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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         25th May 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
  32 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
  33 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
  34 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
  35 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
  36 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
  37
  38 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
  39 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
  40 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
  41 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
  42 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
  43 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
  44 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
  45 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
  46 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
  47 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
  48
  49 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
  50 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
  51 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
  52 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
  53 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
  54 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
  55
  56 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the marked
  57 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
  58 on new Laptops?</p>
  59
  60       </div>
  61       <div class="tags">
  62
  63
  64         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>.
  65
  66
  67       </div>
  68     </div>
  69     <div class="padding"></div>
  70
  71     <div class="entry">
  72       <div class="title">
  73         <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>
  74       </div>
  75       <div class="date">
  76         17th May 2013
  77       </div>
  78       <div class="body">
  79         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
  80 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
  81 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
  82 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
  83 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
  84 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
  85 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
  86 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
  87 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
  88 donate some money</a>.
  89
  90 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
  91 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
  92 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
  93 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
  94 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
  95
  96 <p>The script,
  97 <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/>
  98 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
  99 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
 100 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
 101
 102 <ol>
 103
 104 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
 105 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
 106 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
 107     our configuration.</li>
 108 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
 109     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
 110     according to the profile specified in the config above,
 111     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
 112 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
 113     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
 114 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
 115
 116 </ol>
 117
 118 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
 119 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
 120 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
 121 the needed packages.</p>
 122
 123 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
 124 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
 125 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
 126 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
 127 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
 128 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
 129
 130 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
 131 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
 132 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
 133
 134 <p><pre>
 135 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
 136 DESKTOP="lxde"
 137 </pre></p>
 138
 139 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
 140 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
 141 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
 142 boot.</p>
 143
 144       </div>
 145       <div class="tags">
 146
 147
 148         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>.
 149
 150
 151       </div>
 152     </div>
 153     <div class="padding"></div>
 154
 155     <div class="entry">
 156       <div class="title">
 157         <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>
 158       </div>
 159       <div class="date">
 160         11th May 2013
 161       </div>
 162       <div class="body">
 163         <P>In January,
 164 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
 165 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
 166 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
 167 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
 168 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
 169 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
 170 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
 171 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
 172 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
 173 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
 174 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
 175 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
 176
 177 <p><table>
 178 <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>
 179 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
 180 <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>
 181 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
 182 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
 183 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
 184 <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>
 185 <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>
 186 <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>
 187 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
 188 </table></p>
 189
 190 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
 191 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
 192 available in experimental.</p>
 193
 194 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
 195 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
 196 for LEGO designers.</p>
 197
 198       </div>
 199       <div class="tags">
 200
 201
 202         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>.
 203
 204
 205       </div>
 206     </div>
 207     <div class="padding"></div>
 208
 209     <div class="entry">
 210       <div class="title">
 211         <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>
 212       </div>
 213       <div class="date">
 214          5th May 2013
 215       </div>
 216       <div class="body">
 217         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
 218 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
 219 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
 220 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
 221 soon.</p>
 222
 223 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
 224 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
 225 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
 226 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
 227 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
 228 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
 229 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
 230 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
 231 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
 232 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
 233 Edu.</a>
 234
 235 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
 236 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
 237 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
 238 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
 239 follow.<p>
 240
 241       </div>
 242       <div class="tags">
 243
 244
 245         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>.
 246
 247
 248       </div>
 249     </div>
 250     <div class="padding"></div>
 251
 252     <div class="entry">
 253       <div class="title">
 254         <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>
 255       </div>
 256       <div class="date">
 257          3rd April 2013
 258       </div>
 259       <div class="body">
 260         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
 261 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
 262 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
 263 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
 264
 265 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
 266 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
 267 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
 268 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
 269 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
 270 BTS. :)</p>
 271
 272       </div>
 273       <div class="tags">
 274
 275
 276         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>.
 277
 278
 279       </div>
 280     </div>
 281     <div class="padding"></div>
 282
 283     <div class="entry">
 284       <div class="title">
 285         <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>
 286       </div>
 287       <div class="date">
 288          2nd February 2013
 289       </div>
 290       <div class="body">
 291         <p>My
 292 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
 293 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
 294 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
 295 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
 296 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
 297 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
 298 version too.</p>
 299
 300 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
 301 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
 302 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
 303 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
 304 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
 305 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
 306 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
 307 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
 308
 309 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
 310 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
 311 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
 312 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
 313 it. :)</p>
 314
 315 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 316 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 317 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 318
 319       </div>
 320       <div class="tags">
 321
 322
 323         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>.
 324
 325
 326       </div>
 327     </div>
 328     <div class="padding"></div>
 329
 330     <div class="entry">
 331       <div class="title">
 332         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
 333       </div>
 334       <div class="date">
 335         22nd January 2013
 336       </div>
 337       <div class="body">
 338         <p>Yesterday, I
 339 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
 340 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
 341 pluggable hardware devices, which I
 342 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
 343 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
 344 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
 345 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
 346 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
 347 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
 348 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
 349 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
 350 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
 351 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
 352
 353 <pre>
 354 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
 355 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
 356 </pre>
 357
 358 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
 359 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
 360 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
 361 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
 362
 363 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
 364 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
 365 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
 366 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
 367 word.</p>
 368
 369 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
 370 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
 371 process.</p>
 372
 373 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
 374 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
 375
 376       </div>
 377       <div class="tags">
 378
 379
 380         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>.
 381
 382
 383       </div>
 384     </div>
 385     <div class="padding"></div>
 386
 387     <div class="entry">
 388       <div class="title">
 389         <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>
 390       </div>
 391       <div class="date">
 392         21st January 2013
 393       </div>
 394       <div class="body">
 395         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
 396 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
 397 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
 398 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
 399 it, fetch the
 400 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
 401 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
 402 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
 403 autostart script.</p>
 404
 405 <p>The design is simple:</p>
 406
 407 <ul>
 408
 409 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
 410 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
 411
 412 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
 413 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
 414 initially did.</li>
 415
 416 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
 417 the APT database, a database
 418 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
 419 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
 420
 421 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
 422 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
 423 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
 424 package or packages.</li>
 425
 426 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
 427 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
 428
 429 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
 430 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
 431
 432 </ul>
 433
 434 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
 435 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
 436 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
 437 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
 438
 439 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
 440 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
 441 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
 442 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
 443 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
 444
 445 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
 446 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
 447 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
 448 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
 449 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
 450 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
 451 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
 452 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
 453
 454 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
 455 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
 456 '<tt>svn checkout
 457 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
 458 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
 459 devscripts package.</p>
 460
 461 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
 462 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
 463 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
 464 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
 465 instructions</a> for details.</p>
 466
 467       </div>
 468       <div class="tags">
 469
 470
 471         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>.
 472
 473
 474       </div>
 475     </div>
 476     <div class="padding"></div>
 477
 478     <div class="entry">
 479       <div class="title">
 480         <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>
 481       </div>
 482       <div class="date">
 483         19th January 2013
 484       </div>
 485       <div class="body">
 486         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
 487 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
 488 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
 489 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
 490 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
 491 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
 492 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
 493 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
 494 not a durable solution.
 495
 496 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
 497 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
 498
 499 <ul>
 500
 501 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
 502   than A4).</li>
 503 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
 504 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
 505 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
 506 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
 507 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
 508 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
 509 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
 510 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
 511 size).</li>
 512 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
 513   X.org packages.</li>
 514 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
 515   the time).
 516
 517 </ul>
 518
 519 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
 520 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
 521 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
 522 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
 523 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
 524 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
 525 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
 526 still be useful.</p>
 527
 528 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
 529 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
 530 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
 531 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
 532 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
 533 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
 534
 535       </div>
 536       <div class="tags">
 537
 538
 539         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>.
 540
 541
 542       </div>
 543     </div>
 544     <div class="padding"></div>
 545
 546     <div class="entry">
 547       <div class="title">
 548         <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>
 549       </div>
 550       <div class="date">
 551         18th January 2013
 552       </div>
 553       <div class="body">
 554         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
 555 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
 556 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
 557 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
 558 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
 559 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
 560 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
 561
 562 <pre>
 563 #!/usr/bin/python
 564 import sys
 565 import apt
 566 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 567     cache = apt.Cache()
 568     cache.open(None)
 569     thepkgs = []
 570     for pkg in cache:
 571         version = pkg.candidate
 572         if version is None:
 573             version = pkg.installed
 574         if version is None:
 575             continue
 576         record = version.record
 577         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
 578             continue
 579         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
 580         for t in mime_types:
 581             t = t.rstrip().strip()
 582             if t == mimetype:
 583                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
 584     return thepkgs
 585 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
 586 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
 587     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
 588 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
 589 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 590     print "  %s" %pkg
 591 </pre>
 592
 593 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
 594
 595 <pre>
 596 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
 597 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
 598   gecko-mediaplayer
 599 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
 600 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
 601   browser-plugin-gnash
 602 %
 603 </pre>
 604
 605 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
 606 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
 607 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
 608 anyone working on adding it?</p>
 609
 610 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
 611 request for icweasel support for this feature is
 612 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
 613 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
 614 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
 615 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
 616
 617       </div>
 618       <div class="tags">
 619
 620
 621         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>.
 622
 623
 624       </div>
 625     </div>
 626     <div class="padding"></div>
 627
 628     <div class="entry">
 629       <div class="title">
 630         <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>
 631       </div>
 632       <div class="date">
 633         16th January 2013
 634       </div>
 635       <div class="body">
 636         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
 637 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
 638 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
 639 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
 640 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
 641 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
 642 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
 643 downloaded by the browser.</p>
 644
 645 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
 646 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
 647 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
 648 can be found on the
 649 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
 650 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
 651 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
 652 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
 653 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
 654
 655 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
 656
 657 <pre>
 658   count MIME type
 659   ----- -----------------------
 660      32 text/plain
 661      30 audio/mpeg
 662      29 image/png
 663      28 image/jpeg
 664      27 application/ogg
 665      26 audio/x-mp3
 666      25 image/tiff
 667      25 image/gif
 668      22 image/bmp
 669      22 audio/x-wav
 670      20 audio/x-flac
 671      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 672      18 video/x-ms-asf
 673      18 audio/x-musepack
 674      18 audio/x-mpeg
 675      18 application/x-ogg
 676      17 video/mpeg
 677      17 audio/x-scpls
 678      17 audio/ogg
 679      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 680 </pre>
 681
 682 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
 683
 684 <pre>
 685   count MIME type
 686   ----- -----------------------
 687      33 text/plain
 688      32 image/png
 689      32 image/jpeg
 690      29 audio/mpeg
 691      27 image/gif
 692      26 image/tiff
 693      26 application/ogg
 694      25 audio/x-mp3
 695      22 image/bmp
 696      21 audio/x-wav
 697      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 698      19 audio/x-mpeg
 699      18 video/mpeg
 700      18 audio/x-scpls
 701      18 audio/x-flac
 702      18 application/x-ogg
 703      17 video/x-ms-asf
 704      17 text/html
 705      17 audio/x-musepack
 706      16 image/x-xbitmap
 707 </pre>
 708
 709 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 710
 711 <pre>
 712   count MIME type
 713   ----- -----------------------
 714      31 text/plain
 715      31 image/png
 716      31 image/jpeg
 717      29 audio/mpeg
 718      28 application/ogg
 719      27 image/gif
 720      26 image/tiff
 721      26 audio/x-mp3
 722      23 audio/x-wav
 723      22 image/bmp
 724      21 audio/x-flac
 725      20 audio/x-mpegurl
 726      19 audio/x-mpeg
 727      18 video/x-ms-asf
 728      18 video/mpeg
 729      18 audio/x-scpls
 730      18 application/x-ogg
 731      17 audio/x-musepack
 732      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 733      16 video/x-msvideo
 734 </pre>
 735
 736 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
 737 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
 738 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
 739 issues.</p>
 740
 741 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
 742 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
 743
 744       </div>
 745       <div class="tags">
 746
 747
 748         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>.
 749
 750
 751       </div>
 752     </div>
 753     <div class="padding"></div>
 754
 755     <div class="entry">
 756       <div class="title">
 757         <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>
 758       </div>
 759       <div class="date">
 760         15th January 2013
 761       </div>
 762       <div class="body">
 763         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
 764 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
 765 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
 766 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
 767 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
 768 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
 769 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
 770 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
 771 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
 772 packages.</p>
 773
 774 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
 775 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
 776 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
 777 modalias.</p>
 778
 779 <p><blockquote>
 780 Package: package-name
 781 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
 782 </blockquote></p>
 783
 784 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
 785 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
 786
 787 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
 788 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
 789
 790 <p><blockquote>
 791 Package: cheese
 792 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
 793 </blockquote></p>
 794
 795 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
 796 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
 797
 798 <p><blockquote>
 799 Package: pcmciautils
 800 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
 801 </blockquote></p>
 802
 803 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
 804 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
 805
 806 <p><blockquote>
 807 Package: colorhug-client
 808 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
 809 </blockquote></p>
 810
 811 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
 812 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
 813 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
 814
 815 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
 816 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
 817 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
 818 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
 819 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
 820 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
 821 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
 822 Raring.</p>
 823
 824 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
 825 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
 826 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
 827 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
 828 try the
 829 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
 830 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
 831 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
 832 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
 833
 834 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
 835 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
 836
 837 <p><blockquote>
 838 % ./hw-support-lookup
 839 <br>yubikey-personalization
 840 <br>%
 841 </blockquote></p>
 842
 843 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
 844 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
 845
 846 <p><blockquote>
 847 % ./hw-support-lookup
 848 <br>pcmciautils
 849 <br>%
 850 </blockquote></p>
 851
 852 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
 853 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
 854 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
 855
 856 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
 857 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
 858 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
 859 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
 860 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
 861 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
 862 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
 863 see if it work.</p>
 864
 865 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 866 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 867 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 868 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 869
 870       </div>
 871       <div class="tags">
 872
 873
 874         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>.
 875
 876
 877       </div>
 878     </div>
 879     <div class="padding"></div>
 880
 881     <div class="entry">
 882       <div class="title">
 883         <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>
 884       </div>
 885       <div class="date">
 886         14th January 2013
 887       </div>
 888       <div class="body">
 889         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
 890 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
 891 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
 892 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
 893 in
 894 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 895 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
 896
 897 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
 898
 899 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
 900 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
 901 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
 902 &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;,
 903 &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
 904 &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;.
 905
 906 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
 907 this shell script:</p>
 908
 909 <pre>
 910 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
 911 </pre>
 912
 913 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
 914 using modinfo:</p>
 915
 916 <pre>
 917 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
 918 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
 919 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
 920 %
 921 </pre>
 922
 923 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
 924
 925 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
 926 Bridge memory controller:</p>
 927
 928 <p><blockquote>
 929 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
 930 </blockquote></p>
 931
 932 <p>This represent these values:</p>
 933
 934 <pre>
 935  v   00008086  (vendor)
 936  d   00002770  (device)
 937  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
 938  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
 939  bc  06        (bus class)
 940  sc  00        (bus subclass)
 941  i   00        (interface)
 942 </pre>
 943
 944 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
 945 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
 946 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
 947 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
 948
 949 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
 950 means.</p>
 951
 952 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
 953
 954 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
 955 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
 956
 957 <p><blockquote>
 958 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
 959 </blockquote></p>
 960
 961 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
 962
 963 <pre>
 964  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
 965  p    0001  (device product)
 966  d    0206  (bcddevice)
 967  dc     09  (device class)
 968  dsc    00  (device subclass)
 969  dp     00  (device protocol)
 970  ic     09  (interface class)
 971  isc    00  (interface subclass)
 972  ip     00  (interface protocol)
 973 </pre>
 974
 975 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
 976 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
 977 these alias entries show up:</p>
 978
 979 <p><blockquote>
 980 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
 981 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
 982 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
 983 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
 984 </blockquote></p>
 985
 986 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
 987 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
 988 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
 989
 990 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
 991
 992 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
 993 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
 994
 995 <p><blockquote>
 996 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 997 </blockquote></p>
 998
 999 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
1000
1001 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
1002
1003 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1004 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1005 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
1006
1007 <p><blockquote>
1008 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
1009 </blockquote></p>
1010
1011 <p>The values present are</p>
1012
1013 <pre>
1014  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
1015  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
1016  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
1017  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
1018  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
1019  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
1020  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
1021  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
1022  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
1023  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
1024  ct   10             (chassis type)
1025  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
1026 </pre>
1027
1028 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
1029 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
1030
1031 <pre>
1032   3 Desktop
1033   4 Low Profile Desktop
1034   5 Pizza Box
1035   6 Mini Tower
1036   7 Tower
1037   8 Portable
1038   9 Laptop
1039  10 Notebook
1040  11 Hand Held
1041  12 Docking Station
1042  13 All In One
1043  14 Sub Notebook
1044  15 Space-saving
1045  16 Lunch Box
1046  17 Main Server Chassis
1047  18 Expansion Chassis
1048  19 Sub Chassis
1049  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1050  21 Peripheral Chassis
1051  22 RAID Chassis
1052  23 Rack Mount Chassis
1053  24 Sealed-case PC
1054  25 Multi-system
1055  26 CompactPCI
1056  27 AdvancedTCA
1057  28 Blade
1058  29 Blade Enclosing
1059 </pre>
1060
1061 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1062 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1063 claim it is a desktop.</p>
1064
1065 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
1066
1067 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
1068 test machine:</p>
1069
1070 <p><blockquote>
1071 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1072 </blockquote></p>
1073
1074 <p>The values present are</p>
1075
1076 <pre>
1077   ty  01  (type)
1078   pr  00  (prototype)
1079   id  00  (id)
1080   ex  00  (extra)
1081 </pre>
1082
1083 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
1084 the valid values are.</p>
1085
1086 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
1087
1088 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1089 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1090 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
1091 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
1092 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
1093 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
1094 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
1095
1096 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
1097
1098 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
1099 one can use the following shell script:</p>
1100
1101 <pre>
1102   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
1103     echo "$id" ; \
1104     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
1105   done
1106 </pre>
1107
1108 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
1109 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
1110
1111 <pre>
1112   acpi:ACPI0003:
1113     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
1114   acpi:device:
1115   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
1116   acpi:IBM0068:
1117     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
1118     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
1119     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
1120     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
1121   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1122     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
1123     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
1124     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
1125   [...]
1126 </pre>
1127
1128 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1129 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1130 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1131 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1132
1133 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
1134 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
1135 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
1136
1137       </div>
1138       <div class="tags">
1139
1140
1141         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>.
1142
1143
1144       </div>
1145     </div>
1146     <div class="padding"></div>
1147
1148     <div class="entry">
1149       <div class="title">
1150         <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>
1151       </div>
1152       <div class="date">
1153         10th January 2013
1154       </div>
1155       <div class="body">
1156         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1157 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1158 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1159 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
1160 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
1161 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
1162 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1163 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
1164 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1165 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
1166 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1167 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
1168 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1169 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
1170 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1171 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
1172 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
1173 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
1174
1175       </div>
1176       <div class="tags">
1177
1178
1179         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>.
1180
1181
1182       </div>
1183     </div>
1184     <div class="padding"></div>
1185
1186     <div class="entry">
1187       <div class="title">
1188         <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>
1189       </div>
1190       <div class="date">
1191          9th January 2013
1192       </div>
1193       <div class="body">
1194         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1195 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1196 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1197 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1198 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1199 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1200 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1201 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1202 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1203 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
1204 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
1205
1206 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
1207 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
1208 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
1209 simple:
1210
1211 <ul>
1212
1213 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1214   starting when a user log in.</li>
1215
1216 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1217   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
1218
1219 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1220   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1221   packages.</li>
1222
1223 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1224   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
1225
1226 </ul>
1227
1228 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1229 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1230 discover database to find packages and
1231 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
1232 packages.</p>
1233
1234 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1235 draft package is now checked into
1236 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1237 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
1238 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
1239 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1240 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1241 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
1242 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
1243 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1244 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
1245 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
1246 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
1247 because of the freeze).</p>
1248
1249 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1250 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1251 inserted):</p>
1252
1253 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
1254
1255 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1256 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
1257 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
1258
1259 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1260 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1261 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1262 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1263 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1264 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1265 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
1266
1267 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1268 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1269 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1270 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1271 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1272 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1273 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1274 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1275 not be installed?</p>
1276
1277 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1278 please send me an email. :)</p>
1279
1280       </div>
1281       <div class="tags">
1282
1283
1284         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>.
1285
1286
1287       </div>
1288     </div>
1289     <div class="padding"></div>
1290
1291     <div class="entry">
1292       <div class="title">
1293         <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>
1294       </div>
1295       <div class="date">
1296          2nd January 2013
1297       </div>
1298       <div class="body">
1299         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
1300 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
1301 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
1302 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
1303 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
1304 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
1305 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
1306 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
1307 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
1308 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
1309
1310 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
1311 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
1312 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
1313
1314       </div>
1315       <div class="tags">
1316
1317
1318         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>.
1319
1320
1321       </div>
1322     </div>
1323     <div class="padding"></div>
1324
1325     <div class="entry">
1326       <div class="title">
1327         <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>
1328       </div>
1329       <div class="date">
1330         25th December 2012
1331       </div>
1332       <div class="body">
1333         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1334 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
1335
1336 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
1337 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1338 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1339 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1340 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
1341 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1342 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1343 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
1344 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1345 name.</p>
1346
1347 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1348 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1349 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
1350
1351 <blockquote><pre>
1352 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1353 cd bitcoin
1354 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1355 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1356 </pre></blockquote>
1357
1358 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1359 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1360 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1361 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1362 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1363 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1364 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1365 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1366 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
1367
1368 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1369 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1370 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1371
1372       </div>
1373       <div class="tags">
1374
1375
1376         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>.
1377
1378
1379       </div>
1380     </div>
1381     <div class="padding"></div>
1382
1383     <div class="entry">
1384       <div class="title">
1385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
1386       </div>
1387       <div class="date">
1388         21st December 2012
1389       </div>
1390       <div class="body">
1391         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1392 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
1393 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1394 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1395 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1396 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1397 is now maintained by a
1398 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1399 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1400 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1401 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1402 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1403 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
1404 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
1405 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
1406 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
1407 Corallo in a
1408 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
1409 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
1410 Debian package.</p>
1411
1412 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
1413 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
1414 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
1415 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
1416 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
1417 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
1418 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
1419 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
1420 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1421 new version to unstable.
1422
1423 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1424 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
1425 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1426 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1427 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1428 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1429 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1430 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
1431 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1432 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1433 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
1434 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1435 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1436 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
1437 have not tested them.</p>
1438
1439 <p>My
1440 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
1441 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1442 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1443 years ago, as can be
1444 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
1445 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
1446 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1447 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1448 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
1449 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1450 the same address as last time,
1451 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1452
1453       </div>
1454       <div class="tags">
1455
1456
1457         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>.
1458
1459
1460       </div>
1461     </div>
1462     <div class="padding"></div>
1463
1464     <div class="entry">
1465       <div class="title">
1466         <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>
1467       </div>
1468       <div class="date">
1469          7th September 2012
1470       </div>
1471       <div class="body">
1472         <p>As I
1473 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
1474 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
1475 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
1476 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
1477 repository for the project</a>.</p>
1478
1479 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
1480 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
1481 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
1482 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
1483
1484 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
1485 PostScript formats at
1486 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
1487 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
1488
1489       </div>
1490       <div class="tags">
1491
1492
1493         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>.
1494
1495
1496       </div>
1497     </div>
1498     <div class="padding"></div>
1499
1500     <div class="entry">
1501       <div class="title">
1502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
1503       </div>
1504       <div class="date">
1505         16th August 2012
1506       </div>
1507       <div class="body">
1508         <p>I dag fyller
1509 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
1510 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
1511 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
1512
1513       </div>
1514       <div class="tags">
1515
1516
1517         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
1518
1519
1520       </div>
1521     </div>
1522     <div class="padding"></div>
1523
1524     <div class="entry">
1525       <div class="title">
1526         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1527       </div>
1528       <div class="date">
1529         24th June 2012
1530       </div>
1531       <div class="body">
1532         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1533 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
1534 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
1535 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1536 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1537 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
1538 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1539 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1540 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
1541 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
1542 missing in my book.</p>
1543
1544 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1545 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1546 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1547 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
1548 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
1549 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
1550 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
1551
1552       </div>
1553       <div class="tags">
1554
1555
1556         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>.
1557
1558
1559       </div>
1560     </div>
1561     <div class="padding"></div>
1562
1563     <div class="entry">
1564       <div class="title">
1565         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
1566       </div>
1567       <div class="date">
1568         21st November 2011
1569       </div>
1570       <div class="body">
1571         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
1572 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
1573 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
1574 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
1575 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
1576 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
1577 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
1578 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
1579 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
1580 the tools to do so.</p>
1581
1582 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
1583 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
1584 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
1585 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
1586
1587 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
1588 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
1589 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
1590 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
1591 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
1592 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
1593 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
1594 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
1595
1596 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
1597 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
1598 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
1599
1600 <p><pre>
1601 #!/usr/bin/perl
1602 use strict;
1603 use warnings;
1604 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
1605 BEGIN {
1606     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
1607     my %rhelmodules = (
1608         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
1609         );
1610     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
1611         eval "use $module;";
1612         if ($@) {
1613             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
1614             system("yum install -y $pkg");
1615             eval "use $module;";
1616         }
1617     }
1618 }
1619 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
1620
1621 upgrade_dell();
1622
1623 exit 0;
1624
1625 sub run_firmware_script {
1626     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
1627     unless ($script) {
1628         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
1629         exit 1
1630     }
1631     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
1632
1633     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
1634         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
1635     } else {
1636         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
1637     }
1638 }
1639
1640 sub run_firmware_scripts {
1641     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
1642     # Run firmware packages
1643     for my $dir (@dirs) {
1644         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
1645         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
1646         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
1647             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
1648             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
1649         }
1650         closedir $dh;
1651     }
1652 }
1653
1654 sub download {
1655     my $url = shift;
1656     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
1657     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
1658 }
1659
1660 sub upgrade_dell {
1661     my @dirs;
1662     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1663     chomp $product;
1664
1665     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
1666
1667         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
1668         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
1669
1670         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
1671             CLEANUP => 1
1672             );
1673         chdir($tmpdir);
1674         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
1675         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
1676         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
1677         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
1678         my $fwopts = "-q";
1679         if (@paths) {
1680             for my $url (@paths) {
1681                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
1682             }
1683             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
1684         } else {
1685             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1686             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1687         }
1688         chdir('/');
1689     } else {
1690         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1691         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1692     }
1693 }
1694
1695 sub fetch_dell_fw {
1696     my $path = shift;
1697     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
1698     download($url);
1699 }
1700
1701 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
1702 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
1703 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
1704 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
1705     my $filename = shift;
1706
1707     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1708     chomp $product;
1709     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
1710
1711     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
1712
1713     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
1714     my @paths;
1715     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
1716         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
1717         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
1718         my $oscode;
1719         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
1720             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
1721         } else {
1722             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
1723         }
1724         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
1725         {
1726             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
1727         }
1728     }
1729     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
1730         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
1731
1732         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
1733         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
1734
1735         my $cpath = $component->{path};
1736         for my $path (@paths) {
1737             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
1738                 push(@paths, $cpath);
1739             }
1740         }
1741     }
1742     return @paths;
1743 }
1744 </pre>
1745
1746 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
1747 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
1748 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
1749 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
1750 outdated.</p>
1751
1752       </div>
1753       <div class="tags">
1754
1755
1756         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>.
1757
1758
1759       </div>
1760     </div>
1761     <div class="padding"></div>
1762
1763     <div class="entry">
1764       <div class="title">
1765         <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>
1766       </div>
1767       <div class="date">
1768          4th August 2011
1769       </div>
1770       <div class="body">
1771         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
1772 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
1773 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
1774 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
1775 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
1776 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
1777 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
1778 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
1779 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
1780
1781 <p><blockquote>
1782 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
1783 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
1784 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
1785 </blockquote></p>
1786
1787 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
1788 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
1789 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
1790 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
1791 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
1792 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
1793 hard to explain.</p>
1794
1795 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
1796 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
1797 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
1798 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
1799 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
1800 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
1801 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
1802 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
1803 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
1804 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
1805 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
1806 mode).</p>
1807
1808 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
1809 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
1810 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
1811 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
1812 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
1813 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
1814 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
1815 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
1816 after visiting single user mode.</p>
1817
1818 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
1819 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
1820 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
1821 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
1822 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
1823 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
1824 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
1825 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
1826
1827 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
1828 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
1829 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
1830
1831       </div>
1832       <div class="tags">
1833
1834
1835         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>.
1836
1837
1838       </div>
1839     </div>
1840     <div class="padding"></div>
1841
1842     <div class="entry">
1843       <div class="title">
1844         <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>
1845       </div>
1846       <div class="date">
1847         30th July 2011
1848       </div>
1849       <div class="body">
1850         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
1851 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
1852 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
1853 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
1854 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
1855 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
1856 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
1857 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
1858 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
1859 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
1860 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
1861 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
1862 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
1863
1864 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
1865 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
1866 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
1867 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
1868 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
1869 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
1870 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
1871 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
1872 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
1873
1874 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
1875 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
1876 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
1877 is presented.</p>
1878
1879 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
1880 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
1881 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
1882 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
1883 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
1884 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
1885 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
1886 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
1887 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
1888 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
1889 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
1890 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
1891 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
1892 find time to push this forward.</p>
1893
1894       </div>
1895       <div class="tags">
1896
1897
1898         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>.
1899
1900
1901       </div>
1902     </div>
1903     <div class="padding"></div>
1904
1905     <div class="entry">
1906       <div class="title">
1907         <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>
1908       </div>
1909       <div class="date">
1910         29th July 2011
1911       </div>
1912       <div class="body">
1913         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
1914 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
1915 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
1916 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
1917 issues.</p>
1918
1919 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
1920 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
1921 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
1922
1923 <ol>
1924
1925 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
1926 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
1927 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
1928 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
1929 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
1930 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
1931 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
1932 Debian.</li>
1933
1934 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
1935 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
1936 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
1937 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
1938 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
1939 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
1940 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
1941 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
1942 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
1943 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
1944 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
1945 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
1946 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
1947
1948 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
1949 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
1950 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
1951 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
1952 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
1953 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
1954 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
1955 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
1956 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
1957 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
1958
1959 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
1960 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
1961 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
1962 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
1963 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
1964 latter behaviour.</li>
1965
1966 </ol>
1967
1968 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
1969 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
1970 it do not matter much.</p>
1971
1972 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
1973 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
1974 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
1975
1976       </div>
1977       <div class="tags">
1978
1979
1980         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>.
1981
1982
1983       </div>
1984     </div>
1985     <div class="padding"></div>
1986
1987     <div class="entry">
1988       <div class="title">
1989         <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>
1990       </div>
1991       <div class="date">
1992         26th July 2011
1993       </div>
1994       <div class="body">
1995         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
1996 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
1997 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
1998 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
1999 security support for a few years.</p>
2000
2001 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
2002 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
2003 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
2004 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
2005 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
2006 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
2007 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
2008 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
2009 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
2010 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
2011 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
2012 easier in the future.</p>
2013
2014 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
2015 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
2016 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
2017 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
2018 do not have time for.</p>
2019
2020       </div>
2021       <div class="tags">
2022
2023
2024         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>.
2025
2026
2027       </div>
2028     </div>
2029     <div class="padding"></div>
2030
2031     <div class="entry">
2032       <div class="title">
2033         <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>
2034       </div>
2035       <div class="date">
2036          3rd April 2011
2037       </div>
2038       <div class="body">
2039         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
2040 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
2041 update in English.</p>
2042
2043 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
2044 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
2045 of the British service
2046 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
2047 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
2048 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
2049 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
2050 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
2051 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
2052 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
2053 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
2054 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
2055 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
2056 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
2057 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
2058 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
2059
2060 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
2061 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
2062 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
2063 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
2064 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
2065 public infrastructure.</p>
2066
2067 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
2068 such service?</p>
2069
2070       </div>
2071       <div class="tags">
2072
2073
2074         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>.
2075
2076
2077       </div>
2078     </div>
2079     <div class="padding"></div>
2080
2081     <div class="entry">
2082       <div class="title">
2083         <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>
2084       </div>
2085       <div class="date">
2086         28th January 2011
2087       </div>
2088       <div class="body">
2089         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
2090 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
2091 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
2092 available on the Internet, and check our locally
2093 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
2094 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
2095 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
2096 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
2097 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
2098 out which security holes were present in our free software
2099 collection.</p>
2100
2101 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
2102 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
2103 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
2104 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
2105 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
2106 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
2107 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
2108 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
2109 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
2110 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
2111 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
2112 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
2113 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
2114 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
2115 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
2116 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
2117
2118 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
2119 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
2120 check out, one could look up
2121 <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
2122 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
2123 The most recent one is
2124 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
2125 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
2126 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
2127
2128 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
2129 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
2130 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
2131 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
2132 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
2133 security issues out.</p>
2134
2135 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
2136 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
2137 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
2138 RHEL is providing
2139 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
2140 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
2141 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
2142
2143 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
2144 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
2145 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
2146 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
2147 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
2148 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
2149 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
2150 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
2151 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
2152 established soon.</p>
2153
2154 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
2155 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
2156 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
2157 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
2158 for their packages.</p>
2159
2160       </div>
2161       <div class="tags">
2162
2163
2164         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>.
2165
2166
2167       </div>
2168     </div>
2169     <div class="padding"></div>
2170
2171     <div class="entry">
2172       <div class="title">
2173         <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>
2174       </div>
2175       <div class="date">
2176         23rd January 2011
2177       </div>
2178       <div class="body">
2179         <p>In the
2180 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
2181 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
2182 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
2183 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
2184 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
2185 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
2186 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
2187 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
2188 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
2189 one of my machines like this:</p>
2190
2191 <pre>
2192 loaded modules:
2193 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
2194 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
2195 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
2196 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
2197 10de:03ec pata_amd
2198 10de:03f6 sata_nv
2199 1022:1103 k8temp
2200 109e:036e bttv
2201 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
2202 11ab:4364 sky2
2203 </pre>
2204
2205 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
2206 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
2207
2208 <pre>
2209 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
2210     echo loaded pci modules:
2211     (
2212         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
2213         for address in * ; do
2214             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
2215                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
2216                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
2217                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
2218                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
2219                     echo "$id $module"
2220                 fi
2221             fi
2222         done
2223     )
2224     echo
2225 fi
2226 </pre>
2227
2228 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
2229 mappings:</p>
2230
2231 <pre>
2232 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
2233     echo loaded usb modules:
2234     (
2235         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
2236         for address in * ; do
2237             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
2238                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
2239                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
2240                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
2241                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
2242                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
2243                         echo "$id $module"
2244                     fi
2245                 fi
2246             fi
2247         done
2248     )
2249     echo
2250 fi
2251 </pre>
2252
2253 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
2254 well.</p>
2255
2256       </div>
2257       <div class="tags">
2258
2259
2260         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>.
2261
2262
2263       </div>
2264     </div>
2265     <div class="padding"></div>
2266
2267     <div class="entry">
2268       <div class="title">
2269         <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>
2270       </div>
2271       <div class="date">
2272         22nd December 2010
2273       </div>
2274       <div class="body">
2275         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
2276 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
2277 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
2278 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
2279 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
2280 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
2281 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
2282 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
2283 university.</p>
2284
2285 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
2286 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
2287 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
2288 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
2289 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
2290 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
2291 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
2292 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
2293
2294 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
2295 I perform on a new model.</p>
2296
2297 <ul>
2298
2299 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
2300 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
2301 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
2302
2303 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
2304 installation, X.org is working.</li>
2305
2306 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
2307 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
2308 reported by the program.</li>
2309
2310 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
2311 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
2312 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
2313 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
2314 normally test this by playing
2315 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
2316 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
2317
2318 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
2319 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2320
2321 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
2322 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2323
2324 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
2325 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
2326
2327 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
2328 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
2329 few.</li>
2330
2331 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
2332 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
2333 notice this.</li>
2334
2335 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
2336 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
2337 resume.</li>
2338
2339 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
2340 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
2341 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
2342 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
2343 not.</li>
2344
2345 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
2346 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
2347 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
2348 existence.</li>
2349
2350 </ul>
2351
2352 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
2353 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
2354 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
2355 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
2356 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
2357 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
2358 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
2359 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
2360
2361       </div>
2362       <div class="tags">
2363
2364
2365         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>.
2366
2367
2368       </div>
2369     </div>
2370     <div class="padding"></div>
2371
2372     <div class="entry">
2373       <div class="title">
2374         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
2375       </div>
2376       <div class="date">
2377         11th December 2010
2378       </div>
2379       <div class="body">
2380         <p>As I continue to explore
2381 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
2382 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
2383 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
2384
2385 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
2386 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
2387 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
2388 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
2389 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
2390 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
2391 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
2392 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
2393 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
2394 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
2395 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
2396 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
2397 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
2398 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
2399 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
2400 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
2401 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
2402 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
2403 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
2404 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
2405
2406 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
2407 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
2408 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
2409 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
2410 If the Skolelinux foundation
2411 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
2412 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
2413 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
2414 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
2415 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
2416 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
2417 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
2418 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
2419
2420 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
2421 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
2422 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
2423 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
2424 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
2425 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
2426 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
2427 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
2428 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
2429 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
2430 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
2431 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
2432 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
2433 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
2434 currencies.</p>
2435
2436 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
2437 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
2438 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
2439 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
2440 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
2441 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
2442 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
2443 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
2444 BitCoins.  Check out
2445 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
2446 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
2447 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
2448 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
2449 yet.</p>
2450
2451 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
2452 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
2453 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
2454 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
2455 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
2456
2457       </div>
2458       <div class="tags">
2459
2460
2461         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>.
2462
2463
2464       </div>
2465     </div>
2466     <div class="padding"></div>
2467
2468     <div class="entry">
2469       <div class="title">
2470         <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>
2471       </div>
2472       <div class="date">
2473         10th December 2010
2474       </div>
2475       <div class="body">
2476         <p>With this weeks lawless
2477 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
2478 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
2479 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
2480 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
2481 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
2482 A blog post from
2483 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
2484 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
2485 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
2486 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
2487 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
2488 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
2489 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
2490
2491 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
2492 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
2493 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
2494 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
2495 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
2496 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
2497 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
2498 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
2499 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
2500 Debian</a> soon.</p>
2501
2502 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
2503 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
2504 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
2505 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
2506 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
2507 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
2508 you can even get
2509 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
2510 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
2511 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
2512 on the current exchange rates.</p>
2513
2514 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
2515 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
2516 donations to the address
2517 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
2518
2519       </div>
2520       <div class="tags">
2521
2522
2523         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>.
2524
2525
2526       </div>
2527     </div>
2528     <div class="padding"></div>
2529
2530     <div class="entry">
2531       <div class="title">
2532         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
2533       </div>
2534       <div class="date">
2535         27th November 2010
2536       </div>
2537       <div class="body">
2538         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
2539 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
2540 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
2541 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
2542 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
2543 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
2544 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
2545 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
2546
2547 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
2548 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2549 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
2550 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
2551 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
2552 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
2553 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
2554 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
2555 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
2556 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
2557 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
2558
2559 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
2560 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
2561 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
2562 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
2563 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
2564 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
2565 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
2566 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
2567 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
2568 what is going on.</p>
2569
2570       </div>
2571       <div class="tags">
2572
2573
2574         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>.
2575
2576
2577       </div>
2578     </div>
2579     <div class="padding"></div>
2580
2581     <div class="entry">
2582       <div class="title">
2583         <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>
2584       </div>
2585       <div class="date">
2586         22nd November 2010
2587       </div>
2588       <div class="body">
2589         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
2590 upgrade testing of the
2591 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2592 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
2593 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
2594 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
2595
2596 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2597
2598 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2599
2600 <blockquote><p>
2601   apache2.2-bin
2602   aptdaemon
2603   baobab
2604   binfmt-support
2605   browser-plugin-gnash
2606   cheese-common
2607   cli-common
2608   cups-pk-helper
2609   dmz-cursor-theme
2610   empathy
2611   empathy-common
2612   freedesktop-sound-theme
2613   freeglut3
2614   gconf-defaults-service
2615   gdm-themes
2616   gedit-plugins
2617   geoclue
2618   geoclue-hostip
2619   geoclue-localnet
2620   geoclue-manual
2621   geoclue-yahoo
2622   gnash
2623   gnash-common
2624   gnome
2625   gnome-backgrounds
2626   gnome-cards-data
2627   gnome-codec-install
2628   gnome-core
2629   gnome-desktop-environment
2630   gnome-disk-utility
2631   gnome-screenshot
2632   gnome-search-tool
2633   gnome-session-canberra
2634   gnome-system-log
2635   gnome-themes-extras
2636   gnome-themes-more
2637   gnome-user-share
2638   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2639   gstreamer0.10-tools
2640   gtk2-engines
2641   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2642   gtk2-engines-smooth
2643   hamster-applet
2644   libapache2-mod-dnssd
2645   libapr1
2646   libaprutil1
2647   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
2648   libaprutil1-ldap
2649   libart2.0-cil
2650   libboost-date-time1.42.0
2651   libboost-python1.42.0
2652   libboost-thread1.42.0
2653   libchamplain-0.4-0
2654   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
2655   libcheese-gtk18
2656   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2657   libcryptui0
2658   libdiscid0
2659   libelf1
2660   libepc-1.0-2
2661   libepc-common
2662   libepc-ui-1.0-2
2663   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2664   libfreerdp0
2665   libgconf2.0-cil
2666   libgdata-common
2667   libgdata7
2668   libgdu-gtk0
2669   libgee2
2670   libgeoclue0
2671   libgexiv2-0
2672   libgif4
2673   libglade2.0-cil
2674   libglib2.0-cil
2675   libgmime2.4-cil
2676   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2677   libgnome2.24-cil
2678   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
2679   libgpod-common
2680   libgpod4
2681   libgtk2.0-cil
2682   libgtkglext1
2683   libgtksourceview2.0-common
2684   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2685   libmono-addins0.2-cil
2686   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
2687   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2688   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
2689   libmono-posix2.0-cil
2690   libmono-security2.0-cil
2691   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2692   libmono-system2.0-cil
2693   libmtp8
2694   libmusicbrainz3-6
2695   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
2696   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
2697   libopal3.6.8
2698   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
2699   libpt2.6.7
2700   libpython2.6
2701   librpm1
2702   librpmio1
2703   libsdl1.2debian
2704   libsrtp0
2705   libssh-4
2706   libtelepathy-farsight0
2707   libtelepathy-glib0
2708   libtidy-0.99-0
2709   media-player-info
2710   mesa-utils
2711   mono-2.0-gac
2712   mono-gac
2713   mono-runtime
2714   nautilus-sendto
2715   nautilus-sendto-empathy
2716   p7zip-full
2717   pkg-config
2718   python-aptdaemon
2719   python-aptdaemon-gtk
2720   python-axiom
2721   python-beautifulsoup
2722   python-bugbuddy
2723   python-clientform
2724   python-coherence
2725   python-configobj
2726   python-crypto
2727   python-cupshelpers
2728   python-elementtree
2729   python-epsilon
2730   python-evolution
2731   python-feedparser
2732   python-gdata
2733   python-gdbm
2734   python-gst0.10
2735   python-gtkglext1
2736   python-gtksourceview2
2737   python-httplib2
2738   python-louie
2739   python-mako
2740   python-markupsafe
2741   python-mechanize
2742   python-nevow
2743   python-notify
2744   python-opengl
2745   python-openssl
2746   python-pam
2747   python-pkg-resources
2748   python-pyasn1
2749   python-pysqlite2
2750   python-rdflib
2751   python-serial
2752   python-tagpy
2753   python-twisted-bin
2754   python-twisted-conch
2755   python-twisted-core
2756   python-twisted-web
2757   python-utidylib
2758   python-webkit
2759   python-xdg
2760   python-zope.interface
2761   remmina
2762   remmina-plugin-data
2763   remmina-plugin-rdp
2764   remmina-plugin-vnc
2765   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2766   rhythmbox-plugins
2767   rpm-common
2768   rpm2cpio
2769   seahorse-plugins
2770   shotwell
2771   software-center
2772   system-config-printer-udev
2773   telepathy-gabble
2774   telepathy-mission-control-5
2775   telepathy-salut
2776   tomboy
2777   totem
2778   totem-coherence
2779   totem-mozilla
2780   totem-plugins
2781   transmission-common
2782   xdg-user-dirs
2783   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
2784   xserver-xephyr
2785 </p></blockquote>
2786
2787 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2788
2789 <blockquote><p>
2790   cheese
2791   ekiga
2792   eog
2793   epiphany-extensions
2794   evolution-exchange
2795   fast-user-switch-applet
2796   file-roller
2797   gcalctool
2798   gconf-editor
2799   gdm
2800   gedit
2801   gedit-common
2802   gnome-games
2803   gnome-games-data
2804   gnome-nettool
2805   gnome-system-tools
2806   gnome-themes
2807   gnuchess
2808   gucharmap
2809   guile-1.8-libs
2810   libavahi-ui0
2811   libdmx1
2812   libgalago3
2813   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2814   libgtksourceview2.0-0
2815   liblircclient0
2816   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
2817   libspeexdsp1
2818   libsvga1
2819   rhythmbox
2820   seahorse
2821   sound-juicer
2822   system-config-printer
2823   totem-common
2824   transmission-gtk
2825   vinagre
2826   vino
2827 </p></blockquote>
2828
2829 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2830
2831 <blockquote><p>
2832   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2833 </p></blockquote>
2834
2835 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2836
2837 <blockquote><p>
2838 [nothing]
2839 </p></blockquote>
2840
2841 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
2842
2843 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2844
2845 <blockquote><p>
2846   ksmserver
2847 </p></blockquote>
2848
2849 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2850
2851 <blockquote><p>
2852   kwin
2853   network-manager-kde
2854 </p></blockquote>
2855
2856 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2857
2858 <blockquote><p>
2859   arts
2860   dolphin
2861   freespacenotifier
2862   google-gadgets-gst
2863   google-gadgets-xul
2864   kappfinder
2865   kcalc
2866   kcharselect
2867   kde-core
2868   kde-plasma-desktop
2869   kde-standard
2870   kde-window-manager
2871   kdeartwork
2872   kdeartwork-emoticons
2873   kdeartwork-style
2874   kdeartwork-theme-icon
2875   kdebase
2876   kdebase-apps
2877   kdebase-workspace
2878   kdebase-workspace-bin
2879   kdebase-workspace-data
2880   kdeeject
2881   kdelibs
2882   kdeplasma-addons
2883   kdeutils
2884   kdewallpapers
2885   kdf
2886   kfloppy
2887   kgpg
2888   khelpcenter4
2889   kinfocenter
2890   konq-plugins-l10n
2891   konqueror-nsplugins
2892   kscreensaver
2893   kscreensaver-xsavers
2894   ktimer
2895   kwrite
2896   libgle3
2897   libkde4-ruby1.8
2898   libkonq5
2899   libkonq5-templates
2900   libnetpbm10
2901   libplasma-ruby
2902   libplasma-ruby1.8
2903   libqt4-ruby1.8
2904   marble-data
2905   marble-plugins
2906   netpbm
2907   nuvola-icon-theme
2908   plasma-dataengines-workspace
2909   plasma-desktop
2910   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
2911   plasma-runners-addons
2912   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
2913   plasma-scriptengine-python
2914   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
2915   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
2916   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
2917   plasma-scriptengines
2918   plasma-wallpapers-addons
2919   plasma-widget-folderview
2920   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2921   ruby
2922   sweeper
2923   update-notifier-kde
2924   xscreensaver-data-extra
2925   xscreensaver-gl
2926   xscreensaver-gl-extra
2927   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2928 </p></blockquote>
2929
2930 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2931
2932 <blockquote><p>
2933   ark
2934   google-gadgets-common
2935   google-gadgets-qt
2936   htdig
2937   kate
2938   kdebase-bin
2939   kdebase-data
2940   kdepasswd
2941   kfind
2942   klipper
2943   konq-plugins
2944   konqueror
2945   ksysguard
2946   ksysguardd
2947   libarchive1
2948   libcln6
2949   libeet1
2950   libeina-svn-06
2951   libggadget-1.0-0b
2952   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
2953   libgps19
2954   libkdecorations4
2955   libkephal4
2956   libkonq4
2957   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
2958   libkscreensaver5
2959   libksgrd4
2960   libksignalplotter4
2961   libkunitconversion4
2962   libkwineffects1a
2963   libmarblewidget4
2964   libntrack-qt4-1
2965   libntrack0
2966   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
2967   libplasmaclock4a
2968   libplasmagenericshell4
2969   libprocesscore4a
2970   libprocessui4a
2971   libqalculate5
2972   libqedje0a
2973   libqtruby4shared2
2974   libqzion0a
2975   libruby1.8
2976   libscim8c2a
2977   libsmokekdecore4-3
2978   libsmokekdeui4-3
2979   libsmokekfile3
2980   libsmokekhtml3
2981   libsmokekio3
2982   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
2983   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
2984   libsmokekparts3
2985   libsmokektexteditor3
2986   libsmokekutils3
2987   libsmokenepomuk3
2988   libsmokephonon3
2989   libsmokeplasma3
2990   libsmokeqtcore4-3
2991   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
2992   libsmokeqtgui4-3
2993   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
2994   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
2995   libsmokeqtscript4-3
2996   libsmokeqtsql4-3
2997   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
2998   libsmokeqttest4-3
2999   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
3000   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
3001   libsmokeqtxml4-3
3002   libsmokesolid3
3003   libsmokesoprano3
3004   libtaskmanager4a
3005   libtidy-0.99-0
3006   libweather-ion4a
3007   libxklavier16
3008   libxxf86misc1
3009   okteta
3010   oxygencursors
3011   plasma-dataengines-addons
3012   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
3013   plasma-widget-lancelot
3014   plasma-widgets-addons
3015   plasma-widgets-workspace
3016   polkit-kde-1
3017   ruby1.8
3018   systemsettings
3019   update-notifier-common
3020 </p></blockquote>
3021
3022 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
3023 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
3024 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
3025 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
3026
3027       </div>
3028       <div class="tags">
3029
3030
3031         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>.
3032
3033
3034       </div>
3035     </div>
3036     <div class="padding"></div>
3037
3038     <div class="entry">
3039       <div class="title">
3040         <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>
3041       </div>
3042       <div class="date">
3043         22nd November 2010
3044       </div>
3045       <div class="body">
3046         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
3047 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
3048 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
3049 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
3050 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
3051 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
3052 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
3053 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
3054 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
3055
3056 <p>I found
3057 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
3058 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
3059 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
3060 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
3061 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
3062 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
3063
3064 <pre>
3065 #!/bin/sh
3066
3067 # Based on
3068 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
3069
3070 set -e
3071 set -x
3072
3073 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
3074     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
3075     exit 1
3076 else
3077     host="$1"
3078 fi
3079
3080 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
3081     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
3082     exit 1
3083 fi
3084
3085 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
3086 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3087 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3088 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
3089
3090 img=$host.img
3091 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
3092 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
3093
3094 parted $img mklabel msdos
3095 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
3096 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
3097 parted $img set 1 boot on
3098
3099 modprobe dm-mod
3100 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
3101 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
3102
3103 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
3104 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
3105 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
3106
3107 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
3108 losetup -d /dev/loop0
3109 </pre>
3110
3111 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
3112 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
3113
3114 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
3115 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
3116 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
3117 seem to work just fine.</p>
3118
3119       </div>
3120       <div class="tags">
3121
3122
3123         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>.
3124
3125
3126       </div>
3127     </div>
3128     <div class="padding"></div>
3129
3130     <div class="entry">
3131       <div class="title">
3132         <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>
3133       </div>
3134       <div class="date">
3135         20th November 2010
3136       </div>
3137       <div class="body">
3138         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
3139 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
3140 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
3141 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
3142
3143 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
3144 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
3145 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
3146
3147 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
3148
3149 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3150
3151 <blockquote><p>
3152   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
3153   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
3154   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
3155   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
3156   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
3157   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
3158   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
3159   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
3160   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
3161   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
3162   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3163   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3164   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
3165   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
3166   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
3167   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
3168   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3169   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
3170   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3171   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
3172   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
3173   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3174   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
3175   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
3176   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
3177   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3178   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3179   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
3180   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3181   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
3182   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
3183   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
3184   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
3185   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
3186   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
3187   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
3188   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
3189   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
3190   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
3191   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
3192   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
3193   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
3194   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
3195   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
3196   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
3197   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
3198   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
3199   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
3200   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
3201   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
3202   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
3203   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
3204   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3205   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
3206   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
3207   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
3208   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
3209   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
3210   zip
3211 </p></blockquote>
3212
3213 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
3214
3215 <blockquote><p>
3216   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
3217   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
3218   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
3219   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
3220   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
3221   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
3222   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
3223   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
3224   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
3225   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
3226   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
3227   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
3228   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
3229   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3230   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3231   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
3232   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3233   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
3234   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
3235   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
3236   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
3237   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
3238   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
3239   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
3240   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
3241   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
3242   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
3243   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
3244   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
3245 </p></blockquote>
3246
3247 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3248
3249 <blockquote><p>
3250   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3251 </p></blockquote>
3252
3253 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3254
3255 <blockquote><p>
3256 [nothing]
3257 </p></blockquote>
3258
3259 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
3260
3261 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3262
3263 <blockquote><p>
3264   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
3265   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
3266   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
3267   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
3268   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
3269   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
3270   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
3271   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
3272   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
3273   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
3274   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
3275   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
3276   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
3277   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
3278   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
3279   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
3280   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
3281   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
3282   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
3283   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
3284   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
3285   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
3286   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
3287   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
3288   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
3289   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
3290   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
3291   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
3292   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
3293   ttf-sazanami-gothic
3294 </p></blockquote>
3295
3296 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3297
3298 <blockquote><p>
3299   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
3300   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
3301   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
3302   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
3303   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
3304   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
3305   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
3306   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
3307   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
3308   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
3309   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
3310   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
3311   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
3312   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
3313   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
3314   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
3315   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
3316   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
3317   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
3318   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
3319   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3320   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
3321   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3322   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3323   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
3324   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
3325   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
3326   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
3327   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
3328   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
3329   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
3330   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
3331   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
3332 </p></blockquote>
3333
3334 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3335
3336 <blockquote><p>
3337   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
3338   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
3339   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
3340   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
3341   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3342   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
3343   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3344 </p></blockquote>
3345
3346 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3347
3348 <blockquote><p>
3349   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
3350 </p></blockquote>
3351
3352       </div>
3353       <div class="tags">
3354
3355
3356         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>.
3357
3358
3359       </div>
3360     </div>
3361     <div class="padding"></div>
3362
3363     <div class="entry">
3364       <div class="title">
3365         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
3366       </div>
3367       <div class="date">
3368         20th November 2010
3369       </div>
3370       <div class="body">
3371         <p>Answering
3372 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
3373 call from the Gnash project</a> for
3374 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
3375 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
3376 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
3377 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
3378 releases out more often.</p>
3379
3380 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
3381 I have considered setting up a <a
3382 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
3383 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
3384 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
3385 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
3386 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
3387 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
3388 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
3389 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
3390 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
3391 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
3392 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
3393 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
3394
3395       </div>
3396       <div class="tags">
3397
3398
3399         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>.
3400
3401
3402       </div>
3403     </div>
3404     <div class="padding"></div>
3405
3406     <div class="entry">
3407       <div class="title">
3408         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
3409       </div>
3410       <div class="date">
3411          9th November 2010
3412       </div>
3413       <div class="body">
3414         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
3415
3416 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
3417 3D linked in from
3418 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
3419 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
3420
3421       </div>
3422       <div class="tags">
3423
3424
3425         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>.
3426
3427
3428       </div>
3429     </div>
3430     <div class="padding"></div>
3431
3432     <div class="entry">
3433       <div class="title">
3434         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
3435       </div>
3436       <div class="date">
3437         24th October 2010
3438       </div>
3439       <div class="body">
3440         <p>Some updates.</p>
3441
3442 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
3443 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
3444 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
3445 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
3446 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
3447 :)</p>
3448
3449 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
3450 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
3451 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
3452 It is called
3453 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
3454 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
3455 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
3456 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
3457 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
3458 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
3459
3460 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
3461 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
3462 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
3463 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
3464 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
3465 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
3466 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
3467 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
3468 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
3469 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
3470
3471       </div>
3472       <div class="tags">
3473
3474
3475         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>.
3476
3477
3478       </div>
3479     </div>
3480     <div class="padding"></div>
3481
3482     <div class="entry">
3483       <div class="title">
3484         <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>
3485       </div>
3486       <div class="date">
3487          4th September 2010
3488       </div>
3489       <div class="body">
3490         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
3491 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
3492 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
3493 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
3494 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
3495 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
3496 installed.</p>
3497
3498 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
3499 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
3500 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
3501 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
3502 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
3503 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
3504 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
3505 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
3506 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
3507
3508 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
3509 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
3510 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
3511 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
3512 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
3513 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
3514 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
3515 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
3516 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
3517 pages they want to visit.</p>
3518
3519 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
3520 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
3521 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
3522 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
3523 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
3524 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
3525 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
3526 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
3527 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
3528 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
3529 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
3530
3531       </div>
3532       <div class="tags">
3533
3534
3535         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>.
3536
3537
3538       </div>
3539     </div>
3540     <div class="padding"></div>
3541
3542     <div class="entry">
3543       <div class="title">
3544         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
3545       </div>
3546       <div class="date">
3547         27th July 2010
3548       </div>
3549       <div class="body">
3550         <p>I discovered this while doing
3551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
3552 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
3553 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
3554 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
3555 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
3556
3557 <p>An example is from todays
3558 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
3559 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
3560 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
3561 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
3562 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
3563 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
3564 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
3565
3566 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
3567
3568 <blockquote><pre>
3569 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
3570  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
3571   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
3572 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
3573  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
3574 </pre></blockquote>
3575
3576 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
3577 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
3578 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
3579 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
3580 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
3581 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
3582 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
3583 of dependency loops.</p>
3584
3585 <p>Thanks to
3586 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
3587 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
3588 dependencies
3589 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
3590 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
3591
3592 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
3593 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
3594 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
3595 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
3596 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
3597 it.</p>
3598
3599       </div>
3600       <div class="tags">
3601
3602
3603         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>.
3604
3605
3606       </div>
3607     </div>
3608     <div class="padding"></div>
3609
3610     <div class="entry">
3611       <div class="title">
3612         <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>
3613       </div>
3614       <div class="date">
3615         17th July 2010
3616       </div>
3617       <div class="body">
3618         <p>This is a
3619 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
3620 on my
3621 <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
3622 work</a> on
3623 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
3624 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
3625
3626 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
3627 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
3628 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
3629 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
3630
3631 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
3632 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
3633 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
3634
3635 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
3636
3637 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
3638 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
3639 the web.
3640
3641 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
3642 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
3643 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
3644 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
3645 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
3646 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
3647
3648 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
3649 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
3650 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
3651 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
3652 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
3653 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
3654 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
3655 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
3656 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
3657 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
3658 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
3659 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
3660 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
3661 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
3662 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
3663 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
3664
3665 <blockquote><pre>
3666 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3667   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3668   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3669   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3670   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3671   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3672   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3673
3674 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3675   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3676   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
3677   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
3678   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
3679   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
3680 </pre></blockquote>
3681
3682 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
3683 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
3684 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
3685 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3686 also exist.</p>
3687
3688 <blockquote><pre>
3689 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3690 objectclass: top
3691 objectclass: dnsdomain
3692 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3693 dc: tjener
3694 arecord: 10.0.2.2
3695 associateddomain: tjener.intern
3696
3697 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3698 objectclass: top
3699 objectclass: dnsdomain2
3700 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3701 dc: 2
3702 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
3703 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
3704 </pre></blockquote>
3705
3706 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
3707 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
3708 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
3709 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
3710 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
3711 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
3712 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
3713 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
3714 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
3715 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
3716 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
3717 instead.</p>
3718
3719 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
3720 like this:</p>
3721
3722 <blockquote><pre>
3723 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3724   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3725   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3726   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3727   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3728   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3729
3730 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3731   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
3732 </pre></blockquote>
3733
3734 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
3735 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
3736 reverse lookups.</p>
3737
3738 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
3739 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
3740 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
3741 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
3742
3743 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
3744 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
3745 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
3746
3747 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
3748 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
3749 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
3750 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
3751 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
3752
3753 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
3754 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
3755 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
3756 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
3757 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
3758
3759 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
3760 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
3761 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
3762 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
3763 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
3764 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
3765
3766 <blockquote><pre>
3767 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
3768     SUP top
3769     AUXILIARY
3770     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
3771           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
3772           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
3773           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
3774           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
3775     ))
3776 </pre></blockquote>
3777
3778 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
3779 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
3780 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
3781 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
3782 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
3783 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
3784
3785 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
3786
3787 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
3788 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
3789 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
3790 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
3791 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
3792
3793 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
3794 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
3795 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
3796 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
3797
3798 <blockquote><pre>
3799 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
3800 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
3801 </pre></blockquote>
3802
3803 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
3804 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
3805 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
3806 search result is this entry:</p>
3807
3808 <blockquote><pre>
3809 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3810 cn: dhcp
3811 objectClass: top
3812 objectClass: dhcpServer
3813 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3814 </pre></blockquote>
3815
3816 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
3817 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
3818 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
3819 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
3820 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
3821 The search result is this entry:</p>
3822
3823 <blockquote><pre>
3824 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3825 cn: DHCP Config
3826 objectClass: top
3827 objectClass: dhcpService
3828 objectClass: dhcpOptions
3829 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3830 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
3831 dhcpStatements: authoritative
3832 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
3833 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
3834 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
3835 </pre></blockquote>
3836
3837 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
3838 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
3839 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
3840 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
3841 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
3842 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
3843 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
3844 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
3845 related computer objects.</p>
3846
3847 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
3848 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
3849 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
3850 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
3851 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
3852 like:</p>
3853
3854 <blockquote><pre>
3855 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3856 cn: hostname
3857 objectClass: top
3858 objectClass: dhcpHost
3859 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3860 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
3861 </pre></blockquote>
3862
3863 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
3864 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
3865 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
3866 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
3867 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
3868 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
3869 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
3870 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
3871 structural object class.
3872
3873 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
3874
3875 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
3876 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
3877 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
3878 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
3879 in the configuration.</p>
3880
3881 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
3882 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
3883 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
3884 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
3885 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
3886 structure.</p>
3887
3888 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
3889 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
3890
3891 <blockquote><pre>
3892 ou=services
3893   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
3894     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
3895     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3896       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3897         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3898     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3899       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3900         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3901     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
3902       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
3903 </pre></blockquote>
3904
3905 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
3906 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
3907 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
3908 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
3909
3910 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
3911 like this:</p>
3912
3913 <blockquote><pre>
3914 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3915 dc: hostname
3916 objectClass: top
3917 objectClass: dhcpHost
3918 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3919 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
3920 associateddomain: hostname.intern
3921 arecord: 10.11.12.13
3922 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3923 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
3924 </pre></blockquote>
3925
3926 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
3927 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
3928 auxiliary object class.</p>
3929
3930       </div>
3931       <div class="tags">
3932
3933
3934         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>.
3935
3936
3937       </div>
3938     </div>
3939     <div class="padding"></div>
3940
3941     <div class="entry">
3942       <div class="title">
3943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
3944       </div>
3945       <div class="date">
3946         14th July 2010
3947       </div>
3948       <div class="body">
3949         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
3950 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
3951 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
3952 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
3953 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
3954
3955 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
3956 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
3957
3958 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
3959 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
3960 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
3961 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
3962 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
3963 to a slave DNS server.</p>
3964
3965 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
3966 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
3967 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
3968 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
3969 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
3970 seem to work.</p>
3971
3972 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
3973 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
3974 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
3975 this:</p>
3976
3977 <blockquote><pre>
3978   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3979   cn: hostname
3980   objectClass: dhcphost
3981   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3982   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
3983   associateddomain: hostname.intern
3984   arecord: 10.11.12.13
3985   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3986   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
3987   ldapconfigsound: Y
3988 </pre></blockquote>
3989
3990 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
3991 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
3992 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
3993 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
3994
3995 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
3996 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
3997 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
3998 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
3999 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
4000 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
4001 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
4002 might be a good place to put it.</p>
4003
4004 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4005 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4006
4007       </div>
4008       <div class="tags">
4009
4010
4011         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>.
4012
4013
4014       </div>
4015     </div>
4016     <div class="padding"></div>
4017
4018     <div class="entry">
4019       <div class="title">
4020         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
4021       </div>
4022       <div class="date">
4023         11th July 2010
4024       </div>
4025       <div class="body">
4026         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
4027 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
4028 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
4029 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
4030
4031 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
4032 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
4033 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
4034 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
4035 LTSP clients.</p>
4036
4037 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
4038 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
4039 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
4040
4041 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
4042 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
4043 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
4044
4045 <blockquote><pre>
4046 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
4047 #
4048 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
4049 #
4050 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
4051 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
4052 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
4053 #
4054 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
4055 # existence of attribute names.
4056 #
4057 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
4058 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
4059 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
4060 #
4061 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
4062 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
4063 #
4064 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
4065 #     SUP top
4066 #     AUXILIARY
4067 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
4068
4069 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
4070 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
4071     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
4072     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
4073         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
4074         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
4075             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
4076             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
4077             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
4078             # bass value on to clients
4079             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
4080         done
4081     done
4082 fi
4083 </pre></blockquote>
4084
4085 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
4086 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
4087 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
4088 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
4089 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
4090
4091 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4092 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4093
4094 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
4095 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
4096 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
4097 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
4098 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
4099 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
4100
4101       </div>
4102       <div class="tags">
4103
4104
4105         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>.
4106
4107
4108       </div>
4109     </div>
4110     <div class="padding"></div>
4111
4112     <div class="entry">
4113       <div class="title">
4114         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
4115       </div>
4116       <div class="date">
4117          9th July 2010
4118       </div>
4119       <div class="body">
4120         <p>Since
4121 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
4122 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
4123 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
4124 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
4125 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
4126 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
4127 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
4128 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
4129 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
4130 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
4131 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
4132 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
4133 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
4134
4135       </div>
4136       <div class="tags">
4137
4138
4139         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>.
4140
4141
4142       </div>
4143     </div>
4144     <div class="padding"></div>
4145
4146     <div class="entry">
4147       <div class="title">
4148         <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>
4149       </div>
4150       <div class="date">
4151          3rd July 2010
4152       </div>
4153       <div class="body">
4154         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
4155 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
4156 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
4157 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
4158 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
4159 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
4160 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
4161 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
4162
4163 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
4164 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
4165 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
4166 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
4167 publish the difference.</p>
4168
4169 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4170
4171 <blockquote><p>
4172   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4173   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
4174   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
4175   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
4176   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
4177   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
4178   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
4179   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
4180 </p></blockquote>
4181
4182 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4183
4184 <blockquote><p>
4185   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
4186   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
4187   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
4188   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
4189   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
4190   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
4191   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
4192   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
4193   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4194   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
4195   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
4196   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
4197   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
4198   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
4199   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
4200   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
4201   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
4202   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
4203   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
4204   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
4205 </p></blockquote>
4206
4207 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4208
4209 <blockquote><p>
4210   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
4211   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
4212   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4213   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4214   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
4215   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
4216   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
4217   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4218   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4219   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4220   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4221   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
4222   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
4223   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
4224   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
4225   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
4226   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
4227   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
4228   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
4229   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
4230   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
4231 </p></blockquote>
4232
4233 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4234
4235 <blockquote><p>
4236   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
4237   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
4238   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
4239 </p></blockquote>
4240
4241 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
4242 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
4243 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
4244 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
4245 the difference somewhat.
4246
4247       </div>
4248       <div class="tags">
4249
4250
4251         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>.
4252
4253
4254       </div>
4255     </div>
4256     <div class="padding"></div>
4257
4258     <div class="entry">
4259       <div class="title">
4260         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
4261       </div>
4262       <div class="date">
4263         28th June 2010
4264       </div>
4265       <div class="body">
4266         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
4267 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
4268 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
4269 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
4270 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
4271 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
4272 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
4273 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
4274 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
4275 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
4276
4277 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
4278 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
4279 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
4280 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
4281 released.</p>
4282
4283 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
4284 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
4285 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
4286 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
4287
4288 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
4289 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4290
4291 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
4292 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
4293 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
4294 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
4295 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
4296
4297       </div>
4298       <div class="tags">
4299
4300
4301         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>.
4302
4303
4304       </div>
4305     </div>
4306     <div class="padding"></div>
4307
4308     <div class="entry">
4309       <div class="title">
4310         <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>
4311       </div>
4312       <div class="date">
4313         24th June 2010
4314       </div>
4315       <div class="body">
4316         <p>A while back, I
4317 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
4318 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
4319 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
4320 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
4321
4322 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
4323 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
4324 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
4325 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
4326
4327 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
4328 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
4329 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
4330 Debian Edu.</p>
4331
4332 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
4333 the
4334 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
4335 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
4336 available today from IETF.</p>
4337
4338 <pre>
4339 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
4340 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
4341 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
4342  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
4343         NAME 'dhcpHost'
4344         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
4345 -       SUP top
4346 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
4347         MUST cn
4348         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
4349         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
4350 </pre>
4351
4352 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
4353 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
4354 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
4355
4356 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4357 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4358
4359       </div>
4360       <div class="tags">
4361
4362
4363         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>.
4364
4365
4366       </div>
4367     </div>
4368     <div class="padding"></div>
4369
4370     <div class="entry">
4371       <div class="title">
4372         <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>
4373       </div>
4374       <div class="date">
4375         16th June 2010
4376       </div>
4377       <div class="body">
4378         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
4379 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
4380 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
4381 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
4382 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
4383 this:
4384
4385 <blockquote><pre>
4386 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4387 tasksel --new-install
4388 </pre></blockquote>
4389
4390 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
4391 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
4392 any output what so ever.
4393
4394 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
4395 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
4396 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
4397 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
4398 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
4399 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
4400 code like this:
4401
4402 <blockquote><pre>
4403 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4404 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
4405 $cmd
4406 </pre></blockquote>
4407
4408 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
4409 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
4410 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
4411 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
4412 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
4413 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
4414 installation.</p>
4415
4416 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
4417 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
4418 like this.</p>
4419
4420       </div>
4421       <div class="tags">
4422
4423
4424         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>.
4425
4426
4427       </div>
4428     </div>
4429     <div class="padding"></div>
4430
4431     <div class="entry">
4432       <div class="title">
4433         <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>
4434       </div>
4435       <div class="date">
4436         13th June 2010
4437       </div>
4438       <div class="body">
4439         <p>My
4440 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
4441 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
4442 finally made the upgrade logs available from
4443 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
4444 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
4445 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
4446 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
4447
4448 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
4449 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
4450 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
4451 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
4452 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
4453 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
4454 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
4455 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
4456
4457 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
4458 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
4459 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
4460 too surprising.</p>
4461
4462 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
4463 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
4464 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
4465 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
4466 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
4467 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
4468 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
4469 continue.</p>
4470
4471 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
4472 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
4473   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
4474   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
4475   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
4476   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
4477   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
4478   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4479   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4480   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
4481   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
4482   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
4483   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
4484   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4485   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4486   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4487   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4488   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4489   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
4490   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
4491   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
4492   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
4493   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
4494   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
4495   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
4496   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
4497   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
4498   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
4499   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
4500   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
4501
4502 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
4503
4504 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
4505   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
4506   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
4507   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
4508   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
4509   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
4510   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
4511   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
4512   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
4513   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
4514   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4515   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
4516   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
4517   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
4518   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
4519   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
4520   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
4521   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
4522   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
4523   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
4524   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
4525   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
4526   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
4527   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
4528   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
4529   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
4530   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
4531   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
4532   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
4533   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4534   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4535   zip</p>
4536
4537 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
4538
4539 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
4540   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
4541   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
4542   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
4543   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
4544   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
4545   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4546   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4547   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
4548   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
4549   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
4550   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
4551   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4552   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4553   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4554   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4555   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4556   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
4557   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
4558   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
4559   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
4560   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
4561   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
4562   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
4563   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
4564   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
4565   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
4566   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
4567
4568 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
4569 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
4570   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
4571   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
4572   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
4573   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
4574   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
4575   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
4576   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
4577   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
4578   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
4579   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
4580   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
4581   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
4582   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
4583   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
4584   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
4585   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
4586   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
4587   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
4588   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
4589   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
4590   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
4591   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
4592   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
4593   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
4594   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
4595   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
4596   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
4597   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
4598   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
4599   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
4600   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
4601   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
4602   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
4603   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4604   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4605   xulrunner-1.9</p>
4606
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/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
4622       </div>
4623       <div class="date">
4624         11th June 2010
4625       </div>
4626       <div class="body">
4627         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
4628 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
4629 have been discovered and reported in the process
4630 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
4631 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
4632 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
4633 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
4634 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
4635
4636 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
4637 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
4638 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
4639 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
4640 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
4641 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
4642
4643 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
4644 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
4645 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4646 is created.  The bug report
4647 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
4648 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
4649 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
4650 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
4651 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
4652 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
4653 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
4654 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
4655 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
4656 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
4657 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
4658 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
4659 Debian Squeeze.</p>
4660
4661 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
4662 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
4663 trick:</p>
4664
4665 <blockquote><pre>
4666 #!/bin/sh
4667 set -ex
4668
4669 if [ "$1" ] ; then
4670     desktop=$1
4671 else
4672     desktop=gnome
4673 fi
4674
4675 from=lenny
4676 to=squeeze
4677
4678 exec &lt; /dev/null
4679 unset LANG
4680 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
4681 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
4682 fuser -mv .
4683 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
4684 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4685 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
4686 #!/bin/sh
4687 exit 101
4688 EOF
4689 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
4690 exit_cleanup() {
4691     umount $tmpdir/proc
4692 }
4693 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
4694 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
4695 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
4696
4697 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
4698
4699 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
4700 # to return the correct answers.
4701 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
4702     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
4703
4704 # Include the desktop and laptop task
4705 for test in desktop laptop ; do
4706     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
4707 #!/bin/sh
4708 exit 2
4709 EOF
4710     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
4711 done
4712
4713 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4714 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
4715 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
4716 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
4717
4718 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
4719 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4720 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4721 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
4722 fuser -mv
4723 </pre></blockquote>
4724
4725 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
4726 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
4727 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
4728 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
4729 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
4730 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
4731
4732 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
4733 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
4734 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
4735 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
4736 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
4737 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
4738 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
4739
4740 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
4741 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
4742 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
4743 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
4744 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
4745 packages.</p>
4746
4747       </div>
4748       <div class="tags">
4749
4750
4751         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>.
4752
4753
4754       </div>
4755     </div>
4756     <div class="padding"></div>
4757
4758     <div class="entry">
4759       <div class="title">
4760         <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>
4761       </div>
4762       <div class="date">
4763          6th June 2010
4764       </div>
4765       <div class="body">
4766         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
4767 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
4768 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
4769 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
4770 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
4771 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
4772 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
4773
4774 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
4775 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
4776 COLUMNS):</p>
4777
4778 <blockquote><pre>
4779 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
4780 previous=N
4781 PREVLEVEL=
4782 RUNLEVEL=
4783 runlevel=S
4784 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
4785 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
4786 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
4787 </pre></blockquote>
4788
4789 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
4790 script.</p>
4791
4792 <blockquote><pre>
4793 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
4794 previous=N
4795 PREVLEVEL=N
4796 RUNLEVEL=S
4797 runlevel=S
4798 </pre></blockquote>
4799
4800 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
4801 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
4802 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
4803
4804 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
4805 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
4806 choice.</p>
4807
4808       </div>
4809       <div class="tags">
4810
4811
4812         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>.
4813
4814
4815       </div>
4816     </div>
4817     <div class="padding"></div>
4818
4819     <div class="entry">
4820       <div class="title">
4821         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
4822       </div>
4823       <div class="date">
4824          6th June 2010
4825       </div>
4826       <div class="body">
4827         <p>Via the
4828 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
4829 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
4830 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
4831 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
4832 following the standards wars of today.</p>
4833
4834       </div>
4835       <div class="tags">
4836
4837
4838         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>.
4839
4840
4841       </div>
4842     </div>
4843     <div class="padding"></div>
4844
4845     <div class="entry">
4846       <div class="title">
4847         <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>
4848       </div>
4849       <div class="date">
4850          3rd June 2010
4851       </div>
4852       <div class="body">
4853         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
4854 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
4855 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
4856 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
4857 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
4858
4859 <blockquote><pre>
4860 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
4861   vendor                    count
4862   Dell Computer Corporation     1
4863     PowerEdge 1750              1
4864   IBM                           1
4865     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
4866   Intel                         2
4867   [no-dmi-info]                 3
4868 maintainer:~#
4869 </pre></blockquote>
4870
4871 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
4872 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
4873 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
4874 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
4875 option to list the individual machines.</p>
4876
4877 <p>A larger list is
4878 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
4879 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
4880 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
4881 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
4882 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
4883 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
4884 collector.</p>
4885
4886       </div>
4887       <div class="tags">
4888
4889
4890         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>.
4891
4892
4893       </div>
4894     </div>
4895     <div class="padding"></div>
4896
4897     <div class="entry">
4898       <div class="title">
4899         <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>
4900       </div>
4901       <div class="date">
4902          1st June 2010
4903       </div>
4904       <div class="body">
4905         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
4906 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
4907 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
4908 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
4909 wait.</p>
4910
4911 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
4912 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
4913 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
4914 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
4915 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
4916 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
4917
4918 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
4919 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
4920 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
4921 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
4922 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
4923 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
4924 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
4925 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
4926
4927 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
4928
4929       </div>
4930       <div class="tags">
4931
4932
4933         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>.
4934
4935
4936       </div>
4937     </div>
4938     <div class="padding"></div>
4939
4940     <div class="entry">
4941       <div class="title">
4942         <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>
4943       </div>
4944       <div class="date">
4945         27th May 2010
4946       </div>
4947       <div class="body">
4948         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
4949 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
4950 issues are known and should be solved:
4951
4952 <p><ul>
4953
4954 <li>The wicd package seen to
4955 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
4956 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
4957 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
4958 seem to be on the case.</li>
4959
4960 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
4961 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
4962 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
4963 maintainer is on the case.</li>
4964
4965 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
4966 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
4967 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
4968 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
4969 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
4970 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
4971 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
4972 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
4973
4974 </ul></p>
4975
4976 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
4977 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
4978 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
4979 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
4980
4981 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4982 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4983 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4984 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
4985
4986 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
4987
4988       </div>
4989       <div class="tags">
4990
4991
4992         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>.
4993
4994
4995       </div>
4996     </div>
4997     <div class="padding"></div>
4998
4999     <div class="entry">
5000       <div class="title">
5001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
5002       </div>
5003       <div class="date">
5004         22nd May 2010
5005       </div>
5006       <div class="body">
5007         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
5008 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
5009 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
5010 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
5011
5012 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
5013 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
5014 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
5015 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
5016 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
5017 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
5018 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
5019 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
5020 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
5021 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
5022 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
5023 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
5024 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
5025 going to work.</p>
5026
5027 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
5028 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
5029 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
5030 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
5031 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
5032 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
5033 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
5034 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
5035 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
5036 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
5037 Edu.</p>
5038
5039 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
5040 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
5041 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
5042 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
5043 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
5044 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
5045
5046 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
5047 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
5048
5049       </div>
5050       <div class="tags">
5051
5052
5053         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>.
5054
5055
5056       </div>
5057     </div>
5058     <div class="padding"></div>
5059
5060     <div class="entry">
5061       <div class="title">
5062         <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>
5063       </div>
5064       <div class="date">
5065         14th May 2010
5066       </div>
5067       <div class="body">
5068         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
5069 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
5070 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
5071 expected, if I am to believe the
5072 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
5073 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
5074 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
5075 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
5076 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
5077 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
5078 version.</p>
5079
5080 More information about
5081 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5082 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
5083 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
5084 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
5085
5086 <blockquote><pre>
5087 CONCURRENCY=none
5088 </pre></blockquote>
5089
5090 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5091 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5092 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5093 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5094
5095       </div>
5096       <div class="tags">
5097
5098
5099         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>.
5100
5101
5102       </div>
5103     </div>
5104     <div class="padding"></div>
5105
5106     <div class="entry">
5107       <div class="title">
5108         <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>
5109       </div>
5110       <div class="date">
5111         14th May 2010
5112       </div>
5113       <div class="body">
5114         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
5115 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
5116 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
5117 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
5118 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
5119 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
5120 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
5121 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
5122
5123 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
5124 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
5125 this on the collector host:</p>
5126
5127 <blockquote><pre>
5128 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
5129 </pre></blockquote>
5130
5131 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
5132 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
5133
5134 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
5135 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
5136 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
5137 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
5138 written yet.</p>
5139
5140       </div>
5141       <div class="tags">
5142
5143
5144         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>.
5145
5146
5147       </div>
5148     </div>
5149     <div class="padding"></div>
5150
5151     <div class="entry">
5152       <div class="title">
5153         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
5154       </div>
5155       <div class="date">
5156         13th May 2010
5157       </div>
5158       <div class="body">
5159         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
5160 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
5161 has been
5162 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
5163
5164 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
5165 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
5166 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
5167 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
5168 based boot system.  Tollef is
5169 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
5170 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
5171 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
5172 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
5173 at the moment do not.</p>
5174
5175 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
5176 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
5177 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
5178 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
5179 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
5180 way forward.</p>
5181
5182 <p>In the mean time, based on the
5183 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
5184 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
5185 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
5186 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
5187 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
5188 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
5189 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
5190 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
5191
5192       </div>
5193       <div class="tags">
5194
5195
5196         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>.
5197
5198
5199       </div>
5200     </div>
5201     <div class="padding"></div>
5202
5203     <div class="entry">
5204       <div class="title">
5205         <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>
5206       </div>
5207       <div class="date">
5208          6th May 2010
5209       </div>
5210       <div class="body">
5211         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
5212 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
5213 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
5214 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
5215 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5216 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
5217 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
5218
5219 <blockquote><pre>
5220 CONCURRENCY=makefile
5221 </pre></blockquote>
5222
5223 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
5224 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
5225 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
5226 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
5227 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
5228 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
5229 make this happen.</p>
5230
5231 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
5232 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
5233 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
5234 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
5235 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
5236
5237 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
5238 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
5239 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
5240 fix the remaining issues.</p>
5241
5242 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5243 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5244 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5245 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5246
5247       </div>
5248       <div class="tags">
5249
5250
5251         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>.
5252
5253
5254       </div>
5255     </div>
5256     <div class="padding"></div>
5257
5258     <div class="entry">
5259       <div class="title">
5260         <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>
5261       </div>
5262       <div class="date">
5263         27th July 2009
5264       </div>
5265       <div class="body">
5266         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
5267 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
5268 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
5269 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
5270 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
5271 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
5272 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
5273
5274 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
5275 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
5276 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
5277
5278       </div>
5279       <div class="tags">
5280
5281
5282         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>.
5283
5284
5285       </div>
5286     </div>
5287     <div class="padding"></div>
5288
5289     <div class="entry">
5290       <div class="title">
5291         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
5292       </div>
5293       <div class="date">
5294         22nd July 2009
5295       </div>
5296       <div class="body">
5297         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
5298 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
5299 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
5300 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
5301 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
5302 the package up to date.</p>
5303
5304 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
5305 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
5306 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
5307 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
5308 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
5309 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
5310 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
5311 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
5312 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
5313 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
5314 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
5315 working on the future release.</p>
5316
5317 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
5318 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
5319
5320       </div>
5321       <div class="tags">
5322
5323
5324         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>.
5325
5326
5327       </div>
5328     </div>
5329     <div class="padding"></div>
5330
5331     <div class="entry">
5332       <div class="title">
5333         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
5334       </div>
5335       <div class="date">
5336         24th June 2009
5337       </div>
5338       <div class="body">
5339         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
5340 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
5341 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
5342 funded
5343 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
5344 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
5345 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
5346 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
5347 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
5348 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
5349
5350 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
5351 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
5352 boot:</p>
5353
5354 <ul>
5355
5356 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
5357
5358 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
5359    clock is in UTC.</li>
5360
5361 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
5362    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5363    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
5364
5365 </ul>
5366
5367 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
5368 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
5369 Villegas</a>.
5370
5371 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
5372 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
5373 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
5374 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
5375 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
5376 using this.</p>
5377
5378 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
5379 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
5380 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
5381 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
5382 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
5383 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
5384 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
5385
5386       </div>
5387       <div class="tags">
5388
5389
5390         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>.
5391
5392
5393       </div>
5394     </div>
5395     <div class="padding"></div>
5396
5397     <div class="entry">
5398       <div class="title">
5399         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
5400       </div>
5401       <div class="date">
5402         17th May 2009
5403       </div>
5404       <div class="body">
5405         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
5406 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
5407 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
5408 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
5409 dager siden kom
5410 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
5411 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
5412 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
5413 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
5414 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
5415
5416 <blockquote>
5417 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
5418 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
5419 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
5420 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
5421 </blockquote>
5422
5423 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
5424 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
5425 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
5426 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
5427 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
5428
5429 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
5430 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
5431 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
5432
5433       </div>
5434       <div class="tags">
5435
5436
5437         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
5438
5439
5440       </div>
5441     </div>
5442     <div class="padding"></div>
5443
5444     <div class="entry">
5445       <div class="title">
5446         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
5447       </div>
5448       <div class="date">
5449          7th May 2009
5450       </div>
5451       <div class="body">
5452         <p>Kom over
5453 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
5454 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
5455 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
5456 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
5457 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
5458 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
5459 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
5460
5461       </div>
5462       <div class="tags">
5463
5464
5465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5466
5467
5468       </div>
5469     </div>
5470     <div class="padding"></div>
5471
5472     <div class="entry">
5473       <div class="title">
5474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
5475       </div>
5476       <div class="date">
5477          2nd May 2009
5478       </div>
5479       <div class="body">
5480         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
5481 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
5482 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
5483 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
5484 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
5485 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
5486 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
5487 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
5488 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
5489 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
5490 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
5491 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
5492 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
5493 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
5494 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
5495 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
5496 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
5497 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
5498 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
5499 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
5500
5501 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
5502 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
5503 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
5504 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
5505 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
5506 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
5507 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
5508 betydelige.</p>
5509
5510       </div>
5511       <div class="tags">
5512
5513
5514         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5515
5516
5517       </div>
5518     </div>
5519     <div class="padding"></div>
5520
5521     <div class="entry">
5522       <div class="title">
5523         <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>
5524       </div>
5525       <div class="date">
5526          2nd May 2009
5527       </div>
5528       <div class="body">
5529         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
5530 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
5531 do not yet know them.</p>
5532
5533 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
5534 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
5535 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
5536 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
5537 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
5538 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
5539 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
5540 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
5541 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
5542 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
5543 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
5544
5545 <p>The second one is
5546 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
5547 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
5548 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
5549 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
5550 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
5551 and the company behind it is running
5552 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
5553 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
5554 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
5555 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
5556 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
5557 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
5558 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
5559 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
5560
5561 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
5562 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
5563 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
5564 surrounded by today.</p>
5565
5566       </div>
5567       <div class="tags">
5568
5569
5570         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>.
5571
5572
5573       </div>
5574     </div>
5575     <div class="padding"></div>
5576
5577     <div class="entry">
5578       <div class="title">
5579         <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>
5580       </div>
5581       <div class="date">
5582         28th April 2009
5583       </div>
5584       <div class="body">
5585         <p>Julien Blache
5586 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
5587 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
5588 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
5589 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
5590 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
5591 properties.</p>
5592
5593       </div>
5594       <div class="tags">
5595
5596
5597         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>.
5598
5599
5600       </div>
5601     </div>
5602     <div class="padding"></div>
5603
5604     <div class="entry">
5605       <div class="title">
5606         <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>
5607       </div>
5608       <div class="date">
5609         30th March 2009
5610       </div>
5611       <div class="body">
5612         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
5613 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
5614 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
5615 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
5616 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
5617 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
5618 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
5619 application.</p>
5620
5621 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
5622 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
5623 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
5624 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
5625 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
5626 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
5627 blocked from doing so.</p>
5628
5629 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
5630 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
5631 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
5632 requirements change.</p>
5633
5634 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
5635 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
5636 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
5637
5638       </div>
5639       <div class="tags">
5640
5641
5642         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>.
5643
5644
5645       </div>
5646     </div>
5647     <div class="padding"></div>
5648
5649     <div class="entry">
5650       <div class="title">
5651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
5652       </div>
5653       <div class="date">
5654         29th March 2009
5655       </div>
5656       <div class="body">
5657         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
5658 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
5659 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
5660 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
5661 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
5662 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
5663 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
5664 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
5665 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
5666 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
5667 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
5668 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
5669 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
5670 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
5671 now. :)</p>
5672
5673       </div>
5674       <div class="tags">
5675
5676
5677         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>.
5678
5679
5680       </div>
5681     </div>
5682     <div class="padding"></div>
5683
5684     <div class="entry">
5685       <div class="title">
5686         <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>
5687       </div>
5688       <div class="date">
5689         29th March 2009
5690       </div>
5691       <div class="body">
5692         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
5693 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
5694 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
5695 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
5696 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
5697 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
5698
5699 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
5700 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
5701 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
5702 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
5703 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
5704 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
5705 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
5706 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
5707 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
5708 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
5709 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
5710 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
5711 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
5712
5713 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
5714 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
5715 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
5716 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
5717
5718 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
5719 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
5720
5721 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
5722 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
5723 new IETF work group?</p>
5724
5725       </div>
5726       <div class="tags">
5727
5728
5729         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>.
5730
5731
5732       </div>
5733     </div>
5734     <div class="padding"></div>
5735
5736     <div class="entry">
5737       <div class="title">
5738         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
5739       </div>
5740       <div class="date">
5741         15th February 2009
5742       </div>
5743       <div class="body">
5744         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
5745 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
5746 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
5747 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
5748 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
5749 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
5750 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
5751 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
5752 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
5753 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
5754 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
5755 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
5756
5757       </div>
5758       <div class="tags">
5759
5760
5761         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
5762
5763
5764       </div>
5765     </div>
5766     <div class="padding"></div>
5767
5768     <div class="entry">
5769       <div class="title">
5770         <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>
5771       </div>
5772       <div class="date">
5773          7th December 2008
5774       </div>
5775       <div class="body">
5776         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
5777 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
5778 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
5779 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
5780 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
5781 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
5782 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
5783 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
5784
5785 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
5786 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
5787 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
5788 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
5789 of these cards.</p>
5790
5791       </div>
5792       <div class="tags">
5793
5794
5795         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>.
5796
5797
5798       </div>
5799     </div>
5800     <div class="padding"></div>
5801
5802     <div class="entry">
5803       <div class="title">
5804         <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>
5805       </div>
5806       <div class="date">
5807         25th November 2008
5808       </div>
5809       <div class="body">
5810         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
5811 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
5812 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
5813 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
5814 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
5815 notes are available on
5816 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
5817 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
5818 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
5819 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
5820 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
5821 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
5822 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
5823 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
5824 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
5825
5826 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
5827 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
5828
5829       </div>
5830       <div class="tags">
5831
5832
5833         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>.
5834
5835
5836       </div>
5837     </div>
5838     <div class="padding"></div>
5839
5840     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
5841     <div id="sidebar">
5842
5843
5844
5845 <h2>Archive</h2>
5846 <ul>
5847
5848 <li>2013
5849 <ul>
5850
5851 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
5852
5853 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
5854
5855 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
5856
5857 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
5858
5859 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (8)</a></li>
5860
5861 </ul></li>
5862
5863 <li>2012
5864 <ul>
5865
5866 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
5867
5868 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
5869
5870 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
5871
5872 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
5873
5874 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
5875
5876 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
5877
5878 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
5879
5880 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
5881
5882 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
5883
5884 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
5885
5886 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
5887
5888 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
5889
5890 </ul></li>
5891
5892 <li>2011
5893 <ul>
5894
5895 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
5896
5897 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
5898
5899 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
5900
5901 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
5902
5903 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
5904
5905 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
5906
5907 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
5908
5909 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
5910
5911 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
5912
5913 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
5914
5915 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
5916
5917 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
5918
5919 </ul></li>
5920
5921 <li>2010
5922 <ul>
5923
5924 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
5925
5926 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
5927
5928 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
5929
5930 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
5931
5932 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
5933
5934 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
5935
5936 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
5937
5938 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
5939
5940 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
5941
5942 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
5943
5944 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
5945
5946 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
5947
5948 </ul></li>
5949
5950 <li>2009
5951 <ul>
5952
5953 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
5954
5955 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
5956
5957 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
5958
5959 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
5960
5961 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
5962
5963 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
5964
5965 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
5966
5967 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
5968
5969 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
5970
5971 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
5972
5973 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
5974
5975 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
5976
5977 </ul></li>
5978
5979 <li>2008
5980 <ul>
5981
5982 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
5983
5984 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
5985
5986 </ul></li>
5987
5988 </ul>
5989
5990
5991
5992 <h2>Tags</h2>
5993 <ul>
5994
5995  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
5996
5997  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
5998
5999  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
6000
6001  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
6002
6003  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
6004
6005  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
6006
6007  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
6008
6009  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (75)</a></li>
6010
6011  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (128)</a></li>
6012
6013  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
6014
6015  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (9)</a></li>
6016
6017  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
6018
6019  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (193)</a></li>
6020
6021  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
6022
6023  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
6024
6025  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (11)</a></li>
6026
6027  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
6028
6029  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (34)</a></li>
6030
6031  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (6)</a></li>
6032
6033  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
6034
6035  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
6036
6037  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
6038
6039  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
6040
6041  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
6042
6043  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (233)</a></li>
6044
6045  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (152)</a></li>
6046
6047  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
6048
6049  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
6050
6051  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (44)</a></li>
6052
6053  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (65)</a></li>
6054
6055  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
6056
6057  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
6058
6059  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
6060
6061  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (7)</a></li>
6062
6063  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
6064
6065  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
6066
6067  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
6068
6069  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (29)</a></li>
6070
6071  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
6072
6073  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
6074
6075  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (42)</a></li>
6076
6077  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
6078
6079  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (7)</a></li>
6080
6081  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (15)</a></li>
6082
6083  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
6084
6085  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
6086
6087  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (38)</a></li>
6088
6089  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
6090
6091  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
6092
6093 </ul>
6094
6095
6096     </div>
6097     <p style="text-align: right">
6098  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
6099 </p>
6100
6101   </body>
6102 </html>