553 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
11554 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
11555 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
11556 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
11557 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
11558 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
11559 mode).</p>
11560
11561 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
11562 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
11563 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
11564 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
11565 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
11566 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
11567 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
11568 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
11569 after visiting single user mode.</p>
11570
11571 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
11572 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
11573 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
11574 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
11575 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
11576 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
11577 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
11578 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
11579
11580 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
11581 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
11582 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
11583
11584       </div>
11585       <div class="tags">
11586
11587
11588         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>.
11589
11590
11591       </div>
11592     </div>
11593     <div class="padding"></div>
11594
11595     <div class="entry">
11596       <div class="title">
11597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
11598       </div>
11599       <div class="date">
11600         30th July 2011
11601       </div>
11602       <div class="body">
11603         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
11604 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
11605 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
11606 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
11607 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
11608 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
11609 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
11610 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
11611 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
11612 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
11613 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
11614 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
11615 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
11616
11617 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
11618 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
11619 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
11620 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
11621 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
11622 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
11623 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
11624 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
11625 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
11626
11627 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
11628 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
11629 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
11630 is presented.</p>
11631
11632 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
11633 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
11634 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
11635 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
11636 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
11637 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
11638 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
11639 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
11640 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
11641 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
11642 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
11643 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
11644 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
11645 find time to push this forward.</p>
11646
11647       </div>
11648       <div class="tags">
11649
11650
11651         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>.
11652
11653
11654       </div>
11655     </div>
11656     <div class="padding"></div>
11657
11658     <div class="entry">
11659       <div class="title">
11660         <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>
11661       </div>
11662       <div class="date">
11663         29th July 2011
11664       </div>
11665       <div class="body">
11666         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
11667 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
11668 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
11669 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
11670 issues.</p>
11671
11672 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
11673 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
11674 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
11675
11676 <ol>
11677
11678 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
11679 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
11680 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
11681 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
11682 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
11683 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
11684 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
11685 Debian.</li>
11686
11687 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
11688 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
11689 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
11690 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
11691 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
11692 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
11693 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
11694 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
11695 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
11696 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
11697 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
11698 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
11699 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
11700
11701 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
11702 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
11703 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
11704 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
11705 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
11706 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
11707 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
11708 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
11709 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
11710 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
11711
11712 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
11713 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
11714 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
11715 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
11716 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
11717 latter behaviour.</li>
11718
11719 </ol>
11720
11721 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
11722 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
11723 it do not matter much.</p>
11724
11725 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
11726 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
11727 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
11728
11729       </div>
11730       <div class="tags">
11731
11732
11733         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>.
11734
11735
11736       </div>
11737     </div>
11738     <div class="padding"></div>
11739
11740     <div class="entry">
11741       <div class="title">
11742         <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>
11743       </div>
11744       <div class="date">
11745         26th July 2011
11746       </div>
11747       <div class="body">
11748         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
11749 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
11750 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
11751 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
11752 security support for a few years.</p>
11753
11754 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
11755 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
11756 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
11757 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
11758 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
11759 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
11760 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
11761 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
11762 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
11763 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
11764 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
11765 easier in the future.</p>
11766
11767 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
11768 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
11769 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
11770 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
11771 do not have time for.</p>
11772
11773       </div>
11774       <div class="tags">
11775
11776
11777         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>.
11778
11779
11780       </div>
11781     </div>
11782     <div class="padding"></div>
11783
11784     <div class="entry">
11785       <div class="title">
11786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
11787       </div>
11788       <div class="date">
11789         20th June 2011
11790       </div>
11791       <div class="body">
11792         <p>Reading
11793 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
11794 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
11795 parts of the
11796 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
11797 and
11798 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
11799 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
11800 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
11801 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
11802
11803       </div>
11804       <div class="tags">
11805
11806
11807         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>.
11808
11809
11810       </div>
11811     </div>
11812     <div class="padding"></div>
11813
11814     <div class="entry">
11815       <div class="title">
11816         <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>
11817       </div>
11818       <div class="date">
11819         30th April 2011
11820       </div>
11821       <div class="body">
11822         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
11823 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
11824 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
11825 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
11826 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
11827 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
11828 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
11829 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
11830 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
11831 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
11832
11833 <p>Where is it?  Visit
11834 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
11835 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
11836 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
11837 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
11838
11839       </div>
11840       <div class="tags">
11841
11842
11843         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>.
11844
11845
11846       </div>
11847     </div>
11848     <div class="padding"></div>
11849
11850     <div class="entry">
11851       <div class="title">
11852         <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>
11853       </div>
11854       <div class="date">
11855         29th April 2011
11856       </div>
11857       <div class="body">
11858         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
11859 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
11860 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
11861 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
11862 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
11863 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
11864 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
11865 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
11866 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
11867 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
11868 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
11869 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
11870 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
11871
11872 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
11873 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
11874 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
11875 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
11876 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
11877 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
11878 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
11879 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
11880 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
11881 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
11882 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
11883 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
11884 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
11885
11886 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
11887 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
11888 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
11889 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
11890 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
11891 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
11892 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
11893 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
11894 it.</p>
11895
11896 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
11897 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
11898 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
11899 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
11900 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
11901 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
11902 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
11903
11904 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
11905 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
11906 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
11907 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
11908 and range= options.</p>
11909
11910 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
11911 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
11912 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
11913 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
11914 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
11915 to best handle this.  I've noticed
11916 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
11917 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
11918 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
11919 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
11920
11921 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
11922 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
11923 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
11924 discussions instead of only
11925 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
11926 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
11927 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
11928 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
11929 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
11930 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
11931
11932       </div>
11933       <div class="tags">
11934
11935
11936         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>.
11937
11938
11939       </div>
11940     </div>
11941     <div class="padding"></div>
11942
11943     <div class="entry">
11944       <div class="title">
11945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
11946       </div>
11947       <div class="date">
11948          6th April 2011
11949       </div>
11950       <div class="body">
11951         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
11952 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
11953 A few days ago the project
11954 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
11955 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
11956 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
11957 into Gnash.</p>
11958
11959       </div>
11960       <div class="tags">
11961
11962
11963         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>.
11964
11965
11966       </div>
11967     </div>
11968     <div class="padding"></div>
11969
11970     <div class="entry">
11971       <div class="title">
11972         <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>
11973       </div>
11974       <div class="date">
11975          3rd April 2011
11976       </div>
11977       <div class="body">
11978         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
11979 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
11980 update in English.</p>
11981
11982 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
11983 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
11984 of the British service
11985 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
11986 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
11987 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
11988 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
11989 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
11990 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
11991 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
11992 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
11993 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
11994 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
11995 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
11996 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
11997 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
11998
11999 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
12000 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
12001 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
12002 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
12003 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
12004 public infrastructure.</p>
12005
12006 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
12007 such service?</p>
12008
12009       </div>
12010       <div class="tags">
12011
12012
12013         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>.
12014
12015
12016       </div>
12017     </div>
12018     <div class="padding"></div>
12019
12020     <div class="entry">
12021       <div class="title">
12022         <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>
12023       </div>
12024       <div class="date">
12025         28th January 2011
12026       </div>
12027       <div class="body">
12028         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
12029 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
12030 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
12031 available on the Internet, and check our locally
12032 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
12033 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
12034 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
12035 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
12036 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
12037 out which security holes were present in our free software
12038 collection.</p>
12039
12040 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
12041 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
12042 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
12043 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
12044 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
12045 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
12046 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
12047 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
12048 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
12049 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
12050 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
12051 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
12052 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
12053 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
12054 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
12055 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
12056
12057 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
12058 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
12059 check out, one could look up
12060 <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
12061 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
12062 The most recent one is
12063 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
12064 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
12065 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
12066
12067 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
12068 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
12069 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
12070 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
12071 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
12072 security issues out.</p>
12073
12074 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
12075 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
12076 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
12077 RHEL is providing
12078 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
12079 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
12080 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
12081
12082 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
12083 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
12084 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
12085 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
12086 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
12087 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
12088 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
12089 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
12090 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
12091 established soon.</p>
12092
12093 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
12094 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
12095 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
12096 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
12097 for their packages.</p>
12098
12099       </div>
12100       <div class="tags">
12101
12102
12103         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>.
12104
12105
12106       </div>
12107     </div>
12108     <div class="padding"></div>
12109
12110     <div class="entry">
12111       <div class="title">
12112         <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>
12113       </div>
12114       <div class="date">
12115         23rd January 2011
12116       </div>
12117       <div class="body">
12118         <p>In the
12119 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
12120 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
12121 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
12122 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
12123 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
12124 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
12125 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
12126 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
12127 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
12128 one of my machines like this:</p>
12129
12130 <pre>
12131 loaded modules:
12132 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
12133 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
12134 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
12135 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
12136 10de:03ec pata_amd
12137 10de:03f6 sata_nv
12138 1022:1103 k8temp
12139 109e:036e bttv
12140 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
12141 11ab:4364 sky2
12142 </pre>
12143
12144 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
12145 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
12146
12147 <pre>
12148 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
12149     echo loaded pci modules:
12150     (
12151         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
12152         for address in * ; do
12153             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12154                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12155                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12156                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12157                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
12158                     echo "$id $module"
12159                 fi
12160             fi
12161         done
12162     )
12163     echo
12164 fi
12165 </pre>
12166
12167 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
12168 mappings:</p>
12169
12170 <pre>
12171 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
12172     echo loaded usb modules:
12173     (
12174         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
12175         for address in * ; do
12176             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12177                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12178                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12179                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12180                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
12181                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
12182                         echo "$id $module"
12183                     fi
12184                 fi
12185             fi
12186         done
12187     )
12188     echo
12189 fi
12190 </pre>
12191
12192 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
12193 well.</p>
12194
12195       </div>
12196       <div class="tags">
12197
12198
12199         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>.
12200
12201
12202       </div>
12203     </div>
12204     <div class="padding"></div>
12205
12206     <div class="entry">
12207       <div class="title">
12208         <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>
12209       </div>
12210       <div class="date">
12211         16th January 2011
12212       </div>
12213       <div class="body">
12214         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
12215 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
12216 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
12217 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
12218 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
12219 the Wikipedia article on
12220 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
12221 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
12222 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
12223 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
12224 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
12225 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
12226 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
12227 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
12228 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
12229 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
12230 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
12231 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
12232
12233 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
12234 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
12235 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
12236 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
12237 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
12238 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
12239 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
12240 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
12241 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
12242 from last week</a>.</p>
12243
12244 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
12245 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
12246 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
12247 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
12248 was without royalties and license terms, check out
12249 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12250 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
12251
12252 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
12253 available from
12254 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
12255 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
12256 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
12257
12258 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
12259 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
12260 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
12261 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
12262
12263       </div>
12264       <div class="tags">
12265
12266
12267         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>.
12268
12269
12270       </div>
12271     </div>
12272     <div class="padding"></div>
12273
12274     <div class="entry">
12275       <div class="title">
12276         <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 &lt;video&gt;</a>
12277       </div>
12278       <div class="date">
12279         12th January 2011
12280       </div>
12281       <div class="body">
12282         <p>Today I discovered
12283 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
12284 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
12285 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
12286 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
12287 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
12288 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
12289 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
12290 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12291 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
12292 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
12293 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
12294 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
12295 on the Google announcement is available from
12296 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
12297 A good read. :)</p>
12298
12299 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
12300 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
12301 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
12302 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
12303 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
12304 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
12305 browsers support H.264, and others support
12306 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
12307 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
12308 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
12309 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
12310 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
12311 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
12312 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
12313 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
12314
12315 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
12316 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
12317 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
12318 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
12319 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
12320 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
12321 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
12322
12323 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
12324 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
12325 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
12326 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
12327 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
12328 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
12329 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
12330
12331 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
12332 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
12333 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
12334 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
12335 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
12336 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
12337 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
12338
12339 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
12340 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
12341 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
12342 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
12343 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
12344 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
12345 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
12346 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
12347 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
12348 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
12349 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
12350 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
12351 I guess time will tell.</p>
12352
12353 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
12354 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
12355 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
12356
12357       </div>
12358       <div class="tags">
12359
12360
12361         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>.
12362
12363
12364       </div>
12365     </div>
12366     <div class="padding"></div>
12367
12368     <div class="entry">
12369       <div class="title">
12370         <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>
12371       </div>
12372       <div class="date">
12373         30th December 2010
12374       </div>
12375       <div class="body">
12376         <p>After trying to
12377 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
12378 Ogg Theora</a> to
12379 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
12380 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
12381 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
12382 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
12383 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
12384 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
12385 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
12386
12387 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
12388 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
12389 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
12390 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
12391 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
12392 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
12393 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
12394
12395 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
12396 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
12397
12398       </div>
12399       <div class="tags">
12400
12401
12402         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>.
12403
12404
12405       </div>
12406     </div>
12407     <div class="padding"></div>
12408
12409     <div class="entry">
12410       <div class="title">
12411         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
12412       </div>
12413       <div class="date">
12414         27th December 2010
12415       </div>
12416       <div class="body">
12417         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
12418 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
12419 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
12420 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
12421 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
12422 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
12423 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
12424 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
12425
12426 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
12427 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
12428 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
12429 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
12430 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
12431 page</a>.</p>
12432
12433 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
12434 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
12435 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
12436 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
12437 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
12438 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
12439 specification on equal terms.</p>
12440
12441 <blockquote>
12442
12443 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
12444 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
12445 open standard:</p>
12446
12447 <ul>
12448
12449 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12450 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12451 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
12452 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
12453
12454 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
12455 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
12456 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
12457 nominal fee.</li>
12458
12459 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
12460 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
12461 free basis.</li>
12462
12463 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
12464
12465 </ul>
12466 </blockquote>
12467
12468 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
12469 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
12470 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
12471 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
12472 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
12473 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
12474 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
12475
12476 <blockquote>
12477
12478 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
12479
12480 <ol>
12481
12482 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
12483 tilgængelig.</li>
12484
12485 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
12486 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
12487
12488 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
12489 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
12490
12491 </ol>
12492
12493 </blockquote>
12494
12495 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
12496 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
12497
12498 <blockquote>
12499
12500 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
12501
12502 <ol>
12503
12504 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
12505 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
12506
12507 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
12508 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
12509 Standard themselves;</li>
12510
12511 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
12512 any party or in any business model;</li>
12513
12514 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
12515 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
12516 parties;</li>
12517
12518 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
12519 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
12520 parties.</li>
12521
12522 </ol>
12523
12524 </blockquote>
12525
12526 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
12527 its
12528 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
12529 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
12530
12531 <blockquote>
12532 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
12533
12534 <ul>
12535
12536 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
12537   democratic:
12538
12539          <ul>
12540
12541          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
12542             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
12543             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
12544             and managed.</li>
12545
12546          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
12547             method, can be changed through input from all
12548             participants.</li>
12549
12550          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
12551             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
12552
12553          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
12554             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
12555
12556          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
12557             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
12558             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
12559
12560          </ul>
12561
12562 </li>
12563
12564 </ul>
12565
12566 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
12567 <ul>
12568
12569 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
12570   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
12571   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
12572   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
12573   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
12574
12575 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
12576   a technical or economic barriers</li>
12577
12578 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
12579   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
12580   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
12581   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
12582   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
12583   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
12584   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
12585   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
12586   intended to function.</li>
12587
12588 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
12589   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
12590   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
12591
12592 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
12593   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
12594   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
12595   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
12596   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
12597   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
12598   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
12599   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
12600
12601       <ul>
12602
12603       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
12604         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
12605         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
12606
12607       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
12608         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
12609         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
12610         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
12611
12612       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
12613         licensor</li>
12614
12615       </ul>
12616 </li>
12617
12618 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
12619   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
12620   or restricted licensing terms</li>
12621
12622 </ul>
12623
12624 </blockquote>
12625
12626 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
12627 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
12628 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
12629 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
12630 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
12631 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
12632 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
12633 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
12634 Standards.</p>
12635
12636       </div>
12637       <div class="tags">
12638
12639
12640         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>.
12641
12642
12643       </div>
12644     </div>
12645     <div class="padding"></div>
12646
12647     <div class="entry">
12648       <div class="title">
12649         <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>
12650       </div>
12651       <div class="date">
12652         25th December 2010
12653       </div>
12654       <div class="body">
12655         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
12656 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
12657
12658 <blockquote>
12659
12660 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
12661 as follows:</p>
12662
12663 <ol>
12664
12665 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
12666 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
12667 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
12668
12669 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12670 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12671 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
12672 parties.</li>
12673
12674 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
12675 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
12676 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
12677
12678 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
12679 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
12680
12681 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
12682
12683 </ol>
12684
12685 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
12686 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
12687 products based on the standard.</p>
12688 </blockquote>
12689
12690 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
12691 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
12692 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
12693 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
12694 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
12695 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
12696 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
12697 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
12698
12699 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
12700
12701 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
12702 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
12703 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
12704 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
12705 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
12706 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
12707 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
12708 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
12709 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
12710 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
12711 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
12712 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
12713 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
12714 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
12715
12716 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
12717
12718 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
12719 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
12720 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
12721 documentation indicating this.</p>
12722
12723 <p>According to
12724 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
12725 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
12726 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
12727 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
12728 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
12729 report is correct.</p>
12730
12731 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
12732
12733 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
12734 container format</a> and both the
12735 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
12736 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
12737 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
12738
12739 <blockquote>
12740
12741 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
12742 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
12743 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
12744 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
12745 specification compliance.
12746
12747 </blockquote>
12748
12749 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
12750 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
12751 this is the term:<p>
12752
12753 <blockquote>
12754
12755 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
12756 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
12757 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
12758 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
12759 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
12760 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
12761 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
12762 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
12763 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
12764 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
12765 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
12766 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
12767
12768 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
12769 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
12770 </blockquote>
12771
12772 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
12773 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
12774 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
12775 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
12776 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
12777
12778 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
12779
12780 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
12781 Theora format.
12782 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
12783 and
12784 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
12785 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
12786 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
12787 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
12788 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
12789 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
12790 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
12791 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
12792
12793 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
12794
12795 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
12796
12797 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
12798
12799 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
12800 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
12801 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
12802 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
12803 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
12804 this.</p>
12805
12806 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
12807 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
12808
12809       </div>
12810       <div class="tags">
12811
12812
12813         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>.
12814
12815
12816       </div>
12817     </div>
12818     <div class="padding"></div>
12819
12820     <div class="entry">
12821       <div class="title">
12822         <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>
12823       </div>
12824       <div class="date">
12825         25th December 2010
12826       </div>
12827       <div class="body">
12828         <p>A few days ago
12829 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
12830 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
12831 2.0 of
12832 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
12833 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
12834 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
12835 Nothing very surprising there, given
12836 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
12837 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
12838 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
12839 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
12840 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
12841 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
12842 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
12843 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
12844 standard definition from its content.</p>
12845
12846 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
12847 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
12848 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
12849 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
12850 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
12851 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
12852 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
12853 background information about that story is available in
12854 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
12855 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
12856
12857 <blockquote>
12858 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
12859 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
12860 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
12861
12862 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
12863
12864 <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>
12865
12866 <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>
12867
12868 <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>
12869
12870 <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>
12871
12872 <p>
12873 <ul>
12874 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
12875 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
12876 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
12877 </ul>
12878 </p>
12879
12880 <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>
12881
12882 <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>
12883
12884 <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>
12885
12886 <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>
12887
12888 <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>
12889
12890
12891 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
12892 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
12893 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
12894 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
12895 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
12896 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
12897
12898 </p>
12899
12900 <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>
12901
12902 <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>
12903
12904 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
12905
12906 <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>
12907
12908 <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>
12909
12910 <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>
12911
12912 <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>
12913
12914 <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>
12915
12916 <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>
12917
12918 <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>
12919
12920 <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>
12921
12922 <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>
12923
12924 <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>
12925
12926 <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>
12927
12928 <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>
12929
12930 <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>
12931
12932 <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>
12933
12934 <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>
12935
12936 <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>
12937
12938 <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>
12939
12940 <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>
12941
12942 <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>
12943
12944 <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>
12945
12946 <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>
12947
12948 <p>On security:</p>
12949
12950 <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>
12951
12952 <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>
12953
12954 <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>
12955
12956 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
12957
12958 <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>
12959
12960 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
12961
12962 <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>
12963
12964 <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>
12965
12966 <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>
12967
12968 <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>
12969
12970 <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>
12971
12972 <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>
12973
12974 <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>
12975
12976 <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>
12977
12978 <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>
12979
12980 <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>
12981
12982 <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>
12983
12984 <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>
12985
12986 <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>
12987
12988 <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>
12989
12990 <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>
12991
12992 <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>
12993
12994 <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>
12995
12996 <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>
12997
12998 <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>
12999
13000 <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>
13001
13002 <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>
13003
13004 <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>
13005
13006 <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>
13007
13008 <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>
13009
13010 <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>
13011
13012 <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>
13013
13014 <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>
13015
13016 <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>
13017
13018 <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>
13019
13020 <p>Cordially,<br>
13021 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
13022 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
13023 </blockquote>
13024
13025       </div>
13026       <div class="tags">
13027
13028
13029         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>.
13030
13031
13032       </div>
13033     </div>
13034     <div class="padding"></div>
13035
13036     <div class="entry">
13037       <div class="title">
13038         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
13039       </div>
13040       <div class="date">
13041         25th December 2010
13042       </div>
13043       <div class="body">
13044         <p>Half a year ago I
13045 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
13046 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
13047 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
13048 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
13049
13050 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
13051 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
13052 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
13053 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
13054 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
13055 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
13056 got such a great test tool available.</p>
13057
13058       </div>
13059       <div class="tags">
13060
13061
13062         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>.
13063
13064
13065       </div>
13066     </div>
13067     <div class="padding"></div>
13068
13069     <div class="entry">
13070       <div class="title">
13071         <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>
13072       </div>
13073       <div class="date">
13074         22nd December 2010
13075       </div>
13076       <div class="body">
13077         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
13078 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
13079 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
13080 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
13081 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
13082 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
13083 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
13084 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
13085 university.</p>
13086
13087 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
13088 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
13089 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
13090 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
13091 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
13092 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
13093 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
13094 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
13095
13096 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
13097 I perform on a new model.</p>
13098
13099 <ul>
13100
13101 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
13102 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
13103 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
13104
13105 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
13106 installation, X.org is working.</li>
13107
13108 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
13109 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
13110 reported by the program.</li>
13111
13112 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
13113 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
13114 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
13115 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
13116 normally test this by playing
13117 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
13118 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
13119
13120 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
13121 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13122
13123 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
13124 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13125
13126 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
13127 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
13128
13129 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
13130 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
13131 few.</li>
13132
13133 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
13134 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
13135 notice this.</li>
13136
13137 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
13138 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
13139 resume.</li>
13140
13141 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
13142 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
13143 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
13144 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
13145 not.</li>
13146
13147 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
13148 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
13149 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
13150 existence.</li>
13151
13152 </ul>
13153
13154 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
13155 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
13156 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
13157 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
13158 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
13159 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
13160 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
13161 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
13162
13163       </div>
13164       <div class="tags">
13165
13166
13167         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>.
13168
13169
13170       </div>
13171     </div>
13172     <div class="padding"></div>
13173
13174     <div class="entry">
13175       <div class="title">
13176         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
13177       </div>
13178       <div class="date">
13179         11th December 2010
13180       </div>
13181       <div class="body">
13182         <p>As I continue to explore
13183 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
13184 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
13185 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
13186
13187 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
13188 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
13189 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
13190 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
13191 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
13192 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
13193 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
13194 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
13195 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
13196 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
13197 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
13198 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
13199 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
13200 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
13201 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
13202 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
13203 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
13204 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
13205 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
13206 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
13207
13208 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
13209 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
13210 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
13211 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
13212 If the Skolelinux foundation
13213 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
13214 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
13215 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
13216 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
13217 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
13218 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
13219 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
13220 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
13221
13222 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
13223 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
13224 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
13225 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
13226 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
13227 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
13228 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
13229 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
13230 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
13231 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
13232 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
13233 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
13234 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
13235 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
13236 currencies.</p>
13237
13238 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
13239 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
13240 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
13241 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
13242 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
13243 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
13244 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
13245 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
13246 BitCoins.  Check out
13247 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
13248 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
13249 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
13250 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
13251 yet.</p>
13252
13253 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
13254 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
13255 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
13256 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
13257 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
13258
13259       </div>
13260       <div class="tags">
13261
13262
13263         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>.
13264
13265
13266       </div>
13267     </div>
13268     <div class="padding"></div>
13269
13270     <div class="entry">
13271       <div class="title">
13272         <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>
13273       </div>
13274       <div class="date">
13275         10th December 2010
13276       </div>
13277       <div class="body">
13278         <p>With this weeks lawless
13279 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
13280 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
13281 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
13282 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
13283 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
13284 A blog post from
13285 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
13286 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
13287 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
13288 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
13289 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
13290 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
13291 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
13292
13293 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
13294 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
13295 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
13296 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
13297 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
13298 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
13299 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
13300 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
13301 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
13302 Debian</a> soon.</p>
13303
13304 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
13305 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
13306 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
13307 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
13308 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
13309 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
13310 you can even get
13311 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
13312 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
13313 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
13314 on the current exchange rates.</p>
13315
13316 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
13317 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
13318 donations to the address
13319 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
13320
13321       </div>
13322       <div class="tags">
13323
13324
13325         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>.
13326
13327
13328       </div>
13329     </div>
13330     <div class="padding"></div>
13331
13332     <div class="entry">
13333       <div class="title">
13334         <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>
13335       </div>
13336       <div class="date">
13337          9th December 2010
13338       </div>
13339       <div class="body">
13340         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
13341 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
13342 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
13343 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
13344 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
13345 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
13346 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
13347 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
13348 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
13349 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
13350 operational.</p>
13351
13352 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
13353 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
13354 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
13355 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
13356 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
13357 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
13358 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
13359
13360       </div>
13361       <div class="tags">
13362
13363
13364         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>.
13365
13366
13367       </div>
13368     </div>
13369     <div class="padding"></div>
13370
13371     <div class="entry">
13372       <div class="title">
13373         <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>
13374       </div>
13375       <div class="date">
13376         29th November 2010
13377       </div>
13378       <div class="body">
13379         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13380 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
13381 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
13382 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
13383 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
13384 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13385
13386 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
13387 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
13388 will hold its
13389 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
13390 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
13391 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
13392 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
13393 vote this year.</p>
13394
13395       </div>
13396       <div class="tags">
13397
13398
13399         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
13401
13402       </div>
13403     </div>
13404     <div class="padding"></div>
13405
13406     <div class="entry">
13407       <div class="title">
13408         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
13409       </div>
13410       <div class="date">
13411         27th November 2010
13412       </div>
13413       <div class="body">
13414         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
13415 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
13416 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
13417 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
13418 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
13419 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
13420 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
13421 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
13422
13423 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
13424 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13425 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
13426 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
13427 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
13428 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
13429 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
13430 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
13431 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
13432 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
13433 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
13434
13435 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
13436 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
13437 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
13438 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
13439 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
13440 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
13441 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
13442 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
13443 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
13444 what is going on.</p>
13445
13446       </div>
13447       <div class="tags">
13448
13449
13450         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>.
13451
13452
13453       </div>
13454     </div>
13455     <div class="padding"></div>
13456
13457     <div class="entry">
13458       <div class="title">
13459         <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>
13460       </div>
13461       <div class="date">
13462         22nd November 2010
13463       </div>
13464       <div class="body">
13465         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
13466 upgrade testing of the
13467 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13468 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
13469 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
13470 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
13471
13472 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13473
13474 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13475
13476 <blockquote><p>
13477   apache2.2-bin
13478   aptdaemon
13479   baobab
13480   binfmt-support
13481   browser-plugin-gnash
13482   cheese-common
13483   cli-common
13484   cups-pk-helper
13485   dmz-cursor-theme
13486   empathy
13487   empathy-common
13488   freedesktop-sound-theme
13489   freeglut3
13490   gconf-defaults-service
13491   gdm-themes
13492   gedit-plugins
13493   geoclue
13494   geoclue-hostip
13495   geoclue-localnet
13496   geoclue-manual
13497   geoclue-yahoo
13498   gnash
13499   gnash-common
13500   gnome
13501   gnome-backgrounds
13502   gnome-cards-data
13503   gnome-codec-install
13504   gnome-core
13505   gnome-desktop-environment
13506   gnome-disk-utility
13507   gnome-screenshot
13508   gnome-search-tool
13509   gnome-session-canberra
13510   gnome-system-log
13511   gnome-themes-extras
13512   gnome-themes-more
13513   gnome-user-share
13514   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13515   gstreamer0.10-tools
13516   gtk2-engines
13517   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13518   gtk2-engines-smooth
13519   hamster-applet
13520   libapache2-mod-dnssd
13521   libapr1
13522   libaprutil1
13523   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
13524   libaprutil1-ldap
13525   libart2.0-cil
13526   libboost-date-time1.42.0
13527   libboost-python1.42.0
13528   libboost-thread1.42.0
13529   libchamplain-0.4-0
13530   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
13531   libcheese-gtk18
13532   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13533   libcryptui0
13534   libdiscid0
13535   libelf1
13536   libepc-1.0-2
13537   libepc-common
13538   libepc-ui-1.0-2
13539   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13540   libfreerdp0
13541   libgconf2.0-cil
13542   libgdata-common
13543   libgdata7
13544   libgdu-gtk0
13545   libgee2
13546   libgeoclue0
13547   libgexiv2-0
13548   libgif4
13549   libglade2.0-cil
13550   libglib2.0-cil
13551   libgmime2.4-cil
13552   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13553   libgnome2.24-cil
13554   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
13555   libgpod-common
13556   libgpod4
13557   libgtk2.0-cil
13558   libgtkglext1
13559   libgtksourceview2.0-common
13560   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13561   libmono-addins0.2-cil
13562   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
13563   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13564   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
13565   libmono-posix2.0-cil
13566   libmono-security2.0-cil
13567   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13568   libmono-system2.0-cil
13569   libmtp8
13570   libmusicbrainz3-6
13571   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
13572   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
13573   libopal3.6.8
13574   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
13575   libpt2.6.7
13576   libpython2.6
13577   librpm1
13578   librpmio1
13579   libsdl1.2debian
13580   libsrtp0
13581   libssh-4
13582   libtelepathy-farsight0
13583   libtelepathy-glib0
13584   libtidy-0.99-0
13585   media-player-info
13586   mesa-utils
13587   mono-2.0-gac
13588   mono-gac
13589   mono-runtime
13590   nautilus-sendto
13591   nautilus-sendto-empathy
13592   p7zip-full
13593   pkg-config
13594   python-aptdaemon
13595   python-aptdaemon-gtk
13596   python-axiom
13597   python-beautifulsoup
13598   python-bugbuddy
13599   python-clientform
13600   python-coherence
13601   python-configobj
13602   python-crypto
13603   python-cupshelpers
13604   python-elementtree
13605   python-epsilon
13606   python-evolution
13607   python-feedparser
13608   python-gdata
13609   python-gdbm
13610   python-gst0.10
13611   python-gtkglext1
13612   python-gtksourceview2
13613   python-httplib2
13614   python-louie
13615   python-mako
13616   python-markupsafe
13617   python-mechanize
13618   python-nevow
13619   python-notify
13620   python-opengl
13621   python-openssl
13622   python-pam
13623   python-pkg-resources
13624   python-pyasn1
13625   python-pysqlite2
13626   python-rdflib
13627   python-serial
13628   python-tagpy
13629   python-twisted-bin
13630   python-twisted-conch
13631   python-twisted-core
13632   python-twisted-web
13633   python-utidylib
13634   python-webkit
13635   python-xdg
13636   python-zope.interface
13637   remmina
13638   remmina-plugin-data
13639   remmina-plugin-rdp
13640   remmina-plugin-vnc
13641   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13642   rhythmbox-plugins
13643   rpm-common
13644   rpm2cpio
13645   seahorse-plugins
13646   shotwell
13647   software-center
13648   system-config-printer-udev
13649   telepathy-gabble
13650   telepathy-mission-control-5
13651   telepathy-salut
13652   tomboy
13653   totem
13654   totem-coherence
13655   totem-mozilla
13656   totem-plugins
13657   transmission-common
13658   xdg-user-dirs
13659   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
13660   xserver-xephyr
13661 </p></blockquote>
13662
13663 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13664
13665 <blockquote><p>
13666   cheese
13667   ekiga
13668   eog
13669   epiphany-extensions
13670   evolution-exchange
13671   fast-user-switch-applet
13672   file-roller
13673   gcalctool
13674   gconf-editor
13675   gdm
13676   gedit
13677   gedit-common
13678   gnome-games
13679   gnome-games-data
13680   gnome-nettool
13681   gnome-system-tools
13682   gnome-themes
13683   gnuchess
13684   gucharmap
13685   guile-1.8-libs
13686   libavahi-ui0
13687   libdmx1
13688   libgalago3
13689   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13690   libgtksourceview2.0-0
13691   liblircclient0
13692   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
13693   libspeexdsp1
13694   libsvga1
13695   rhythmbox
13696   seahorse
13697   sound-juicer
13698   system-config-printer
13699   totem-common
13700   transmission-gtk
13701   vinagre
13702   vino
13703 </p></blockquote>
13704
13705 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13706
13707 <blockquote><p>
13708   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13709 </p></blockquote>
13710
13711 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13712
13713 <blockquote><p>
13714 [nothing]
13715 </p></blockquote>
13716
13717 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
13718
13719 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13720
13721 <blockquote><p>
13722   ksmserver
13723 </p></blockquote>
13724
13725 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13726
13727 <blockquote><p>
13728   kwin
13729   network-manager-kde
13730 </p></blockquote>
13731
13732 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13733
13734 <blockquote><p>
13735   arts
13736   dolphin
13737   freespacenotifier
13738   google-gadgets-gst
13739   google-gadgets-xul
13740   kappfinder
13741   kcalc
13742   kcharselect
13743   kde-core
13744   kde-plasma-desktop
13745   kde-standard
13746   kde-window-manager
13747   kdeartwork
13748   kdeartwork-emoticons
13749   kdeartwork-style
13750   kdeartwork-theme-icon
13751   kdebase
13752   kdebase-apps
13753   kdebase-workspace
13754   kdebase-workspace-bin
13755   kdebase-workspace-data
13756   kdeeject
13757   kdelibs
13758   kdeplasma-addons
13759   kdeutils
13760   kdewallpapers
13761   kdf
13762   kfloppy
13763   kgpg
13764   khelpcenter4
13765   kinfocenter
13766   konq-plugins-l10n
13767   konqueror-nsplugins
13768   kscreensaver
13769   kscreensaver-xsavers
13770   ktimer
13771   kwrite
13772   libgle3
13773   libkde4-ruby1.8
13774   libkonq5
13775   libkonq5-templates
13776   libnetpbm10
13777   libplasma-ruby
13778   libplasma-ruby1.8
13779   libqt4-ruby1.8
13780   marble-data
13781   marble-plugins
13782   netpbm
13783   nuvola-icon-theme
13784   plasma-dataengines-workspace
13785   plasma-desktop
13786   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
13787   plasma-runners-addons
13788   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
13789   plasma-scriptengine-python
13790   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
13791   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
13792   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
13793   plasma-scriptengines
13794   plasma-wallpapers-addons
13795   plasma-widget-folderview
13796   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13797   ruby
13798   sweeper
13799   update-notifier-kde
13800   xscreensaver-data-extra
13801   xscreensaver-gl
13802   xscreensaver-gl-extra
13803   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13804 </p></blockquote>
13805
13806 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13807
13808 <blockquote><p>
13809   ark
13810   google-gadgets-common
13811   google-gadgets-qt
13812   htdig
13813   kate
13814   kdebase-bin
13815   kdebase-data
13816   kdepasswd
13817   kfind
13818   klipper
13819   konq-plugins
13820   konqueror
13821   ksysguard
13822   ksysguardd
13823   libarchive1
13824   libcln6
13825   libeet1
13826   libeina-svn-06
13827   libggadget-1.0-0b
13828   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
13829   libgps19
13830   libkdecorations4
13831   libkephal4
13832   libkonq4
13833   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
13834   libkscreensaver5
13835   libksgrd4
13836   libksignalplotter4
13837   libkunitconversion4
13838   libkwineffects1a
13839   libmarblewidget4
13840   libntrack-qt4-1
13841   libntrack0
13842   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
13843   libplasmaclock4a
13844   libplasmagenericshell4
13845   libprocesscore4a
13846   libprocessui4a
13847   libqalculate5
13848   libqedje0a
13849   libqtruby4shared2
13850   libqzion0a
13851   libruby1.8
13852   libscim8c2a
13853   libsmokekdecore4-3
13854   libsmokekdeui4-3
13855   libsmokekfile3
13856   libsmokekhtml3
13857   libsmokekio3
13858   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
13859   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
13860   libsmokekparts3
13861   libsmokektexteditor3
13862   libsmokekutils3
13863   libsmokenepomuk3
13864   libsmokephonon3
13865   libsmokeplasma3
13866   libsmokeqtcore4-3
13867   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
13868   libsmokeqtgui4-3
13869   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
13870   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
13871   libsmokeqtscript4-3
13872   libsmokeqtsql4-3
13873   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
13874   libsmokeqttest4-3
13875   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
13876   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
13877   libsmokeqtxml4-3
13878   libsmokesolid3
13879   libsmokesoprano3
13880   libtaskmanager4a
13881   libtidy-0.99-0
13882   libweather-ion4a
13883   libxklavier16
13884   libxxf86misc1
13885   okteta
13886   oxygencursors
13887   plasma-dataengines-addons
13888   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
13889   plasma-widget-lancelot
13890   plasma-widgets-addons
13891   plasma-widgets-workspace
13892   polkit-kde-1
13893   ruby1.8
13894   systemsettings
13895   update-notifier-common
13896 </p></blockquote>
13897
13898 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
13899 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
13900 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
13901 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
13902
13903       </div>
13904       <div class="tags">
13905
13906
13907         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>.
13908
13909
13910       </div>
13911     </div>
13912     <div class="padding"></div>
13913
13914     <div class="entry">
13915       <div class="title">
13916         <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>
13917       </div>
13918       <div class="date">
13919         22nd November 2010
13920       </div>
13921       <div class="body">
13922         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
13923 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
13924 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
13925 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
13926 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
13927 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
13928 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
13929 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
13930 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
13931
13932 <p>I found
13933 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
13934 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
13935 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
13936 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
13937 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
13938 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
13939
13940 <pre>
13941 #!/bin/sh
13942
13943 # Based on
13944 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
13945
13946 set -e
13947 set -x
13948
13949 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
13950     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
13951     exit 1
13952 else
13953     host="$1"
13954 fi
13955
13956 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
13957     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
13958     exit 1
13959 fi
13960
13961 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
13962 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13963 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13964 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
13965
13966 img=$host.img
13967 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
13968 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
13969
13970 parted $img mklabel msdos
13971 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
13972 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
13973 parted $img set 1 boot on
13974
13975 modprobe dm-mod
13976 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
13977 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
13978
13979 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
13980 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
13981 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
13982
13983 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
13984 losetup -d /dev/loop0
13985 </pre>
13986
13987 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
13988 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
13989
13990 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
13991 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
13992 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
13993 seem to work just fine.</p>
13994
13995       </div>
13996       <div class="tags">
13997
13998
13999         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>.
14000
14001
14002       </div>
14003     </div>
14004     <div class="padding"></div>
14005
14006     <div class="entry">
14007       <div class="title">
14008         <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>
14009       </div>
14010       <div class="date">
14011         20th November 2010
14012       </div>
14013       <div class="body">
14014         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
14015 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
14016 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
14017 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
14018
14019 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
14020 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
14021 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
14022
14023 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
14024
14025 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14026
14027 <blockquote><p>
14028   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
14029   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
14030   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
14031   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
14032   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
14033   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
14034   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
14035   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
14036   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
14037   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
14038   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14039   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14040   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
14041   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
14042   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
14043   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
14044   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
14045   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
14046   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14047   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
14048   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
14049   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14050   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
14051   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
14052   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
14053   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14054   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14055   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
14056   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14057   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
14058   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
14059   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14060   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
14061   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
14062   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
14063   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
14064   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
14065   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
14066   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
14067   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
14068   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
14069   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
14070   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
14071   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
14072   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
14073   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
14074   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
14075   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
14076   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
14077   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
14078   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
14079   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
14080   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14081   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
14082   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
14083   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
14084   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
14085   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
14086   zip
14087 </p></blockquote>
14088
14089 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
14090
14091 <blockquote><p>
14092   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
14093   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
14094   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
14095   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
14096   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
14097   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
14098   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
14099   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
14100   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
14101   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
14102   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
14103   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14104   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14105   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14106   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14107   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
14108   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14109   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
14110   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
14111   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
14112   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
14113   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
14114   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14115   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
14116   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
14117   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
14118   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
14119   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
14120   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
14121 </p></blockquote>
14122
14123 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14124
14125 <blockquote><p>
14126   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14127 </p></blockquote>
14128
14129 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14130
14131 <blockquote><p>
14132 [nothing]
14133 </p></blockquote>
14134
14135 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14136
14137 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14138
14139 <blockquote><p>
14140   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
14141   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
14142   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
14143   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
14144   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
14145   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
14146   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
14147   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
14148   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
14149   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
14150   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
14151   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
14152   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
14153   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
14154   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
14155   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
14156   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
14157   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
14158   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
14159   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
14160   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
14161   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
14162   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
14163   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
14164   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
14165   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
14166   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
14167   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
14168   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
14169   ttf-sazanami-gothic
14170 </p></blockquote>
14171
14172 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14173
14174 <blockquote><p>
14175   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
14176   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
14177   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
14178   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
14179   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
14180   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
14181   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
14182   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
14183   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
14184   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
14185   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
14186   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
14187   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
14188   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
14189   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
14190   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
14191   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
14192   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
14193   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
14194   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
14195   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14196   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
14197   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
14198   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
14199   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
14200   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
14201   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
14202   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
14203   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
14204   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
14205   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
14206   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
14207   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
14208 </p></blockquote>
14209
14210 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14211
14212 <blockquote><p>
14213   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
14214   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
14215   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
14216   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
14217   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14218   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
14219   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14220 </p></blockquote>
14221
14222 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14223
14224 <blockquote><p>
14225   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
14226 </p></blockquote>
14227
14228       </div>
14229       <div class="tags">
14230
14231
14232         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>.
14233
14234
14235       </div>
14236     </div>
14237     <div class="padding"></div>
14238
14239     <div class="entry">
14240       <div class="title">
14241         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
14242       </div>
14243       <div class="date">
14244         20th November 2010
14245       </div>
14246       <div class="body">
14247         <p>Answering
14248 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
14249 call from the Gnash project</a> for
14250 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
14251 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
14252 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
14253 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
14254 releases out more often.</p>
14255
14256 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
14257 I have considered setting up a <a
14258 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
14259 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
14260 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
14261 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
14262 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
14263 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
14264 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
14265 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
14266 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
14267 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
14268 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
14269 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
14270
14271       </div>
14272       <div class="tags">
14273
14274
14275         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>.
14276
14277
14278       </div>
14279     </div>
14280     <div class="padding"></div>
14281
14282     <div class="entry">
14283       <div class="title">
14284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
14285       </div>
14286       <div class="date">
14287          9th November 2010
14288       </div>
14289       <div class="body">
14290         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
14291
14292 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
14293 3D linked in from
14294 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
14295 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
14296
14297       </div>
14298       <div class="tags">
14299
14300
14301         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>.
14302
14303
14304       </div>
14305     </div>
14306     <div class="padding"></div>
14307
14308     <div class="entry">
14309       <div class="title">
14310         <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>
14311       </div>
14312       <div class="date">
14313          7th November 2010
14314       </div>
14315       <div class="body">
14316         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
14317 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
14318 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
14319 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
14320 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
14321 working using this DVD.</p>
14322
14323 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
14324 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
14325 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
14326 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
14327 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
14328 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
14329 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
14330
14331 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
14332 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
14333 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
14334 Debian archive.</p>
14335
14336 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
14337 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
14338 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
14339 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
14340 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
14341 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
14342 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
14343 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
14344 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
14345 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
14346 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
14347 free X driver should work.</p>
14348
14349 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
14350 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
14351 DVD more useful again.</p>
14352
14353       </div>
14354       <div class="tags">
14355
14356
14357         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>.
14358
14359
14360       </div>
14361     </div>
14362     <div class="padding"></div>
14363
14364     <div class="entry">
14365       <div class="title">
14366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
14367       </div>
14368       <div class="date">
14369         24th October 2010
14370       </div>
14371       <div class="body">
14372         <p>Some updates.</p>
14373
14374 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
14375 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
14376 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
14377 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
14378 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
14379 :)</p>
14380
14381 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
14382 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
14383 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
14384 It is called
14385 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
14386 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
14387 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
14388 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
14389 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
14390 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
14391
14392 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
14393 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
14394 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
14395 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
14396 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
14397 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
14398 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
14399 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
14400 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
14401 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
14402
14403       </div>
14404       <div class="tags">
14405
14406
14407         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>.
14408
14409
14410       </div>
14411     </div>
14412     <div class="padding"></div>
14413
14414     <div class="entry">
14415       <div class="title">
14416         <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>
14417       </div>
14418       <div class="date">
14419         19th October 2010
14420       </div>
14421       <div class="body">
14422         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
14423 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
14424 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
14425 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
14426 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
14427 AVM2 flash files.</p>
14428
14429 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
14430 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
14431 following text:</P>
14432
14433 <p><blockquote>
14434
14435   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
14436   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
14437
14438   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
14439
14440   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
14441
14442   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
14443   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
14444   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
14445   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
14446   days. The project web page is available from
14447   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
14448   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
14449   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
14450
14451   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
14452   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
14453   to get this to happen.</p>
14454
14455   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
14456   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
14457
14458 </blockquote></p>
14459
14460 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
14461 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
14462 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
14463 :)</p>
14464
14465       </div>
14466       <div class="tags">
14467
14468
14469         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>.
14470
14471
14472       </div>
14473     </div>
14474     <div class="padding"></div>
14475
14476     <div class="entry">
14477       <div class="title">
14478         <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>
14479       </div>
14480       <div class="date">
14481          9th October 2010
14482       </div>
14483       <div class="body">
14484         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
14485 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
14486 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
14487 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
14488 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
14489 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
14490 robots.</p>
14491
14492 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
14493 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
14494 a few less important features too.</p>
14495
14496 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
14497 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
14498 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
14499 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
14500
14501 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
14502 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
14503 source or binary package:</p>
14504
14505 <p><ul>
14506 <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>
14507 <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>
14508 <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>
14509 </ul></p>
14510
14511 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
14512 please let me know.</p>
14513
14514       </div>
14515       <div class="tags">
14516
14517
14518         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>.
14519
14520
14521       </div>
14522     </div>
14523     <div class="padding"></div>
14524
14525     <div class="entry">
14526       <div class="title">
14527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
14528       </div>
14529       <div class="date">
14530          3rd October 2010
14531       </div>
14532       <div class="body">
14533         <p><ul>
14534
14535 <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
14536 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
14537
14538 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
14539 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
14540 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
14541
14542 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
14543 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
14544 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
14545 simple setup.
14546
14547 </ul></p>
14548
14549       </div>
14550       <div class="tags">
14551
14552
14553         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>.
14554
14555
14556       </div>
14557     </div>
14558     <div class="padding"></div>
14559
14560     <div class="entry">
14561       <div class="title">
14562         <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>
14563       </div>
14564       <div class="date">
14565          9th September 2010
14566       </div>
14567       <div class="body">
14568         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
14569 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
14570 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
14571 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
14572 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
14573 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
14574 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
14575 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
14576 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
14577
14578 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
14579 written:</p>
14580
14581 <blockquote>
14582 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
14583 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
14584 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
14585 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
14586 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
14587
14588 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
14589 standard.</p>
14590 </blockquote>
14591
14592 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
14593 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
14594 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
14595 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
14596
14597 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
14598 read
14599 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
14600 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
14601 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
14602 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
14603 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
14604 the issue.  The solution is to support the
14605 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
14606 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
14607 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
14608
14609       </div>
14610       <div class="tags">
14611
14612
14613         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>.
14614
14615
14616       </div>
14617     </div>
14618     <div class="padding"></div>
14619
14620     <div class="entry">
14621       <div class="title">
14622         <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>
14623       </div>
14624       <div class="date">
14625          4th September 2010
14626       </div>
14627       <div class="body">
14628         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
14629 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
14630 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
14631 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
14632 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
14633 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
14634 installed.</p>
14635
14636 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
14637 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
14638 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
14639 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
14640 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14641 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
14642 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
14643 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
14644 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
14645
14646 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
14647 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
14648 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
14649 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
14650 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
14651 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
14652 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
14653 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
14654 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
14655 pages they want to visit.</p>
14656
14657 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
14658 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
14659 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
14660 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
14661 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
14662 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
14663 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
14664 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
14665 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
14666 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
14667 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
14668
14669       </div>
14670       <div class="tags">
14671
14672
14673         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>.
14674
14675
14676       </div>
14677     </div>
14678     <div class="padding"></div>
14679
14680     <div class="entry">
14681       <div class="title">
14682         <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>
14683       </div>
14684       <div class="date">
14685          1st September 2010
14686       </div>
14687       <div class="body">
14688         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
14689 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
14690 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
14691 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
14692 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
14693 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
14694 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
14695 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
14696 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
14697 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
14698 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
14699 drive around.</p>
14700
14701 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
14702 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
14703
14704 <p><pre>
14705 use Spykee;
14706 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
14707 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
14708 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
14709 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
14710 $spykee->left();
14711 sleep 2;
14712 $spykee->right();
14713 sleep 2;
14714 $spykee->forward();
14715 sleep 2;
14716 $spykee->back();
14717 sleep 2;
14718 $spykee->stop();
14719 </pre></p>
14720
14721 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
14722 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
14723 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
14724 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
14725 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
14726 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
14727 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
14728 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
14729 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
14730 going. :).</p>
14731
14732 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
14733 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
14734 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
14735 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
14736
14737       </div>
14738       <div class="tags">
14739
14740
14741         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>.
14742
14743
14744       </div>
14745     </div>
14746     <div class="padding"></div>
14747
14748     <div class="entry">
14749       <div class="title">
14750         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
14751       </div>
14752       <div class="date">
14753         30th August 2010
14754       </div>
14755       <div class="body">
14756         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
14757 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
14758 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
14759 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
14760 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
14761 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
14762 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
14763
14764 <pre>
14765 % ln foo bar
14766 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
14767 %
14768 </pre>
14769
14770 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
14771 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
14772 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
14773 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
14774 nevertheless. :)</p>
14775
14776 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
14777 git from
14778 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
14779
14780       </div>
14781       <div class="tags">
14782
14783
14784         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>.
14785
14786
14787       </div>
14788     </div>
14789     <div class="padding"></div>
14790
14791     <div class="entry">
14792       <div class="title">
14793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
14794       </div>
14795       <div class="date">
14796         26th August 2010
14797       </div>
14798       <div class="body">
14799         <p>My file system sematics program
14800 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
14801 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
14802 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
14803 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
14804 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
14805 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
14806 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
14807 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
14808 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
14809 script:</p>
14810
14811 <pre>
14812 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
14813   mode_t retval = 0;
14814   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
14815   if (-1 != fd) {
14816     unlink(name);
14817     struct stat statbuf;
14818     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
14819       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
14820     }
14821     close(fd);
14822   }
14823   return retval;
14824 }
14825
14826 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
14827 int test_umask(void) {
14828   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
14829
14830   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
14831   mode_t newmode;
14832   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
14833     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
14834            newmode);
14835   }
14836   umask(007);
14837   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
14838     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
14839            newmode);
14840   }
14841
14842   umask (orig_umask);
14843   return 0;
14844 }
14845
14846 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
14847   [...]
14848   test_umask();
14849   return 0;
14850 }
14851 </pre>
14852
14853 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
14854
14855 <pre>
14856 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14857 info: testing symlink creation
14858 info: testing subdirectory creation
14859 info: testing fcntl locking
14860   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14861   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14862   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14863   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14864   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14865   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14866 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14867 </pre>
14868
14869 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
14870 result:</p>
14871
14872 <pre>
14873 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14874 info: testing symlink creation
14875 info: testing subdirectory creation
14876 info: testing fcntl locking
14877   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14878   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14879   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14880   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14881   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14882   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14883 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14884   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
14885   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
14886 </pre>
14887
14888 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
14889 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
14890 directory.</p>
14891
14892 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
14893 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
14894
14895 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
14896 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
14897 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
14898
14899       </div>
14900       <div class="tags">
14901
14902
14903         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>.
14904
14905
14906       </div>
14907     </div>
14908     <div class="padding"></div>
14909
14910     <div class="entry">
14911       <div class="title">
14912         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
14913       </div>
14914       <div class="date">
14915         15th August 2010
14916       </div>
14917       <div class="body">
14918         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
14919 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
14920 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
14921 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
14922 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
14923 long time.</p>
14924
14925       </div>
14926       <div class="tags">
14927
14928
14929         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>.
14930
14931
14932       </div>
14933     </div>
14934     <div class="padding"></div>
14935
14936     <div class="entry">
14937       <div class="title">
14938         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
14939       </div>
14940       <div class="date">
14941          9th August 2010
14942       </div>
14943       <div class="body">
14944         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
14945 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
14946 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
14947 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
14948 generated configuration.</p>
14949
14950 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
14951 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
14952 without any manual configuration.</p>
14953
14954 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
14955 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
14956 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
14957 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
14958 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
14959 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
14960 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
14961 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
14962 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
14963 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
14964 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
14965 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
14966 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
14967 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
14968 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
14969 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
14970 use.</p>
14971
14972 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
14973 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
14974 working properly out of the box:</p>
14975
14976 <ul>
14977 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
14978 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
14979 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
14980 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
14981 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
14982 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
14983 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
14984 </ul>
14985
14986 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
14987
14988 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
14989 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
14990 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
14991 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
14992 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
14993
14994 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
14995 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
14996 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
14997 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
14998 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
14999 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
15000 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
15001 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
15002
15003 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
15004 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
15005 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
15006 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
15007 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
15008 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
15009 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
15010 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
15011 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
15012 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
15013 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
15014 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15015 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
15016 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
15017 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
15018 current DNS domain is used.</p>
15019
15020 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
15021 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
15022 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
15023 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
15024 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
15025 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
15026 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
15027 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
15028 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
15029 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
15030 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
15031 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
15032 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
15033
15034 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
15035 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
15036 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
15037 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
15038 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
15039 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
15040 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
15041 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
15042 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
15043 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
15044 do for now. :)</p>
15045
15046 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
15047 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
15048 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
15049 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
15050 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
15051 yet.</p>
15052
15053 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15054 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15055
15056 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
15057 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
15058 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
15059 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
15060
15061       </div>
15062       <div class="tags">
15063
15064
15065         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>.
15066
15067
15068       </div>
15069     </div>
15070     <div class="padding"></div>
15071
15072     <div class="entry">
15073       <div class="title">
15074         <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>
15075       </div>
15076       <div class="date">
15077          8th August 2010
15078       </div>
15079       <div class="body">
15080         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
15081 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
15082 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
15083 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
15084 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
15085 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
15086 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
15087
15088 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
15089 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
15090 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
15091 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
15092 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
15093 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
15094 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
15095
15096 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
15097 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
15098 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
15099 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
15100 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
15101
15102 <pre>
15103 /*
15104  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
15105  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
15106  * directory.
15107  * License: GPL v2 or later
15108  *
15109  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
15110  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
15111 */
15112
15113 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
15114 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
15115 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
15116
15117 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
15118
15119 #include &lt;errno.h>
15120 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
15121 #include &lt;stdio.h>
15122 #include &lt;string.h>
15123 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
15124 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
15125 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
15126 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
15127 #include &lt;unistd.h>
15128
15129 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15130 /*
15131  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
15132  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
15133  * below.
15134  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
15135  */
15136 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
15137 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
15138   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
15139 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
15140   char *zErrMsg;
15141   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15142   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
15143   unlink(name);
15144   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
15145   if( rc ){
15146     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
15147     sqlite3_close(db);
15148     return -1;
15149   }
15150
15151   /* create tables */
15152   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
15153   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
15154     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
15155     sqlite3_close(db);
15156     return -1;
15157   }
15158   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
15159   sqlite3_close(db);
15160   return 0;
15161 }
15162 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15163
15164 /*
15165  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
15166  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
15167  * done in the sqlite3 library.
15168  * See also
15169  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
15170  * POSIX specification
15171  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
15172  */
15173 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
15174   struct flock fl;
15175   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15176   unlink(name);
15177   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
15178   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
15179
15180   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
15181   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
15182   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15183   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15184   fl.l_len    = 1;
15185   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15186   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15187
15188   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15189   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15190   fl.l_len    = 510;
15191   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15192   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15193
15194   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15195   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15196   fl.l_len    = 1;
15197   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15198   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15199
15200   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15201   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15202   fl.l_len    = 1;
15203   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
15204   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15205
15206   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15207   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15208   fl.l_len    = 510;
15209   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15210
15211   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
15212   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15213   fl.l_len    = 2;
15214   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15215   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15216
15217   close(fd);
15218   return 0;
15219 }
15220
15221 /*
15222  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
15223  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
15224  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
15225  * slowing down file operations.
15226  */
15227 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
15228 #define LEVELS 5
15229   char *path = strdup("test");
15230   char *dirs[LEVELS];
15231   int level;
15232   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
15233   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
15234     char *newpath = NULL;
15235     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
15236       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
15237              path, strerror(errno));
15238       break;
15239     }
15240     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
15241     free(path);
15242     path = newpath;
15243   }
15244   return 0;
15245 }
15246
15247 /*
15248  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
15249  * KDE.
15250  */
15251 int test_symlinks(void) {
15252   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
15253   unlink("symlink");
15254   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
15255     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
15256   return 0;
15257 }
15258
15259 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
15260   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
15261   test_symlinks();
15262   test_subdirectory_creation();
15263 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15264   test_sqlite_open();
15265 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15266   test_gcompris_locking();
15267   return 0;
15268 }
15269 </pre>
15270
15271 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
15272 this:</p>
15273
15274 <pre>
15275 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15276 info: testing symlink creation
15277 info: testing subdirectory creation
15278 info: sqlite worked
15279 info: testing fcntl locking
15280   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15281   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15282   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15283   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15284   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15285   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15286 </pre>
15287
15288 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
15289 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
15290 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
15291 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
15292 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
15293 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
15294 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
15295 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
15296
15297 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
15298 it. :)</p>
15299
15300 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
15301 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
15302 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
15303
15304       </div>
15305       <div class="tags">
15306
15307
15308         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>.
15309
15310
15311       </div>
15312     </div>
15313     <div class="padding"></div>
15314
15315     <div class="entry">
15316       <div class="title">
15317         <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>
15318       </div>
15319       <div class="date">
15320          7th August 2010
15321       </div>
15322       <div class="body">
15323         <p>A few days ago, I
15324 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
15325 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
15326 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
15327 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
15328 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
15329 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
15330 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
15331 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
15332 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
15333
15334 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
15335 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
15336 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
15337 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
15338 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
15339 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
15340 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
15341 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
15342 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
15343 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
15344 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
15345 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
15346 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
15347 gave it a IP address.</p>
15348
15349 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
15350 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
15351 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
15352 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
15353 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
15354 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15355 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
15356 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
15357
15358 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
15359 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
15360 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
15361 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
15362 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
15363 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
15364
15365 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
15366 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
15367 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
15368 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
15369 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
15370 with UID and GID values.</p>
15371
15372 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15373 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15374
15375       </div>
15376       <div class="tags">
15377
15378
15379         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>.
15380
15381
15382       </div>
15383     </div>
15384     <div class="padding"></div>
15385
15386     <div class="entry">
15387       <div class="title">
15388         <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>
15389       </div>
15390       <div class="date">
15391          3rd August 2010
15392       </div>
15393       <div class="body">
15394         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
15395 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
15396 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
15397 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
15398 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
15399 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
15400 servers.</p>
15401
15402 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
15403 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
15404 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
15405 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
15406 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
15407 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
15408 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
15409 .uio.no.</p>
15410
15411 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
15412 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
15413 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
15414 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
15415 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
15416 university servers.</p>
15417
15418 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
15419 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
15420 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
15421 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
15422 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
15423 uses.</p>
15424
15425       </div>
15426       <div class="tags">
15427
15428
15429         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>.
15430
15431
15432       </div>
15433     </div>
15434     <div class="padding"></div>
15435
15436     <div class="entry">
15437       <div class="title">
15438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
15439       </div>
15440       <div class="date">
15441         27th July 2010
15442       </div>
15443       <div class="body">
15444         <p>I discovered this while doing
15445 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
15446 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
15447 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
15448 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
15449 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
15450
15451 <p>An example is from todays
15452 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
15453 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
15454 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
15455 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
15456 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
15457 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
15458 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
15459
15460 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
15461
15462 <blockquote><pre>
15463 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
15464  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
15465   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
15466 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
15467  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
15468 </pre></blockquote>
15469
15470 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
15471 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
15472 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
15473 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
15474 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
15475 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
15476 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
15477 of dependency loops.</p>
15478
15479 <p>Thanks to
15480 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
15481 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
15482 dependencies
15483 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
15484 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
15485
15486 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
15487 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
15488 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
15489 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
15490 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
15491 it.</p>
15492
15493       </div>
15494       <div class="tags">
15495
15496
15497         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>.
15498
15499
15500       </div>
15501     </div>
15502     <div class="padding"></div>
15503
15504     <div class="entry">
15505       <div class="title">
15506         <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>
15507       </div>
15508       <div class="date">
15509         27th July 2010
15510       </div>
15511       <div class="body">
15512         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
15513 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
15514 completed.</p>
15515
15516 <blockquote>
15517 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
15518 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
15519 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
15520 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
15521 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
15522 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
15523 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
15524 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
15525
15526 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
15527 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
15528 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
15529
15530 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
15531 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
15532 much.</p>
15533
15534 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
15535
15536 <ul>
15537 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
15538 <ul>
15539   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
15540          combination with some new artwork
15541   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
15542   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
15543   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
15544   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
15545   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
15546   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
15547   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
15548   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
15549   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
15550 </ul></li>
15551 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
15552     Enabled for:
15553 <ul>
15554   <li>PAM
15555   <li>LDAP
15556   <li>IMAP
15557   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
15558 </ul>
15559 </li>
15560 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
15561 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
15562     fetched from LDAP.</li>
15563 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
15564 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
15565 </ul>
15566 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
15567
15568 <ul>
15569 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
15570     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
15571     for testing.</li>
15572 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
15573     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
15574     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
15575 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
15576 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
15577 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
15578 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
15579     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
15580 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
15581     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
15582     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
15583 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
15584     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
15585     and help out with translations.</li>
15586 </ul>
15587
15588 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
15589
15590 <ul>
15591 <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>
15592 <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>
15593 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15594 </ul>
15595 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
15596
15597 <ul>
15598 <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>
15599 <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>
15600 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15601 </ul>
15602
15603 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
15604 get closer to the final release.</p>
15605
15606 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
15607
15608 <ul>
15609 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15610 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15611 </ul>
15612
15613 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
15614 <ul>
15615 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15616 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15617 </ul>
15618 <p>How to report bugs:
15619 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
15620
15621 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
15622 </blockquote>
15623
15624       </div>
15625       <div class="tags">
15626
15627
15628         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>.
15629
15630
15631       </div>
15632     </div>
15633     <div class="padding"></div>
15634
15635     <div class="entry">
15636       <div class="title">
15637         <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>
15638       </div>
15639       <div class="date">
15640         25th July 2010
15641       </div>
15642       <div class="body">
15643         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
15644 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
15645 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
15646 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
15647 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
15648
15649 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
15650 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
15651 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
15652 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
15653 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
15654 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
15655 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
15656
15657 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
15658 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
15659 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
15660 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
15661 up. :)</p>
15662
15663 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
15664 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
15665 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
15666
15667 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
15668 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
15669 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
15670 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
15671 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
15672 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
15673 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
15674 release another day.</p>
15675
15676 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
15677 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15678
15679       </div>
15680       <div class="tags">
15681
15682
15683         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>.
15684
15685
15686       </div>
15687     </div>
15688     <div class="padding"></div>
15689
15690     <div class="entry">
15691       <div class="title">
15692         <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>
15693       </div>
15694       <div class="date">
15695         18th July 2010
15696       </div>
15697       <div class="body">
15698         <p>Thanks to
15699 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
15700 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
15701 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
15702 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
15703 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
15704 only available from the development server, until more experience is
15705 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
15706
15707 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
15708 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
15709 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
15710 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
15711 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
15712 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
15713 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
15714
15715       </div>
15716       <div class="tags">
15717
15718
15719         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>.
15720
15721
15722       </div>
15723     </div>
15724     <div class="padding"></div>
15725
15726     <div class="entry">
15727       <div class="title">
15728         <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>
15729       </div>
15730       <div class="date">
15731         17th July 2010
15732       </div>
15733       <div class="body">
15734         <p>This is a
15735 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
15736 on my
15737 <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
15738 work</a> on
15739 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
15740 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
15741
15742 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
15743 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
15744 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
15745 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
15746
15747 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
15748 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
15749 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
15750
15751 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
15752
15753 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
15754 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
15755 the web.
15756
15757 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
15758 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
15759 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
15760 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
15761 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
15762 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
15763
15764 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
15765 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
15766 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
15767 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
15768 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
15769 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
15770 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
15771 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
15772 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
15773 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
15774 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
15775 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
15776 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
15777 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
15778 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
15779 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
15780
15781 <blockquote><pre>
15782 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15783   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15784   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15785   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15786   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15787   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15788   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15789
15790 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15791   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15792   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
15793   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
15794   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
15795   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
15796 </pre></blockquote>
15797
15798 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
15799 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
15800 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
15801 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15802 also exist.</p>
15803
15804 <blockquote><pre>
15805 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15806 objectclass: top
15807 objectclass: dnsdomain
15808 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15809 dc: tjener
15810 arecord: 10.0.2.2
15811 associateddomain: tjener.intern
15812
15813 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15814 objectclass: top
15815 objectclass: dnsdomain2
15816 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15817 dc: 2
15818 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
15819 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
15820 </pre></blockquote>
15821
15822 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
15823 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
15824 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
15825 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
15826 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
15827 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
15828 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
15829 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
15830 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
15831 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
15832 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
15833 instead.</p>
15834
15835 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
15836 like this:</p>
15837
15838 <blockquote><pre>
15839 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15840   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15841   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15842   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15843   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15844   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15845
15846 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15847   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
15848 </pre></blockquote>
15849
15850 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
15851 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
15852 reverse lookups.</p>
15853
15854 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
15855 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
15856 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
15857 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
15858
15859 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
15860 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
15861 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
15862
15863 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
15864 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
15865 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
15866 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
15867 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
15868
15869 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
15870 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
15871 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
15872 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
15873 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
15874
15875 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
15876 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
15877 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
15878 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
15879 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
15880 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
15881
15882 <blockquote><pre>
15883 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
15884     SUP top
15885     AUXILIARY
15886     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
15887           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
15888           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
15889           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
15890           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
15891     ))
15892 </pre></blockquote>
15893
15894 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
15895 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
15896 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
15897 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
15898 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
15899 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
15900
15901 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
15902
15903 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
15904 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
15905 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
15906 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
15907 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
15908
15909 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
15910 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
15911 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
15912 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
15913
15914 <blockquote><pre>
15915 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
15916 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
15917 </pre></blockquote>
15918
15919 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
15920 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
15921 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
15922 search result is this entry:</p>
15923
15924 <blockquote><pre>
15925 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15926 cn: dhcp
15927 objectClass: top
15928 objectClass: dhcpServer
15929 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15930 </pre></blockquote>
15931
15932 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
15933 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
15934 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
15935 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
15936 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
15937 The search result is this entry:</p>
15938
15939 <blockquote><pre>
15940 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15941 cn: DHCP Config
15942 objectClass: top
15943 objectClass: dhcpService
15944 objectClass: dhcpOptions
15945 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15946 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
15947 dhcpStatements: authoritative
15948 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
15949 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
15950 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
15951 </pre></blockquote>
15952
15953 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
15954 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
15955 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
15956 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
15957 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
15958 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
15959 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
15960 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
15961 related computer objects.</p>
15962
15963 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
15964 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
15965 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
15966 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
15967 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
15968 like:</p>
15969
15970 <blockquote><pre>
15971 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15972 cn: hostname
15973 objectClass: top
15974 objectClass: dhcpHost
15975 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15976 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
15977 </pre></blockquote>
15978
15979 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
15980 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
15981 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
15982 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
15983 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
15984 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
15985 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
15986 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
15987 structural object class.
15988
15989 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
15990
15991 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
15992 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
15993 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
15994 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
15995 in the configuration.</p>
15996
15997 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
15998 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
15999 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
16000 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
16001 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
16002 structure.</p>
16003
16004 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
16005 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
16006
16007 <blockquote><pre>
16008 ou=services
16009   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
16010     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
16011     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
16012       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
16013         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
16014     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
16015       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
16016         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
16017     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
16018       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
16019 </pre></blockquote>
16020
16021 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
16022 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
16023 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
16024 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
16025
16026 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
16027 like this:</p>
16028
16029 <blockquote><pre>
16030 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16031 dc: hostname
16032 objectClass: top
16033 objectClass: dhcpHost
16034 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16035 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
16036 associateddomain: hostname.intern
16037 arecord: 10.11.12.13
16038 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16039 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
16040 </pre></blockquote>
16041
16042 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
16043 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
16044 auxiliary object class.</p>
16045
16046       </div>
16047       <div class="tags">
16048
16049
16050         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>.
16051
16052
16053       </div>
16054     </div>
16055     <div class="padding"></div>
16056
16057     <div class="entry">
16058       <div class="title">
16059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
16060       </div>
16061       <div class="date">
16062         14th July 2010
16063       </div>
16064       <div class="body">
16065         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
16066 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
16067 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
16068 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
16069 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
16070
16071 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
16072 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
16073
16074 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
16075 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
16076 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
16077 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
16078 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
16079 to a slave DNS server.</p>
16080
16081 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
16082 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
16083 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
16084 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
16085 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
16086 seem to work.</p>
16087
16088 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
16089 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
16090 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
16091 this:</p>
16092
16093 <blockquote><pre>
16094   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16095   cn: hostname
16096   objectClass: dhcphost
16097   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16098   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
16099   associateddomain: hostname.intern
16100   arecord: 10.11.12.13
16101   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16102   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
16103   ldapconfigsound: Y
16104 </pre></blockquote>
16105
16106 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
16107 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
16108 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
16109 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
16110
16111 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
16112 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
16113 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
16114 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
16115 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
16116 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
16117 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
16118 might be a good place to put it.</p>
16119
16120 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16121 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16122
16123       </div>
16124       <div class="tags">
16125
16126
16127         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>.
16128
16129
16130       </div>
16131     </div>
16132     <div class="padding"></div>
16133
16134     <div class="entry">
16135       <div class="title">
16136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
16137       </div>
16138       <div class="date">
16139         11th July 2010
16140       </div>
16141       <div class="body">
16142         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
16143 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
16144 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
16145 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
16146
16147 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
16148 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
16149 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
16150 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
16151 LTSP clients.</p>
16152
16153 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
16154 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
16155 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
16156
16157 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
16158 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
16159 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
16160
16161 <blockquote><pre>
16162 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
16163 #
16164 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
16165 #
16166 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
16167 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
16168 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
16169 #
16170 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
16171 # existence of attribute names.
16172 #
16173 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
16174 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
16175 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
16176 #
16177 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
16178 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
16179 #
16180 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
16181 #     SUP top
16182 #     AUXILIARY
16183 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
16184
16185 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
16186 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
16187     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
16188     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
16189         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
16190         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
16191             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
16192             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
16193             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
16194             # bass value on to clients
16195             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
16196         done
16197     done
16198 fi
16199 </pre></blockquote>
16200
16201 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
16202 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
16203 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
16204 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
16205 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
16206
16207 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16208 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16209
16210 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
16211 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
16212 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
16213 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
16214 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
16215 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
16216
16217       </div>
16218       <div class="tags">
16219
16220
16221         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>.
16222
16223
16224       </div>
16225     </div>
16226     <div class="padding"></div>
16227
16228     <div class="entry">
16229       <div class="title">
16230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16231       </div>
16232       <div class="date">
16233          9th July 2010
16234       </div>
16235       <div class="body">
16236         <p>Since
16237 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
16238 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
16239 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
16240 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
16241 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
16242 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
16243 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
16244 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
16245 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
16246 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
16247 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
16248 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
16249 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
16250
16251       </div>
16252       <div class="tags">
16253
16254
16255         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>.
16256
16257
16258       </div>
16259     </div>
16260     <div class="padding"></div>
16261
16262     <div class="entry">
16263       <div class="title">
16264         <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>
16265       </div>
16266       <div class="date">
16267          3rd July 2010
16268       </div>
16269       <div class="body">
16270         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
16271 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
16272 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
16273 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
16274 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
16275 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
16276 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
16277 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
16278
16279 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
16280 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
16281 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
16282 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
16283 publish the difference.</p>
16284
16285 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16286
16287 <blockquote><p>
16288   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16289   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
16290   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
16291   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16292   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
16293   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16294   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
16295   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
16296 </p></blockquote>
16297
16298 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16299
16300 <blockquote><p>
16301   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
16302   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
16303   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
16304   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
16305   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
16306   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
16307   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
16308   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
16309   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16310   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16311   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
16312   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
16313   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
16314   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
16315   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
16316   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
16317   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
16318   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
16319   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
16320   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
16321 </p></blockquote>
16322
16323 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16324
16325 <blockquote><p>
16326   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
16327   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
16328   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16329   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16330   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
16331   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
16332   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
16333   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16334   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16335   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16336   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16337   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
16338   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
16339   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
16340   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
16341   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
16342   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
16343   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
16344   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
16345   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
16346   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
16347 </p></blockquote>
16348
16349 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16350
16351 <blockquote><p>
16352   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
16353   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
16354   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
16355 </p></blockquote>
16356
16357 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
16358 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
16359 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
16360 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
16361 the difference somewhat.
16362
16363       </div>
16364       <div class="tags">
16365
16366
16367         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>.
16368
16369
16370       </div>
16371     </div>
16372     <div class="padding"></div>
16373
16374     <div class="entry">
16375       <div class="title">
16376         <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>
16377       </div>
16378       <div class="date">
16379          1st July 2010
16380       </div>
16381       <div class="body">
16382         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
16383 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
16384 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
16385 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
16386 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
16387 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
16388 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
16389 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
16390 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
16391
16392 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
16393
16394 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
16395 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
16396 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
16397 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
16398 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
16399 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
16400 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
16401 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
16402 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
16403 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
16404 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
16405 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
16406 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
16407 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
16408 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
16409
16410 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
16411
16412 <blockquote><pre>
16413 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
16414 </pre></blockquote>
16415
16416 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
16417 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
16418 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
16419 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
16420 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
16421 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
16422 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
16423 on how to get this working.</p>
16424
16425 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
16426 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
16427 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
16428 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
16429 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
16430 instructions I found in the
16431 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
16432 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
16433
16434 <blockquote><pre>
16435         debug-level             0
16436         reload-count            unlimited
16437         paranoia                no
16438
16439         enable-cache            passwd          yes
16440         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
16441         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
16442         suggested-size          passwd          211
16443         check-files             passwd          yes
16444         persistent              passwd          yes
16445         shared                  passwd          yes
16446         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
16447         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
16448
16449         enable-cache            group           yes
16450         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
16451         negative-time-to-live   group           20
16452         suggested-size          group           211
16453         check-files             group           yes
16454         persistent              group           yes
16455         shared                  group           yes
16456         max-db-size             group           33554432
16457         auto-propagate          group           yes
16458
16459         enable-cache            hosts           no
16460         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
16461         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
16462         suggested-size          hosts           211
16463         check-files             hosts           yes
16464         persistent              hosts           yes
16465         shared                  hosts           yes
16466         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
16467
16468         enable-cache            services        yes
16469         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
16470         negative-time-to-live   services        20
16471         suggested-size          services        211
16472         check-files             services        yes
16473         persistent              services        yes
16474         shared                  services        yes
16475         max-db-size             services        33554432
16476 </pre></blockquote>
16477
16478 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
16479 automatically like the one provided in
16480 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
16481 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
16482 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
16483 look like this:</p>
16484
16485 <blockquote><pre>
16486 passwd:         files ldap
16487 group:          files ldap
16488 shadow:         files ldap
16489 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
16490 networks:       files
16491 protocols:      files
16492 services:       files
16493 ethers:         files
16494 rpc:            files
16495 netgroup:       files ldap
16496 </pre></blockquote>
16497
16498 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
16499 shadow and netgroup.</p>
16500
16501 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
16502 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
16503 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
16504 attributes cached.
16505
16506 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
16507   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
16508
16509 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
16510 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
16511 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
16512 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
16513 discovered sssd.</p>
16514
16515 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
16516
16517 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
16518 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
16519 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
16520 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
16521 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
16522 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
16523 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
16524 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
16525 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
16526 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
16527 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
16528 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
16529 version 1.2 is now in testing.
16530
16531 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
16532 roaming setup I want</p>
16533
16534 <blockquote><pre>
16535 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
16536 </pre></blockquote>
16537
16538 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
16539 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
16540
16541 <blockquote><pre>
16542 [sssd]
16543 config_file_version = 2
16544 reconnection_retries = 3
16545 sbus_timeout = 30
16546 services = nss, pam
16547 domains = INTERN
16548
16549 [nss]
16550 filter_groups = root
16551 filter_users = root
16552 reconnection_retries = 3
16553
16554 [pam]
16555 reconnection_retries = 3
16556
16557 [domain/INTERN]
16558 enumerate = false
16559 cache_credentials = true
16560
16561 id_provider = ldap
16562 auth_provider = ldap
16563 chpass_provider = ldap
16564
16565 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
16566 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16567 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
16568 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
16569 </pre></blockquote>
16570
16571 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
16572 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
16573
16574 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
16575 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
16576 modify it manually.</p>
16577
16578 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16579 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16580
16581       </div>
16582       <div class="tags">
16583
16584
16585         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>.
16586
16587
16588       </div>
16589     </div>
16590     <div class="padding"></div>
16591
16592     <div class="entry">
16593       <div class="title">
16594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16595       </div>
16596       <div class="date">
16597         28th June 2010
16598       </div>
16599       <div class="body">
16600         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
16601 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
16602 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
16603 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
16604 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
16605 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
16606 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
16607 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
16608 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
16609 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
16610
16611 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
16612 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
16613 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
16614 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
16615 released.</p>
16616
16617 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
16618 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
16619 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
16620 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
16621
16622 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
16623 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16624
16625 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
16626 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
16627 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
16628 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
16629 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
16630
16631       </div>
16632       <div class="tags">
16633
16634
16635         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>.
16636
16637
16638       </div>
16639     </div>
16640     <div class="padding"></div>
16641
16642     <div class="entry">
16643       <div class="title">
16644         <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>
16645       </div>
16646       <div class="date">
16647         24th June 2010
16648       </div>
16649       <div class="body">
16650         <p>A while back, I
16651 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
16652 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
16653 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
16654 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
16655
16656 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
16657 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
16658 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
16659 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
16660
16661 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
16662 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
16663 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
16664 Debian Edu.</p>
16665
16666 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
16667 the
16668 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
16669 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
16670 available today from IETF.</p>
16671
16672 <pre>
16673 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
16674 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
16675 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
16676  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
16677         NAME 'dhcpHost'
16678         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
16679 -       SUP top
16680 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
16681         MUST cn
16682         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
16683         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
16684 </pre>
16685
16686 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
16687 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
16688 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
16689
16690 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16691 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16692
16693       </div>
16694       <div class="tags">
16695
16696
16697         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>.
16698
16699
16700       </div>
16701     </div>
16702     <div class="padding"></div>
16703
16704     <div class="entry">
16705       <div class="title">
16706         <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>
16707       </div>
16708       <div class="date">
16709         16th June 2010
16710       </div>
16711       <div class="body">
16712         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
16713 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
16714 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
16715 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
16716 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
16717 this:
16718
16719 <blockquote><pre>
16720 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16721 tasksel --new-install
16722 </pre></blockquote>
16723
16724 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
16725 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
16726 any output what so ever.
16727
16728 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
16729 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
16730 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
16731 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
16732 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
16733 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
16734 code like this:
16735
16736 <blockquote><pre>
16737 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16738 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
16739 $cmd
16740 </pre></blockquote>
16741
16742 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
16743 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
16744 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
16745 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
16746 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
16747 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
16748 installation.</p>
16749
16750 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
16751 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
16752 like this.</p>
16753
16754       </div>
16755       <div class="tags">
16756
16757
16758         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>.
16759
16760
16761       </div>
16762     </div>
16763     <div class="padding"></div>
16764
16765     <div class="entry">
16766       <div class="title">
16767         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
16768       </div>
16769       <div class="date">
16770         13th June 2010
16771       </div>
16772       <div class="body">
16773         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
16774 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
16775 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
16776 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
16777 pages.</p>
16778
16779 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
16780 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
16781 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
16782 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
16783 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
16784 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
16785 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
16786 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
16787 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
16788 see how the project is doing.</p>
16789
16790 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
16791 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
16792 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
16793 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
16794 Windows.  This is great.</p>
16795
16796       </div>
16797       <div class="tags">
16798
16799
16800         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>.
16801
16802
16803       </div>
16804     </div>
16805     <div class="padding"></div>
16806
16807     <div class="entry">
16808       <div class="title">
16809         <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>
16810       </div>
16811       <div class="date">
16812         13th June 2010
16813       </div>
16814       <div class="body">
16815         <p>My
16816 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
16817 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
16818 finally made the upgrade logs available from
16819 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
16820 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
16821 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
16822 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
16823
16824 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
16825 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
16826 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
16827 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
16828 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
16829 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
16830 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
16831 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
16832
16833 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
16834 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
16835 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
16836 too surprising.</p>
16837
16838 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
16839 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
16840 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
16841 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
16842 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
16843 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
16844 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
16845 continue.</p>
16846
16847 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
16848 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
16849   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
16850   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
16851   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
16852   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
16853   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
16854   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16855   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16856   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16857   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16858   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16859   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16860   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16861   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16862   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16863   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16864   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16865   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16866   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16867   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16868   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16869   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16870   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16871   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16872   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16873   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16874   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16875   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
16876   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
16877
16878 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
16879
16880 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
16881   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
16882   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
16883   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
16884   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16885   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
16886   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
16887   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
16888   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
16889   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
16890   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16891   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
16892   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16893   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
16894   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
16895   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
16896   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
16897   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
16898   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
16899   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
16900   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
16901   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
16902   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
16903   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
16904   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16905   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
16906   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
16907   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
16908   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
16909   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16910   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16911   zip</p>
16912
16913 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
16914
16915 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
16916   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
16917   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
16918   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
16919   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
16920   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
16921   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16922   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16923   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16924   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16925   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16926   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16927   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16928   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16929   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16930   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16931   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16932   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16933   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16934   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16935   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16936   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16937   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16938   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16939   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16940   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16941   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16942   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
16943
16944 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
16945 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
16946   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
16947   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
16948   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
16949   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
16950   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
16951   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
16952   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
16953   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
16954   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
16955   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
16956   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
16957   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
16958   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
16959   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
16960   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
16961   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16962   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16963   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16964   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
16965   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16966   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
16967   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
16968   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16969   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16970   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
16971   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
16972   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
16973   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
16974   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
16975   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
16976   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
16977   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
16978   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
16979   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16980   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16981   xulrunner-1.9</p>
16982
16983
16984       </div>
16985       <div class="tags">
16986
16987
16988         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>.
16989
16990
16991       </div>
16992     </div>
16993     <div class="padding"></div>
16994
16995     <div class="entry">
16996       <div class="title">
16997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
16998       </div>
16999       <div class="date">
17000         11th June 2010
17001       </div>
17002       <div class="body">
17003         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
17004 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
17005 have been discovered and reported in the process
17006 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
17007 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
17008 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
17009 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
17010 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
17011
17012 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
17013 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
17014 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
17015 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
17016 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
17017 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
17018
17019 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
17020 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
17021 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
17022 is created.  The bug report
17023 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
17024 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
17025 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
17026 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
17027 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
17028 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
17029 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
17030 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
17031 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
17032 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
17033 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
17034 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
17035 Debian Squeeze.</p>
17036
17037 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
17038 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
17039 trick:</p>
17040
17041 <blockquote><pre>
17042 #!/bin/sh
17043 set -ex
17044
17045 if [ "$1" ] ; then
17046     desktop=$1
17047 else
17048     desktop=gnome
17049 fi
17050
17051 from=lenny
17052 to=squeeze
17053
17054 exec &lt; /dev/null
17055 unset LANG
17056 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
17057 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
17058 fuser -mv .
17059 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
17060 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
17061 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
17062 #!/bin/sh
17063 exit 101
17064 EOF
17065 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
17066 exit_cleanup() {
17067     umount $tmpdir/proc
17068 }
17069 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
17070 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
17071 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
17072
17073 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
17074
17075 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
17076 # to return the correct answers.
17077 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
17078     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
17079
17080 # Include the desktop and laptop task
17081 for test in desktop laptop ; do
17082     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
17083 #!/bin/sh
17084 exit 2
17085 EOF
17086     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
17087 done
17088
17089 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17090 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
17091 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
17092 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
17093
17094 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
17095 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
17096 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
17097 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
17098 fuser -mv
17099 </pre></blockquote>
17100
17101 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
17102 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
17103 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
17104 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
17105 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
17106 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
17107
17108 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
17109 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
17110 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
17111 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
17112 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
17113 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
17114 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
17115
17116 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
17117 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
17118 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
17119 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
17120 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
17121 packages.</p>
17122
17123       </div>
17124       <div class="tags">
17125
17126
17127         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>.
17128
17129
17130       </div>
17131     </div>
17132     <div class="padding"></div>
17133
17134     <div class="entry">
17135       <div class="title">
17136         <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>
17137       </div>
17138       <div class="date">
17139          6th June 2010
17140       </div>
17141       <div class="body">
17142         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
17143 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
17144 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
17145 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
17146 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
17147 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
17148 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
17149
17150 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
17151 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
17152 COLUMNS):</p>
17153
17154 <blockquote><pre>
17155 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
17156 previous=N
17157 PREVLEVEL=
17158 RUNLEVEL=
17159 runlevel=S
17160 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
17161 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
17162 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
17163 </pre></blockquote>
17164
17165 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
17166 script.</p>
17167
17168 <blockquote><pre>
17169 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
17170 previous=N
17171 PREVLEVEL=N
17172 RUNLEVEL=S
17173 runlevel=S
17174 </pre></blockquote>
17175
17176 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
17177 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
17178 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
17179
17180 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
17181 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
17182 choice.</p>
17183
17184       </div>
17185       <div class="tags">
17186
17187
17188         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>.
17189
17190
17191       </div>
17192     </div>
17193     <div class="padding"></div>
17194
17195     <div class="entry">
17196       <div class="title">
17197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
17198       </div>
17199       <div class="date">
17200          6th June 2010
17201       </div>
17202       <div class="body">
17203         <p>Via the
17204 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
17205 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
17206 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
17207 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
17208 following the standards wars of today.</p>
17209
17210       </div>
17211       <div class="tags">
17212
17213
17214         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>.
17215
17216
17217       </div>
17218     </div>
17219     <div class="padding"></div>
17220
17221     <div class="entry">
17222       <div class="title">
17223         <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>
17224       </div>
17225       <div class="date">
17226          3rd June 2010
17227       </div>
17228       <div class="body">
17229         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
17230 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
17231 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
17232 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
17233 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
17234
17235 <blockquote><pre>
17236 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
17237   vendor                    count
17238   Dell Computer Corporation     1
17239     PowerEdge 1750              1
17240   IBM                           1
17241     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
17242   Intel                         2
17243   [no-dmi-info]                 3
17244 maintainer:~#
17245 </pre></blockquote>
17246
17247 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
17248 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
17249 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
17250 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
17251 option to list the individual machines.</p>
17252
17253 <p>A larger list is
17254 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
17255 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
17256 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
17257 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
17258 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
17259 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
17260 collector.</p>
17261
17262       </div>
17263       <div class="tags">
17264
17265
17266         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>.
17267
17268
17269       </div>
17270     </div>
17271     <div class="padding"></div>
17272
17273     <div class="entry">
17274       <div class="title">
17275         <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>
17276       </div>
17277       <div class="date">
17278          1st June 2010
17279       </div>
17280       <div class="body">
17281         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
17282 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
17283 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
17284 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
17285 wait.</p>
17286
17287 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
17288 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
17289 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
17290 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
17291 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
17292 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
17293
17294 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
17295 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
17296 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
17297 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
17298 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
17299 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
17300 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
17301 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
17302
17303 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
17304
17305       </div>
17306       <div class="tags">
17307
17308
17309         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>.
17310
17311
17312       </div>
17313     </div>
17314     <div class="padding"></div>
17315
17316     <div class="entry">
17317       <div class="title">
17318         <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>
17319       </div>
17320       <div class="date">
17321         27th May 2010
17322       </div>
17323       <div class="body">
17324         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
17325 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
17326 issues are known and should be solved:
17327
17328 <p><ul>
17329
17330 <li>The wicd package seen to
17331 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
17332 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
17333 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
17334 seem to be on the case.</li>
17335
17336 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
17337 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
17338 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
17339 maintainer is on the case.</li>
17340
17341 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
17342 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
17343 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
17344 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
17345 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
17346 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
17347 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
17348 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
17349
17350 </ul></p>
17351
17352 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
17353 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
17354 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
17355 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
17356
17357 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17358 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17359 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17360 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17361
17362 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
17363
17364       </div>
17365       <div class="tags">
17366
17367
17368         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>.
17369
17370
17371       </div>
17372     </div>
17373     <div class="padding"></div>
17374
17375     <div class="entry">
17376       <div class="title">
17377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
17378       </div>
17379       <div class="date">
17380         22nd May 2010
17381       </div>
17382       <div class="body">
17383         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
17384 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
17385 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
17386 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
17387
17388 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
17389 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
17390 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
17391 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
17392 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
17393 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
17394 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
17395 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
17396 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
17397 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
17398 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
17399 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
17400 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
17401 going to work.</p>
17402
17403 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
17404 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
17405 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
17406 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
17407 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
17408 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
17409 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
17410 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
17411 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
17412 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
17413 Edu.</p>
17414
17415 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
17416 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
17417 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
17418 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
17419 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
17420 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
17421
17422 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
17423 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
17424
17425       </div>
17426       <div class="tags">
17427
17428
17429         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>.
17430
17431
17432       </div>
17433     </div>
17434     <div class="padding"></div>
17435
17436     <div class="entry">
17437       <div class="title">
17438         <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>
17439       </div>
17440       <div class="date">
17441         19th May 2010
17442       </div>
17443       <div class="body">
17444         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
17445 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
17446 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
17447 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
17448 into unstable.  The
17449 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
17450 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
17451 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
17452 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
17453 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
17454 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
17455 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
17456
17457 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
17458 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
17459 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
17460 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
17461 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
17462 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
17463 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
17464 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
17465
17466 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
17467 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
17468 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
17469 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
17470 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
17471 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
17472 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
17473
17474 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
17475 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
17476 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
17477 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
17478 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
17479 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
17480 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
17481 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
17482 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
17483 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
17484 on the home directory servers.</p>
17485
17486 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
17487 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
17488 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
17489 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
17490 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
17491 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
17492
17493 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17494 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17495
17496       </div>
17497       <div class="tags">
17498
17499
17500         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>.
17501
17502
17503       </div>
17504     </div>
17505     <div class="padding"></div>
17506
17507     <div class="entry">
17508       <div class="title">
17509         <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>
17510       </div>
17511       <div class="date">
17512         14th May 2010
17513       </div>
17514       <div class="body">
17515         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
17516 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
17517 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
17518 expected, if I am to believe the
17519 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17520 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
17521 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
17522 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
17523 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
17524 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
17525 version.</p>
17526
17527 More information about
17528 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17529 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
17530 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
17531 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
17532
17533 <blockquote><pre>
17534 CONCURRENCY=none
17535 </pre></blockquote>
17536
17537 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17538 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17539 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17540 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17541
17542       </div>
17543       <div class="tags">
17544
17545
17546         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>.
17547
17548
17549       </div>
17550     </div>
17551     <div class="padding"></div>
17552
17553     <div class="entry">
17554       <div class="title">
17555         <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>
17556       </div>
17557       <div class="date">
17558         14th May 2010
17559       </div>
17560       <div class="body">
17561         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
17562 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
17563 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
17564 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
17565 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
17566 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
17567 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
17568 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
17569
17570 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
17571 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
17572 this on the collector host:</p>
17573
17574 <blockquote><pre>
17575 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
17576 </pre></blockquote>
17577
17578 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
17579 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
17580
17581 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
17582 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
17583 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
17584 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
17585 written yet.</p>
17586
17587       </div>
17588       <div class="tags">
17589
17590
17591         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>.
17592
17593
17594       </div>
17595     </div>
17596     <div class="padding"></div>
17597
17598     <div class="entry">
17599       <div class="title">
17600         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
17601       </div>
17602       <div class="date">
17603         13th May 2010
17604       </div>
17605       <div class="body">
17606         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
17607 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
17608 has been
17609 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
17610
17611 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
17612 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
17613 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
17614 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
17615 based boot system.  Tollef is
17616 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
17617 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
17618 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
17619 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
17620 at the moment do not.</p>
17621
17622 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
17623 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
17624 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
17625 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
17626 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
17627 way forward.</p>
17628
17629 <p>In the mean time, based on the
17630 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17631 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
17632 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
17633 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
17634 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
17635 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
17636 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
17637 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
17638
17639       </div>
17640       <div class="tags">
17641
17642
17643         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>.
17644
17645
17646       </div>
17647     </div>
17648     <div class="padding"></div>
17649
17650     <div class="entry">
17651       <div class="title">
17652         <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>
17653       </div>
17654       <div class="date">
17655          6th May 2010
17656       </div>
17657       <div class="body">
17658         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
17659 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
17660 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
17661 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
17662 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17663 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
17664 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
17665
17666 <blockquote><pre>
17667 CONCURRENCY=makefile
17668 </pre></blockquote>
17669
17670 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
17671 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
17672 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
17673 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
17674 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
17675 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
17676 make this happen.</p>
17677
17678 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
17679 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
17680 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
17681 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
17682 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
17683
17684 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
17685 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
17686 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
17687 fix the remaining issues.</p>
17688
17689 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17690 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17691 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17692 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17693
17694       </div>
17695       <div class="tags">
17696
17697
17698         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>.
17699
17700
17701       </div>
17702     </div>
17703     <div class="padding"></div>
17704
17705     <div class="entry">
17706       <div class="title">
17707         <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>
17708       </div>
17709       <div class="date">
17710          2nd May 2010
17711       </div>
17712       <div class="body">
17713         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
17714 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
17715 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
17716
17717 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
17718 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
17719 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
17720 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
17721 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
17722
17723 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
17724 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
17725
17726 <blockquote><pre>
17727 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17728 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
17729 Password expires                                        : never
17730 Password inactive                                       : never
17731 Account expires                                         : never
17732 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17733 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
17734 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17735 root@tjener:~#
17736 </pre></blockquote>
17737
17738 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
17739 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
17740 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
17741 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
17742 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
17743 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
17744
17745 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
17746 intended:</p>
17747
17748 <blockquote><pre>
17749 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
17750 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17751 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
17752 Password expires                                        : never
17753 Password inactive                                       : never
17754 Account expires                                         : never
17755 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17756 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
17757 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17758 root@tjener:~#
17759 </pre></blockquote>
17760
17761 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
17762 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
17763 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
17764
17765 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
17766 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
17767
17768 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
17769 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17770
17771 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
17772 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
17773 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
17774 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
17775 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
17776 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
17777 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
17778
17779 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
17780 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
17781 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
17782 change.</p>
17783
17784       </div>
17785       <div class="tags">
17786
17787
17788         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>.
17789
17790
17791       </div>
17792     </div>
17793     <div class="padding"></div>
17794
17795     <div class="entry">
17796       <div class="title">
17797         <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>
17798       </div>
17799       <div class="date">
17800         28th April 2010
17801       </div>
17802       <div class="body">
17803         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
17804 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
17805 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
17806 and go.</p>
17807
17808 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
17809 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
17810 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
17811 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
17812
17813 <ul>
17814
17815  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
17816    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
17817    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
17818    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
17819    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
17820    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
17821    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
17822    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
17823    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
17824    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
17825    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
17826    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
17827
17828  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
17829    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
17830    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
17831    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
17832    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
17833    or the Fedora developed
17834    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
17835    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
17836
17837  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
17838    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
17839    directory, using unison.</li>
17840
17841  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
17842    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
17843    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
17844    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
17845    implemented.</li>
17846
17847  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
17848    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
17849
17850  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
17851    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
17852    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
17853
17854 </ul>
17855
17856 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
17857 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
17858 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
17859 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
17860 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
17861 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
17862 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
17863 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
17864 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
17865
17866 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17867 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17868
17869       </div>
17870       <div class="tags">
17871
17872
17873         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>.
17874
17875
17876       </div>
17877     </div>
17878     <div class="padding"></div>
17879
17880     <div class="entry">
17881       <div class="title">
17882         <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>
17883       </div>
17884       <div class="date">
17885         19th April 2010
17886       </div>
17887       <div class="body">
17888         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
17889 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
17890 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
17891 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
17892 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
17893 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
17894 restrictions on the web, for example from
17895 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
17896 epub-version from
17897 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
17898 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
17899 strongly recommend this book.</p>
17900
17901       </div>
17902       <div class="tags">
17903
17904
17905         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>.
17906
17907
17908       </div>
17909     </div>
17910     <div class="padding"></div>
17911
17912     <div class="entry">
17913       <div class="title">
17914         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
17915       </div>
17916       <div class="date">
17917         14th April 2010
17918       </div>
17919       <div class="body">
17920         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
17921 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
17922 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
17923 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
17924 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
17925 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
17926 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
17927 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
17928 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
17929
17930 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
17931 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
17932 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
17933 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
17934 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
17935
17936 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
17937 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
17938
17939 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
17940 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
17941 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
17942 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
17943 to work properly.</p>
17944
17945 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
17946 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
17947 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
17948 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
17949 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
17950 time.</p>
17951
17952 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
17953 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
17954 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
17955 up in a few days.</p>
17956
17957       </div>
17958       <div class="tags">
17959
17960
17961         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>.
17962
17963
17964       </div>
17965     </div>
17966     <div class="padding"></div>
17967
17968     <div class="entry">
17969       <div class="title">
17970         <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>
17971       </div>
17972       <div class="date">
17973          6th March 2010
17974       </div>
17975       <div class="body">
17976         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
17977 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
17978 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
17979 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
17980 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
17981 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
17982
17983 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
17984 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
17985 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
17986 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
17987
17988 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
17989 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
17990 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
17991 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
17992 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
17993 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
17994
17995       </div>
17996       <div class="tags">
17997
17998
17999         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>.
18000
18001
18002       </div>
18003     </div>
18004     <div class="padding"></div>
18005
18006     <div class="entry">
18007       <div class="title">
18008         <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>
18009       </div>
18010       <div class="date">
18011         11th February 2010
18012       </div>
18013       <div class="body">
18014         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
18015 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
18016 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
18017 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
18018 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
18019 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
18020 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
18021
18022 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
18023
18024 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
18025 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
18026 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
18027 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
18028
18029       </div>
18030       <div class="tags">
18031
18032
18033         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>.
18034
18035
18036       </div>
18037     </div>
18038     <div class="padding"></div>
18039
18040     <div class="entry">
18041       <div class="title">
18042         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
18043       </div>
18044       <div class="date">
18045         27th January 2010
18046       </div>
18047       <div class="body">
18048         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
18049 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
18050 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
18051 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
18052 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
18053 further.</p>
18054
18055 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
18056 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
18057 configured to be a server for the
18058 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
18059 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
18060 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
18061 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
18062 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
18063 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
18064 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
18065 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
18066 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
18067 and Nagios configuration.</p>
18068
18069 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
18070 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
18071 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
18072 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
18073
18074 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
18075 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
18076 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
18077 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
18078 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
18079 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
18080 the machine.</p>
18081
18082 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
18083 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
18084 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
18085 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
18086
18087 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
18088 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
18089 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
18090 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
18091 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
18092 everything is taken care of.</p>
18093
18094       </div>
18095       <div class="tags">
18096
18097
18098         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>.
18099
18100
18101       </div>
18102     </div>
18103     <div class="padding"></div>
18104
18105     <div class="entry">
18106       <div class="title">
18107         <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>
18108       </div>
18109       <div class="date">
18110         12th August 2009
18111       </div>
18112       <div class="body">
18113         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
18114 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
18115 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
18116 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
18117
18118 <table>
18119 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18120 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18121 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
18122 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
18123 </table>
18124
18125 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
18126 got these numbers:</p>
18127
18128 <table>
18129 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18130 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
18131 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
18132 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
18133 </table>
18134
18135 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
18136
18137 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
18138 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
18139 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
18140 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
18141 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
18142
18143
18144 <table>
18145 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18146 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18147 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
18148 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
18149 </table>
18150
18151 <p>And with 'site:no':
18152
18153 <table>
18154 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18155 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
18156 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
18157 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
18158 </table>
18159
18160 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
18161 numbers.</p>
18162
18163       </div>
18164       <div class="tags">
18165
18166
18167         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>.
18168
18169
18170       </div>
18171     </div>
18172     <div class="padding"></div>
18173
18174     <div class="entry">
18175       <div class="title">
18176         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
18177       </div>
18178       <div class="date">
18179          8th August 2009
18180       </div>
18181       <div class="body">
18182         <p>According to <a
18183 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
18184 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
18185 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
18186 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
18187 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
18188 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
18189 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
18190 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
18191 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
18192 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
18193
18194 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
18195 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
18196 seminar this autumn.</p>
18197
18198       </div>
18199       <div class="tags">
18200
18201
18202         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>.
18203
18204
18205       </div>
18206     </div>
18207     <div class="padding"></div>
18208
18209     <div class="entry">
18210       <div class="title">
18211         <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>
18212       </div>
18213       <div class="date">
18214         27th July 2009
18215       </div>
18216       <div class="body">
18217         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
18218 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
18219 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
18220 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
18221 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
18222 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
18223 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
18224
18225 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
18226 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
18227 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
18228
18229       </div>
18230       <div class="tags">
18231
18232
18233         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>.
18234
18235
18236       </div>
18237     </div>
18238     <div class="padding"></div>
18239
18240     <div class="entry">
18241       <div class="title">
18242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
18243       </div>
18244       <div class="date">
18245         22nd July 2009
18246       </div>
18247       <div class="body">
18248         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
18249 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
18250 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
18251 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
18252 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
18253 the package up to date.</p>
18254
18255 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
18256 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
18257 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
18258 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
18259 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
18260 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
18261 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
18262 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
18263 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
18264 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
18265 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
18266 working on the future release.</p>
18267
18268 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
18269 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
18270
18271       </div>
18272       <div class="tags">
18273
18274
18275         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>.
18276
18277
18278       </div>
18279     </div>
18280     <div class="padding"></div>
18281
18282     <div class="entry">
18283       <div class="title">
18284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
18285       </div>
18286       <div class="date">
18287         24th June 2009
18288       </div>
18289       <div class="body">
18290         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
18291 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
18292 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
18293 funded
18294 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
18295 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
18296 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
18297 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
18298 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
18299 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
18300
18301 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
18302 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
18303 boot:</p>
18304
18305 <ul>
18306
18307 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
18308
18309 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
18310    clock is in UTC.</li>
18311
18312 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
18313    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
18314    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
18315
18316 </ul>
18317
18318 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
18319 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
18320 Villegas</a>.
18321
18322 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
18323 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
18324 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
18325 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
18326 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
18327 using this.</p>
18328
18329 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
18330 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
18331 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
18332 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
18333 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
18334 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
18335 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
18336
18337       </div>
18338       <div class="tags">
18339
18340
18341         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>.
18342
18343
18344       </div>
18345     </div>
18346     <div class="padding"></div>
18347
18348     <div class="entry">
18349       <div class="title">
18350         <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>
18351       </div>
18352       <div class="date">
18353          2nd May 2009
18354       </div>
18355       <div class="body">
18356         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
18357 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
18358 do not yet know them.</p>
18359
18360 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
18361 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
18362 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
18363 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
18364 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
18365 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
18366 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
18367 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
18368 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
18369 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
18370 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
18371
18372 <p>The second one is
18373 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
18374 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
18375 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
18376 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
18377 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
18378 and the company behind it is running
18379 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
18380 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
18381 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
18382 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
18383 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
18384 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
18385 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
18386 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
18387
18388 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
18389 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
18390 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
18391 surrounded by today.</p>
18392
18393       </div>
18394       <div class="tags">
18395
18396
18397         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>.
18398
18399
18400       </div>
18401     </div>
18402     <div class="padding"></div>
18403
18404     <div class="entry">
18405       <div class="title">
18406         <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>
18407       </div>
18408       <div class="date">
18409         28th April 2009
18410       </div>
18411       <div class="body">
18412         <p>Julien Blache
18413 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
18414 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
18415 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
18416 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
18417 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
18418 properties.</p>
18419
18420       </div>
18421       <div class="tags">
18422
18423
18424         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>.
18425
18426
18427       </div>
18428     </div>
18429     <div class="padding"></div>
18430
18431     <div class="entry">
18432       <div class="title">
18433         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
18434       </div>
18435       <div class="date">
18436          5th April 2009
18437       </div>
18438       <div class="body">
18439         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
18440 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
18441 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
18442 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
18443 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
18444 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
18445 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
18446 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
18447
18448 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
18449 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
18450 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
18451   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18452   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
18453
18454 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
18455 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
18456 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
18457 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
18458
18459 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
18460 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
18461 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
18462 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
18463
18464 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
18465 set -e
18466 URL="$1"
18467 SAVEFILE="$2"
18468 DURATION="$3"
18469 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
18470   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18471   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
18472 pid=$!
18473 sleep $DURATION
18474 kill $pid
18475 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
18476
18477       </div>
18478       <div class="tags">
18479
18480
18481         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>.
18482
18483
18484       </div>
18485     </div>
18486     <div class="padding"></div>
18487
18488     <div class="entry">
18489       <div class="title">
18490         <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>
18491       </div>
18492       <div class="date">
18493         30th March 2009
18494       </div>
18495       <div class="body">
18496         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
18497 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
18498 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
18499 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
18500 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
18501 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
18502 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
18503 application.</p>
18504
18505 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
18506 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
18507 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
18508 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
18509 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
18510 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
18511 blocked from doing so.</p>
18512
18513 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
18514 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
18515 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
18516 requirements change.</p>
18517
18518 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
18519 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
18520 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
18521
18522       </div>
18523       <div class="tags">
18524
18525
18526         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>.
18527
18528
18529       </div>
18530     </div>
18531     <div class="padding"></div>
18532
18533     <div class="entry">
18534       <div class="title">
18535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
18536       </div>
18537       <div class="date">
18538         29th March 2009
18539       </div>
18540       <div class="body">
18541         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
18542 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
18543 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
18544 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
18545 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
18546 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
18547 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
18548 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
18549 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
18550 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
18551 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
18552 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
18553 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
18554 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
18555 now. :)</p>
18556
18557       </div>
18558       <div class="tags">
18559
18560
18561         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>.
18562
18563
18564       </div>
18565     </div>
18566     <div class="padding"></div>
18567
18568     <div class="entry">
18569       <div class="title">
18570         <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>
18571       </div>
18572       <div class="date">
18573         29th March 2009
18574       </div>
18575       <div class="body">
18576         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
18577 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
18578 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
18579 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
18580 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
18581 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
18582
18583 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
18584 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
18585 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
18586 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
18587 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
18588 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
18589 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
18590 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
18591 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
18592 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
18593 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
18594 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
18595 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
18596
18597 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
18598 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
18599 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
18600 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
18601
18602 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
18603 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
18604
18605 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
18606 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
18607 new IETF work group?</p>
18608
18609       </div>
18610       <div class="tags">
18611
18612
18613         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>.
18614
18615
18616       </div>
18617     </div>
18618     <div class="padding"></div>
18619
18620     <div class="entry">
18621       <div class="title">
18622         <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>
18623       </div>
18624       <div class="date">
18625         28th February 2009
18626       </div>
18627       <div class="body">
18628         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
18629 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
18630 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
18631 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
18632 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
18633 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
18634 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
18635 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
18636 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
18637 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
18638 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
18639 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
18640 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
18641 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
18642 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
18643 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
18644 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
18645 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
18646 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
18647 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
18648 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
18649 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
18650 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
18651 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
18652 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
18653 machine.</p>
18654
18655 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
18656 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
18657 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
18658 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
18659 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
18660 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
18661 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
18662
18663 <pre>
18664 use LWP::Simple;
18665 use POSIX;
18666 use WWW::Mechanize;
18667 use Date::Parse;
18668 [...]
18669 sub get_support_info {
18670     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
18671     my $str;
18672
18673     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
18674         # fetch website from Dell support
18675         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
18676         my $webpage = get($url);
18677         return undef unless ($webpage);
18678
18679         my $daysleft = -1;
18680         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
18681         foreach my $line (@lines) {
18682             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
18683             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18684             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
18685
18686             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
18687             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
18688             my $lastend = "";
18689             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
18690                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
18691
18692                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18693                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18694                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18695                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
18696                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
18697                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
18698                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
18699             }
18700             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18701             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18702                 if ($lastend lt $today);
18703         }
18704     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
18705         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
18706         my $url =
18707             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
18708         $mech->get($url);
18709         my $fields = {
18710             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
18711             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
18712             'country' => 'NO',
18713             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
18714             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
18715         };
18716         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
18717                             fields      => $fields );
18718         # Next step is screen scraping
18719         my $content = $mech->content();
18720
18721         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18722         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18723         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18724         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18725
18726         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18727
18728         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
18729             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
18730                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
18731             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
18732             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18733                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18734             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18735                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
18736
18737             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
18738
18739             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18740                 if ($end lt $today);
18741         }
18742     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
18743         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
18744         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
18745         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
18746             my $content =
18747                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
18748             if ($content) {
18749                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18750                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18751                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18752                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18753
18754                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
18755                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
18756
18757                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
18758
18759                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18760                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18761                     if ($end lt $today);
18762             }
18763         }
18764     }
18765     return $str;
18766 }
18767 </pre>
18768
18769 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
18770 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
18771 from dmidecode.</p>
18772
18773 <pre>
18774 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
18775                        "447707-B21");
18776 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
18777 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
18778                        "1234567");
18779 </pre>
18780
18781 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
18782 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
18783
18784 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
18785 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
18786 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
18787 do so.</p>
18788
18789       </div>
18790       <div class="tags">
18791
18792
18793         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>.
18794
18795
18796       </div>
18797     </div>
18798     <div class="padding"></div>
18799
18800     <div class="entry">
18801       <div class="title">
18802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
18803       </div>
18804       <div class="date">
18805         20th February 2009
18806       </div>
18807       <div class="body">
18808         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
18809 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
18810 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
18811 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
18812 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
18813 the "missing" computer.</p>
18814
18815 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
18816 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
18817 code blocks as defined in the
18818 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
18819 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
18820 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
18821 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
18822 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
18823 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
18824 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
18825 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
18826 codes.</p>
18827
18828 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
18829 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
18830 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
18831 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
18832 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
18833 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
18834
18835 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
18836 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
18837 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
18838 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
18839 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
18840 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
18841 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
18842 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
18843 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
18844 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
18845
18846 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
18847 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
18848 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
18849
18850       </div>
18851       <div class="tags">
18852
18853
18854         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>.
18855
18856
18857       </div>
18858     </div>
18859     <div class="padding"></div>
18860
18861     <div class="entry">
18862       <div class="title">
18863         <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>
18864       </div>
18865       <div class="date">
18866         17th January 2009
18867       </div>
18868       <div class="body">
18869         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
18870 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
18871 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
18872 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
18873 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
18874 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
18875 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
18876 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
18877 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
18878 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
18879 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
18880 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
18881 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
18882 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
18883
18884 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
18885 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
18886 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
18887 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
18888 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
18889 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
18890 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
18891 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
18892 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
18893 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
18894 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
18895 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
18896 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
18897 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
18898 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
18899 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
18900 playing when the download is done.</p>
18901
18902 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
18903 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
18904 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
18905 too.</p>
18906
18907 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
18908 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
18909 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
18910 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
18911
18912       </div>
18913       <div class="tags">
18914
18915
18916         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>.
18917
18918
18919       </div>
18920     </div>
18921     <div class="padding"></div>
18922
18923     <div class="entry">
18924       <div class="title">
18925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
18926       </div>
18927       <div class="date">
18928         28th December 2008
18929       </div>
18930       <div class="body">
18931         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
18932 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
18933 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
18934 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
18935 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
18936 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
18937 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
18938 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
18939 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
18940 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
18941 source, sink and mixer applications and
18942 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
18943 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
18944 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
18945 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
18946 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
18947 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
18948 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
18949 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
18950 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
18951
18952 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
18953 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
18954 larger stick as well.</p>
18955
18956       </div>
18957       <div class="tags">
18958
18959
18960         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>.
18961
18962
18963       </div>
18964     </div>
18965     <div class="padding"></div>
18966
18967     <div class="entry">
18968       <div class="title">
18969         <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>
18970       </div>
18971       <div class="date">
18972          7th December 2008
18973       </div>
18974       <div class="body">
18975         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
18976 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
18977 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
18978 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
18979 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
18980 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
18981 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
18982 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
18983
18984 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
18985 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
18986 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
18987 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
18988 of these cards.</p>
18989
18990       </div>
18991       <div class="tags">
18992
18993
18994         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>.
18995
18996
18997       </div>
18998     </div>
18999     <div class="padding"></div>
19000
19001     <div class="entry">
19002       <div class="title">
19003         <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>
19004       </div>
19005       <div class="date">
19006         25th November 2008
19007       </div>
19008       <div class="body">
19009         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
19010 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
19011 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
19012 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
19013 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
19014 notes are available on
19015 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
19016 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
19017 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
19018 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
19019 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
19020 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
19021 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
19022 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
19023 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
19024
19025 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
19026 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
19027
19028       </div>
19029       <div class="tags">
19030
19031
19032         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>.
19033
19034
19035       </div>
19036     </div>
19037     <div class="padding"></div>
19038
19039     <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>
19040     <div id="sidebar">
19041
19042
19043
19044 <h2>Archive</h2>
19045 <ul>
19046
19047 <li>2014
19048 <ul>
19049
19050 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
19051
19052 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
19053
19054 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (4)</a></li>
19055
19056 </ul></li>
19057
19058 <li>2013
19059 <ul>
19060
19061 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
19062
19063 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
19064
19065 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
19066
19067 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
19068
19069 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19070
19071 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
19072
19073 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
19074
19075 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
19076
19077 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
19078
19079 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
19080
19081 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
19082
19083 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19084
19085 </ul></li>
19086
19087 <li>2012
19088 <ul>
19089
19090 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
19091
19092 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
19093
19094 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
19095
19096 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
19097
19098 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
19099
19100 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
19101
19102 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
19103
19104 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19105
19106 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
19107
19108 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
19109
19110 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
19111
19112 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19113
19114 </ul></li>
19115
19116 <li>2011
19117 <ul>
19118
19119 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
19120
19121 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
19122
19123 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
19124
19125 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
19126
19127 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
19128
19129 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
19130
19131 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
19132
19133 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19134
19135 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
19136
19137 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19138
19139 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19140
19141 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
19142
19143 </ul></li>
19144
19145 <li>2010
19146 <ul>
19147
19148 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
19149
19150 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
19151
19152 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
19153
19154 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
19155
19156 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19157
19158 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
19159
19160 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
19161
19162 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
19163
19164 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
19165
19166 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
19167
19168 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
19169
19170 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
19171
19172 </ul></li>
19173
19174 <li>2009
19175 <ul>
19176
19177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
19178
19179 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
19180
19181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
19182
19183 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
19184
19185 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19186
19187 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
19188
19189 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
19190
19191 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
19192
19193 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
19194
19195 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19196
19197 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19198
19199 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19200
19201 </ul></li>
19202
19203 <li>2008
19204 <ul>
19205
19206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
19207
19208 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19209
19210 </ul></li>
19211
19212 </ul>
19213
19214
19215
19216 <h2>Tags</h2>
19217 <ul>
19218
19219  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
19220
19221  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
19222
19223  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
19224
19225  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
19226
19227  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
19228
19229  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
19230
19231  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
19232
19233  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
19234
19235  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (95)</a></li>
19236
19237  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (145)</a></li>
19238
19239  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
19240
19241  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
19242
19243  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
19244
19245  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (238)</a></li>
19246
19247  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
19248
19249  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
19250
19251  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
19252
19253  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (6)</a></li>
19254
19255  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
19256
19257  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (39)</a></li>
19258
19259  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
19260
19261  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
19262
19263  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
19264
19265  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (7)</a></li>
19266
19267  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
19268
19269  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (7)</a></li>
19270
19271  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
19272
19273  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (242)</a></li>
19274
19275  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (162)</a></li>
19276
19277  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (11)</a></li>
19278
19279  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
19280
19281  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
19282
19283  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (69)</a></li>
19284
19285  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
19286
19287  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
19288
19289  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
19290
19291  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
19292
19293  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
19294
19295  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
19296
19297  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
19298
19299  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (35)</a></li>
19300
19301  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
19302
19303  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
19304
19305  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
19306
19307  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
19308
19309  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
19310
19311  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (22)</a></li>
19312
19313  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
19314
19315  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
19316
19317  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
19318
19319  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
19320
19321  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (29)</a></li>
19322
19323 </ul>
19324
19325
19326     </div>
19327     <p style="text-align: right">
19328  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
19329 </p>
19330
19331   </body>
19332 </html>