blog/tags/english/index.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   2           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">
   4   <head>
   5     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged english</title>
   7     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/style.css" />
   8     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/vim.css" />
   9     <link rel="alternate" title="RSS Feed" href="english.rss" type="application/rss+xml" />
  10   </head>
  11   <body>
  12     <div class="title">
  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         22nd October 2012
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
  32 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
  33 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
  34 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
  35 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
  36 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
  37 background information is available in Norwegian from
  38 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
  39 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
  40 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
  41 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
  42 willing to
  43 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
  44 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
  45 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
  46 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
  47 sounded like
  48 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
  49 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
  50 later.</p>
  51
  52 <p>And thought this action is
  53 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
  54 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
  55 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
  56 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
  57 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
  58 rights.</p>
  59
  60 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
  61 unacceptable terms.  For example
  62 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
  63 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
  64 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
  65 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
  66 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
  67
  68 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
  69 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
  70 restored the account of the user, as reported by
  71 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
  72 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
  73 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
  74 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
  75 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
  76 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
  77 reading two opinions from
  78 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
  79 Phipps</a> and
  80 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
  81 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
  82 details about the original story.</p>
  83
  84       </div>
  85       <div class="tags">
  86
  87
  88         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
  89
  90
  91       </div>
  92     </div>
  93     <div class="padding"></div>
  94
  95     <div class="entry">
  96       <div class="title">
  97         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
  98       </div>
  99       <div class="date">
 100         18th October 2012
 101       </div>
 102       <div class="body">
 103         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
 104 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
 105 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
 106 across a marvellous drawing by
 107 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
 108 visualising some of what is going on.
 109
 110 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
 111 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
 112
 113 <blockquote>
 114 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
 115 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
 116 </blockquote>
 117
 118 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
 119 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
 120 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
 121 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
 122 Panopticom</a>, and can not help help to think that we are slowly
 123 transforming our society to a huge Panopticom on our own.</p>
 124
 125       </div>
 126       <div class="tags">
 127
 128
 129         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 130
 131
 132       </div>
 133     </div>
 134     <div class="padding"></div>
 135
 136     <div class="entry">
 137       <div class="title">
 138         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
 139       </div>
 140       <div class="date">
 141         12th October 2012
 142       </div>
 143       <div class="body">
 144         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
 145 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
 146 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
 147 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
 148 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
 149 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
 150 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
 151 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
 152 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
 153 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
 154 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
 155 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
 156 matter".</p>
 157
 158 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
 159 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
 160 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
 161 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
 162 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
 163 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
 164 to argue its side.</p>
 165
 166 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
 167 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
 168 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
 169 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
 170
 171 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
 172 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
 173 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
 174
 175       </div>
 176       <div class="tags">
 177
 178
 179         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
 180
 181
 182       </div>
 183     </div>
 184     <div class="padding"></div>
 185
 186     <div class="entry">
 187       <div class="title">
 188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
 189       </div>
 190       <div class="date">
 191          3rd October 2012
 192       </div>
 193       <div class="body">
 194         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
 195 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
 196 the computer science book collection available in his local
 197 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
 198 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
 199 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
 200 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
 201 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
 202 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
 203 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
 204 recently published books.</p>
 205
 206 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
 207 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
 208 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
 209 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
 210 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
 211 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
 212 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
 213 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
 214 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
 215 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
 216 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
 217 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
 218 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
 219 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
 220 for the library that evening.</p>
 221
 222 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
 223 going to know that for example
 224 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
 225 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
 226 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
 227 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
 228 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
 229 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
 230 book right away.</p>
 231
 232       </div>
 233       <div class="tags">
 234
 235
 236         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 237
 238
 239       </div>
 240     </div>
 241     <div class="padding"></div>
 242
 243     <div class="entry">
 244       <div class="title">
 245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
 246       </div>
 247       <div class="date">
 248         23rd September 2012
 249       </div>
 250       <div class="body">
 251         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
 252 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
 253 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
 254 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
 255 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
 256 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
 257
 258 When I started, I
 259 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
 260 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
 261 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
 262 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
 263 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
 264 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
 265 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
 266
 267 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
 268
 269 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
 270 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
 271 the project files currently available from
 272 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 273
 274 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
 275 the updated
 276 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
 277 and
 278 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 279 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
 280 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
 281 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
 282
 283       </div>
 284       <div class="tags">
 285
 286
 287         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 288
 289
 290       </div>
 291     </div>
 292     <div class="padding"></div>
 293
 294     <div class="entry">
 295       <div class="title">
 296         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
 297       </div>
 298       <div class="date">
 299         17th September 2012
 300       </div>
 301       <div class="body">
 302         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
 303 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
 304 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
 305 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
 306 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
 307 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
 308 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
 309
 310 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 311
 312 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
 313 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
 314 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
 315 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
 316 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
 317 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
 318 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
 319 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
 320 training is anyway very important</p>
 321
 322 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
 323 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
 324 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
 325 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
 326 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
 327
 328 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
 329 project?</strong></p>
 330
 331 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
 332 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
 333 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
 334 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
 335 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
 336 hole.</p>
 337
 338 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 339 Edu?</strong></p>
 340
 341 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
 342 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
 343 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
 344 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
 345 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
 346 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
 347 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
 348 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
 349 hassle.</p>
 350
 351 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 352 Edu?</strong></p>
 353
 354 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
 355 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
 356 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
 357 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
 358 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
 359 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
 360 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
 361 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
 362
 363 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 364
 365 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
 366 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
 367 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
 368 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
 369 has the same...</p>
 370
 371 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
 372 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
 373 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
 374 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
 375
 376 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 377 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 378
 379 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
 380 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
 381 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
 382
 383 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
 384 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
 385 don't.</p>
 386
 387 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
 388 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
 389 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
 390 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
 391 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
 392 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
 393 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
 394
 395       </div>
 396       <div class="tags">
 397
 398
 399         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 400
 401
 402       </div>
 403     </div>
 404     <div class="padding"></div>
 405
 406     <div class="entry">
 407       <div class="title">
 408         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
 409       </div>
 410       <div class="date">
 411         15th September 2012
 412       </div>
 413       <div class="body">
 414         <p>After the
 415 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
 416 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
 417 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
 418 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
 419 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
 420 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
 421 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
 422 was
 423 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
 424 formal working group should be formed.</p>
 425
 426 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
 427 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
 428 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
 429 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
 430 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
 431 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
 432 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
 433 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
 434
 435 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
 436 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
 437 IETF.</p>
 438
 439       </div>
 440       <div class="tags">
 441
 442
 443         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 444
 445
 446       </div>
 447     </div>
 448     <div class="padding"></div>
 449
 450     <div class="entry">
 451       <div class="title">
 452         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
 453       </div>
 454       <div class="date">
 455         12th September 2012
 456       </div>
 457       <div class="body">
 458         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
 459 publication of of
 460 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
 461 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
 462 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
 463 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
 464 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
 465 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
 466 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
 467 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
 468 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
 469 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
 470
 471 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
 472 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
 473 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
 474 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
 475
 476 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
 477 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
 478
 479       </div>
 480       <div class="tags">
 481
 482
 483         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 484
 485
 486       </div>
 487     </div>
 488     <div class="padding"></div>
 489
 490     <div class="entry">
 491       <div class="title">
 492         <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>
 493       </div>
 494       <div class="date">
 495          7th September 2012
 496       </div>
 497       <div class="body">
 498         <p>As I
 499 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
 500 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
 501 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
 502 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
 503 repository for the project</a>.</p>
 504
 505 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
 506 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
 507 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
 508 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
 509
 510 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
 511 PostScript formats at
 512 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
 513 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
 514
 515       </div>
 516       <div class="tags">
 517
 518
 519         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>.
 520
 521
 522       </div>
 523     </div>
 524     <div class="padding"></div>
 525
 526     <div class="entry">
 527       <div class="title">
 528         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
 529       </div>
 530       <div class="date">
 531         23rd August 2012
 532       </div>
 533       <div class="body">
 534         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
 535 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
 536 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
 537 revisit the great site
 538 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
 539 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
 540 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
 541
 542       </div>
 543       <div class="tags">
 544
 545
 546         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 547
 548
 549       </div>
 550     </div>
 551     <div class="padding"></div>
 552
 553     <div class="entry">
 554       <div class="title">
 555         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
 556       </div>
 557       <div class="date">
 558         17th August 2012
 559       </div>
 560       <div class="body">
 561         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
 562 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
 563 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
 564 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
 565 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
 566 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
 567 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
 568 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
 569 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
 570 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
 571 summer I
 572 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
 573 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
 574 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
 575
 576 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
 577 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
 578 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
 579 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
 580 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
 581 progress:</p>
 582
 583 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
 584
 585 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
 586 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
 587 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
 588 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
 589 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
 590 english version of the docbook source.</p>
 591
 592 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
 593 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
 594 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
 595 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
 596 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
 597 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
 598 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
 599 project files currently available from <a
 600 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 601
 602 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
 603 the updated
 604 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
 605 and
 606 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 607 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
 608 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
 609 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
 610
 611       </div>
 612       <div class="tags">
 613
 614
 615         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 616
 617
 618       </div>
 619     </div>
 620     <div class="padding"></div>
 621
 622     <div class="entry">
 623       <div class="title">
 624         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
 625       </div>
 626       <div class="date">
 627         10th August 2012
 628       </div>
 629       <div class="body">
 630         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
 631 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
 632 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
 633 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
 634 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
 635 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
 636 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
 637 case for the language
 638 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
 639 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
 640
 641 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
 642 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
 643 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
 644 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
 645 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
 646
 647 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
 648 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
 649 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
 650 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
 651 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
 652 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
 653 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
 654 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
 655 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
 656 alias for 'nb'.</p>
 657
 658 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
 659 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
 660 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
 661 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
 662 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
 663 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
 664 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
 665 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
 666 at the same time. :(</p>
 667
 668 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
 669 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
 670 processors. :(</p>
 671
 672 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
 673
 674       </div>
 675       <div class="tags">
 676
 677
 678         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 679
 680
 681       </div>
 682     </div>
 683     <div class="padding"></div>
 684
 685     <div class="entry">
 686       <div class="title">
 687         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
 688       </div>
 689       <div class="date">
 690         31st July 2012
 691       </div>
 692       <div class="body">
 693         <p>I tried to send this text to the
 694 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
 695 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
 696 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
 697 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
 698 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
 699 out.</p>
 700
 701 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
 702 learning curve at the moment.</p>
 703
 704 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
 705 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
 706 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
 707 available from
 708 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
 709 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
 710 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
 711 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
 712 Squeeze.</p>
 713
 714 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
 715 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
 716 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
 717 problems.</p>
 718
 719 <ul>
 720
 721 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
 722    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
 723    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
 724    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
 725    index references spanning several pages (See
 726    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
 727    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
 728    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
 729
 730 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
 731    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
 732    #683163</a>).</li>
 733
 734 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
 735    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
 736    footnote and text body, see
 737    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
 738    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
 739    refs listed are not right).</li>
 740
 741 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
 742
 743 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
 744    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
 745
 746 </ul>
 747
 748 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
 749 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
 750 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
 751
 752 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
 753
 754       </div>
 755       <div class="tags">
 756
 757
 758         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 759
 760
 761       </div>
 762     </div>
 763     <div class="padding"></div>
 764
 765     <div class="entry">
 766       <div class="title">
 767         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
 768       </div>
 769       <div class="date">
 770         21st July 2012
 771       </div>
 772       <div class="body">
 773         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
 774 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
 775 norwegian version</a> of the book
 776 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
 777 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
 778 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
 779 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
 780 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 781
 782 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
 783 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
 784 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
 785 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
 786 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
 787 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
 788 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
 789 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
 790 print. :)</p>
 791
 792 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
 793 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
 794 language.</p>
 795
 796       </div>
 797       <div class="tags">
 798
 799
 800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 801
 802
 803       </div>
 804     </div>
 805     <div class="padding"></div>
 806
 807     <div class="entry">
 808       <div class="title">
 809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
 810       </div>
 811       <div class="date">
 812         16th July 2012
 813       </div>
 814       <div class="body">
 815         <p>I am currently working on a
 816 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
 817 to translate</a> the book
 818 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
 819 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
 820 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
 821 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
 822 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
 823 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
 824 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 825
 826 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
 827 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
 828 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
 829 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
 830 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
 831 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
 832 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
 833 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
 834 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
 835
 836       </div>
 837       <div class="tags">
 838
 839
 840         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 841
 842
 843       </div>
 844     </div>
 845     <div class="padding"></div>
 846
 847     <div class="entry">
 848       <div class="title">
 849         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
 850       </div>
 851       <div class="date">
 852          9th July 2012
 853       </div>
 854       <div class="body">
 855         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 856 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
 857 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
 858 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
 859 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
 860 to adjust and scale the just released
 861 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
 862 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
 863 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
 864
 865 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 866
 867 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
 868 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
 869 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
 870 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
 871 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
 872 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
 873 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
 874 perspective when working with IT.</p>
 875
 876 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
 877 project?</strong></p>
 878
 879 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
 880 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
 881 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
 882 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
 883 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
 884 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
 885
 886 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 887 Edu?</strong></p>
 888
 889 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
 890 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
 891 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
 892 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
 893 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
 894 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
 895 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
 896 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
 897 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
 898 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
 899 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
 900 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
 901 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
 902 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
 903 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
 904 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
 905 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
 906 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
 907 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
 908 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
 909 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
 910 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
 911 quicker to update.
 912
 913 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 914 Edu?</strong></p>
 915
 916 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
 917 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
 918 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
 919 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
 920 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
 921 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
 922
 923 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
 924 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
 925 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
 926 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
 927 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
 928 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
 929 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
 930 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
 931 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
 932 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
 933 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
 934 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
 935 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
 936 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
 937 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
 938
 939 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
 940 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
 941 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
 942 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
 943 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
 944 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
 945 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
 946 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
 947
 948 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
 949 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
 950 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
 951 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
 952 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
 953 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
 954 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
 955 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
 956 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
 957 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
 958 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
 959 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
 960 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
 961 sound file.</p>
 962
 963 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
 964 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
 965 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
 966 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
 967 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
 968 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
 969 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
 970 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
 971 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
 972
 973 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 974
 975 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
 976 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
 977 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
 978 )</p>
 979
 980 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 981 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 982
 983 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
 984 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
 985 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
 986 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
 987 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
 988 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
 989 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
 990 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
 991 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
 992 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
 993 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
 994 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
 995 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
 996 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
 997 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
 998
 999 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
1000 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
1001 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
1002 management with Airtime</a>,
1003 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
1004 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
1005 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
1006 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
1007 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
1008
1009       </div>
1010       <div class="tags">
1011
1012
1013         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1014
1015
1016       </div>
1017     </div>
1018     <div class="padding"></div>
1019
1020     <div class="entry">
1021       <div class="title">
1022         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
1023       </div>
1024       <div class="date">
1025          8th July 2012
1026       </div>
1027       <div class="body">
1028         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
1029 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
1030 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
1031 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
1032 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
1033 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
1034 Steinberg in his blog post
1035 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
1036 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
1037 spending of your tax money.</p>
1038
1039 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
1040 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
1041 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
1042 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
1043 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
1044 purchases.</p>
1045
1046       </div>
1047       <div class="tags">
1048
1049
1050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1051
1052
1053       </div>
1054     </div>
1055     <div class="padding"></div>
1056
1057     <div class="entry">
1058       <div class="title">
1059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
1060       </div>
1061       <div class="date">
1062          7th July 2012
1063       </div>
1064       <div class="body">
1065         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1066 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
1067 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
1068 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
1069 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
1070 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
1071 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
1072 receive.  The software is
1073
1074 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
1075 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
1076 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
1077 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
1078 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
1079 Windows</a>.</p>
1080
1081 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
1082 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
1083
1084 <p><ul>
1085
1086   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
1087     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
1088
1089   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
1090     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
1091     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
1092     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
1093     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
1094     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
1095     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
1096     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
1097     </li>
1098
1099   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
1100     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
1101
1102   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
1103     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
1104
1105   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
1106     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
1107
1108   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
1109
1110   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
1111     formats </li>
1112
1113   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
1114     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
1115     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
1116     (as separate sets)</li>
1117
1118   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
1119     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
1120     percentage)</li>
1121
1122   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
1123     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
1124     memory):
1125     <ul>
1126       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
1127       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
1128       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
1129       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
1130       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
1131       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
1132       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
1133       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
1134       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
1135       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
1136           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
1137           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
1138           activity)</li>
1139       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
1140       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
1141     </ul></li>
1142
1143   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
1144     <ul>
1145       <li>Break periods</li>
1146       <li>For teacher(s):
1147         <ul>
1148           <li>Not available periods</li>
1149           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
1150           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
1151           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
1152           <li>Min hours daily</li>
1153           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
1154
1155           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
1156             days per week</li>
1157         </ul></li>
1158       <li>For students (sets):
1159         <ul>
1160           <li>Not available periods</li>
1161           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
1162           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
1163           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
1164           <li>Min hours daily</li>
1165           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
1166
1167           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
1168             days per week</li>
1169         </ul></li>
1170       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
1171         <ul>
1172           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
1173           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
1174           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
1175           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
1176           <li>End(s) students day</li>
1177           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
1178           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
1179             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
1180           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
1181           <li>Not overlapping</li>
1182           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
1183           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
1184         </ul></li>
1185     </ul></li>
1186
1187   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
1188     <ul>
1189       <li>Room not available periods</li>
1190       <li>For teacher(s):
1191         <ul>
1192           <li>Home room(s)</li>
1193           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
1194           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
1195         </ul>
1196       </li>
1197
1198       <li>For students (sets):
1199         <ul>
1200           <li>Home room(s)</li>
1201           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
1202           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
1203         </ul>
1204       </li>
1205       <li>Preferred room(s):
1206         <ul>
1207           <li>For a subject</li>
1208           <li>For an activity tag</li>
1209           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
1210           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
1211         </ul>
1212       </li>
1213
1214       <li>For a set of activities:
1215         <ul>
1216           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
1217         </ul>
1218       </li>
1219     </ul>
1220   </li>
1221 </ul></p>
1222
1223 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
1224 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
1225 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
1226 manually, check it out.
1227
1228 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
1229 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
1230 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
1231 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
1232 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
1233 section</a>.</p>
1234
1235       </div>
1236       <div class="tags">
1237
1238
1239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1240
1241
1242       </div>
1243     </div>
1244     <div class="padding"></div>
1245
1246     <div class="entry">
1247       <div class="title">
1248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
1249       </div>
1250       <div class="date">
1251          3rd July 2012
1252       </div>
1253       <div class="body">
1254         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
1255 project (Norwegian version of
1256 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
1257 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
1258 a problem with the municipalities using
1259 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
1260 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
1261 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
1262 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
1263 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
1264 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
1265 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
1266 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
1267 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
1268 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
1269 the From: header.</p>
1270
1271 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
1272 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
1273 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
1274 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
1275 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
1276 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
1277 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
1278 behaviour.</p>
1279
1280 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
1281 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
1282 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
1283 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
1284 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
1285 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
1286 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
1287
1288       </div>
1289       <div class="tags">
1290
1291
1292         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1293
1294
1295       </div>
1296     </div>
1297     <div class="padding"></div>
1298
1299     <div class="entry">
1300       <div class="title">
1301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
1302       </div>
1303       <div class="date">
1304         26th June 2012
1305       </div>
1306       <div class="body">
1307         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
1308 another interview with the people behind
1309 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
1310 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
1311 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
1312 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
1313 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
1314 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1315 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
1316
1317 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1318
1319 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
1320 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
1321 ICT in schools</p>
1322
1323 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1324 project?</strong></p>
1325
1326 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
1327 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
1328 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
1329 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
1330
1331 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1332 Edu?</strong></p>
1333
1334 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
1335 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
1336 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
1337 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
1338
1339 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1340 Edu?</strong></p>
1341
1342 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
1343 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
1344 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
1345 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
1346 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
1347 technologies in school.</p>
1348
1349 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1350
1351 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
1352 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
1353 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
1354
1355 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1356 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1357
1358 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
1359 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
1360 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
1361 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
1362
1363 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
1364 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
1365 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
1366
1367 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
1368 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
1369 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
1370 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
1371 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
1372 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
1373 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
1374 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
1375 working there.</p>
1376
1377       </div>
1378       <div class="tags">
1379
1380
1381         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1382
1383
1384       </div>
1385     </div>
1386     <div class="padding"></div>
1387
1388     <div class="entry">
1389       <div class="title">
1390         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1391       </div>
1392       <div class="date">
1393         24th June 2012
1394       </div>
1395       <div class="body">
1396         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1397 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
1398 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
1399 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1400 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1401 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
1402 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1403 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1404 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
1405 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
1406 missing in my book.</p>
1407
1408 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1409 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1410 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1411 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
1412 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
1413 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
1414 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
1415
1416       </div>
1417       <div class="tags">
1418
1419
1420         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>.
1421
1422
1423       </div>
1424     </div>
1425     <div class="padding"></div>
1426
1427     <div class="entry">
1428       <div class="title">
1429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
1430       </div>
1431       <div class="date">
1432         11th June 2012
1433       </div>
1434       <div class="body">
1435         <p>During my work on
1436 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
1437 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
1438 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
1439 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
1440 explanation.</p>
1441
1442 <p><ul>
1443
1444 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
1445 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
1446 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
1447 system depend on tasksel tasks in
1448 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
1449 installation.</li>
1450
1451 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
1452 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
1453 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
1454 at least try to enable it for these services:
1455 <ul>
1456
1457   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
1458     quotas.</li>
1459   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
1460   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
1461   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
1462   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
1463   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
1464
1465 </ul></li>
1466
1467 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
1468 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
1469 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
1470 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
1471
1472 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
1473 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
1474 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
1475
1476 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
1477 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
1478 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
1479 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
1480 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
1481 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
1482
1483 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
1484 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
1485 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
1486 in Wheezy.
1487
1488 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
1489 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
1490 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
1491
1492 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
1493 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
1494 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
1495 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
1496
1497 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
1498 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
1499 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
1500 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
1501
1502 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
1503 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
1504 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
1505
1506 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
1507 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
1508 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
1509
1510 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
1511 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
1512 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
1513 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
1514 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
1515
1516 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
1517 <ul>
1518
1519 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
1520 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
1521 <li>and probably more?</li>
1522 </ul></li>
1523
1524 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
1525 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
1526 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
1527 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
1528 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
1529 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
1530 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
1531 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
1532
1533
1534 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
1535 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
1536 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
1537 use.</li>
1538
1539 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
1540 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
1541 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
1542 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
1543 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
1544
1545 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
1546 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
1547 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
1548 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
1549 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
1550 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
1551
1552 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
1553 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
1554 There are at least three implementations,
1555 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
1556 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
1557 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
1558 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
1559 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
1560 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
1561 given room.</li>
1562
1563 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
1564 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
1565 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
1566 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
1567 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
1568 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
1569 investigated.</li>
1570
1571 </ul></p>
1572
1573 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
1574 version.</p>
1575
1576       </div>
1577       <div class="tags">
1578
1579
1580         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1581
1582
1583       </div>
1584     </div>
1585     <div class="padding"></div>
1586
1587     <div class="entry">
1588       <div class="title">
1589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
1590       </div>
1591       <div class="date">
1592          9th June 2012
1593       </div>
1594       <div class="body">
1595         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
1596 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
1597 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
1598 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
1599 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
1600 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
1601 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
1602 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
1603 be willing to pay for.</p>
1604
1605 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
1606 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
1607 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
1608 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
1609 Orwell</a>.</p>
1610
1611       </div>
1612       <div class="tags">
1613
1614
1615         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1616
1617
1618       </div>
1619     </div>
1620     <div class="padding"></div>
1621
1622     <div class="entry">
1623       <div class="title">
1624         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
1625       </div>
1626       <div class="date">
1627          6th June 2012
1628       </div>
1629       <div class="body">
1630         <p>A few days ago
1631 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
1632 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
1633 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
1634 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
1635 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
1636 code for HP, Dell and IBM
1637 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
1638 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
1639 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
1640 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
1641 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
1642
1643 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
1644 output:
1645
1646 <blockquote><pre>
1647 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
1648 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
1649 %
1650 </pre></blockquote>
1651
1652 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
1653 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
1654 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
1655
1656       </div>
1657       <div class="tags">
1658
1659
1660         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1661
1662
1663       </div>
1664     </div>
1665     <div class="padding"></div>
1666
1667     <div class="entry">
1668       <div class="title">
1669         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
1670       </div>
1671       <div class="date">
1672          2nd June 2012
1673       </div>
1674       <div class="body">
1675         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
1676 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
1677 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
1678 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
1679 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1680 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
1681
1682 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1683
1684 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
1685 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
1686 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
1687 by Angela).</p>
1688
1689 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
1690 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
1691 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
1692 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
1693 becoming an osteopath.</p>
1694
1695 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
1696 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
1697 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
1698 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
1699 skills with communication skills.</p>
1700
1701 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1702 project?</strong></p>
1703
1704 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
1705 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
1706 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
1707 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
1708 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
1709
1710 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
1711 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
1712 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
1713 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
1714 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
1715 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
1716 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
1717 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
1718 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
1719
1720 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
1721 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
1722 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
1723
1724 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
1725
1726 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
1727 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
1728 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
1729 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
1730 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
1731 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
1732 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
1733 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
1734 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
1735 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
1736 point.</p>
1737
1738 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
1739 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
1740 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
1741 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
1742 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
1743 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
1744
1745 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
1746 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
1747 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
1748 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
1749 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
1750 spare time.</p>
1751
1752 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
1753 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
1754 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
1755 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
1756 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
1757
1758 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
1759 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
1760 avoidance do exist.</p>
1761
1762 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
1763 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
1764 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
1765 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
1766 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
1767 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
1768 and probably a gain for all.</p>
1769
1770 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1771 Edu?</strong></p>
1772
1773 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
1774 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
1775 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
1776 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
1777 project communication, honest communication within the group of
1778 developers, etc.</p>
1779
1780 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1781 Edu?</strong></p>
1782
1783 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
1784
1785 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
1786 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
1787 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
1788 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
1789 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
1790 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
1791 contribute).</p>
1792
1793 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
1794 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
1795 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
1796 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
1797 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
1798 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
1799 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
1800 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
1801 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
1802 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
1803
1804 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1805
1806 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
1807
1808 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
1809 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
1810 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
1811
1812 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
1813 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
1814 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
1815 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
1816
1817 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
1818 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
1819 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
1820 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
1821 whiteboard.</p>
1822
1823 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
1824
1825 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1826 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1827
1828 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
1829 enrol people.</p>
1830
1831       </div>
1832       <div class="tags">
1833
1834
1835         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
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/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
1845       </div>
1846       <div class="date">
1847          1st June 2012
1848       </div>
1849       <div class="body">
1850         <p>A few years ago I wrote
1851 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
1852 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
1853 I have learned from colleges here at the
1854 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
1855 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
1856 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
1857 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
1858 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
1859
1860 <p><pre>
1861 use strict;
1862 use warnings;
1863 use SOAP::Lite;
1864 use Data::Dumper;
1865 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
1866 my $App = 'test';
1867 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
1868 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
1869 my $s = SOAP::Lite
1870     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
1871     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
1872     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
1873     ;
1874 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
1875     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
1876     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
1877     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
1878 );
1879 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
1880 </pre></p>
1881
1882 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
1883
1884 <p><pre>
1885 $VAR1 = {
1886           'Asset' => {
1887                      'Entitlements' => {
1888                                        'EntitlementData' => [
1889                                                             {
1890                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
1891                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
1892                                                               'Provider' => '',
1893                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
1894                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
1895                                                             },
1896                                                             {
1897                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
1898                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
1899                                                               'Provider' => '',
1900                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
1901                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
1902                                                             },
1903                                                             {
1904                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
1905                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
1906                                                               'Provider' => '',
1907                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
1908                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
1909                                                             }
1910                                                           ]
1911                                      },
1912                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
1913                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
1914                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
1915                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
1916                                           'Buid' => '2323',
1917                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
1918                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
1919                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
1920                                         }
1921                    }
1922         };
1923 </pre></p>
1924
1925 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
1926 service outside the
1927 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
1928 documentation</a>, and according to
1929 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
1930 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
1931 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
1932
1933 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
1934 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
1935
1936       </div>
1937       <div class="tags">
1938
1939
1940         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1941
1942
1943       </div>
1944     </div>
1945     <div class="padding"></div>
1946
1947     <div class="entry">
1948       <div class="title">
1949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
1950       </div>
1951       <div class="date">
1952         31st May 2012
1953       </div>
1954       <div class="body">
1955         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
1956 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
1957 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
1958 running Debian Squeeze, where
1959 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
1960 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
1961 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
1962 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
1963 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
1964 another day.</p>
1965
1966 <p>After calibration, I get a
1967 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
1968 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
1969 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
1970 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
1971 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
1972 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
1973 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
1974 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
1975 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
1976 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
1977 and a simple</p>
1978
1979 <p><pre>
1980 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
1981 </pre></p>
1982
1983 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
1984 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
1985 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
1986 enough for now.</p>
1987
1988       </div>
1989       <div class="tags">
1990
1991
1992         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1993
1994
1995       </div>
1996     </div>
1997     <div class="padding"></div>
1998
1999     <div class="entry">
2000       <div class="title">
2001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
2002       </div>
2003       <div class="date">
2004         27th May 2012
2005       </div>
2006       <div class="body">
2007         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
2008 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2009 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
2010 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
2011 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
2012 since then, helping to make sure the
2013 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
2014 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
2015
2016 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2017
2018 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
2019 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
2020 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
2021 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
2022 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
2023 our computer network.</p>
2024
2025 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
2026 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
2027 (4 months).</p>
2028
2029 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2030 project?</strong></p>
2031
2032 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
2033 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
2034 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
2035 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
2036 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
2037 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
2038 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
2039 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
2040 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
2041 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
2042 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
2043 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
2044 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
2045 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
2046
2047 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2048 Edu?</strong></p>
2049
2050 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
2051 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
2052 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
2053 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
2054 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
2055 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
2056 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
2057 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
2058
2059 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2060 Edu?</strong></p>
2061
2062 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
2063 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
2064 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
2065 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
2066 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
2067 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
2068 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
2069 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
2070 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
2071 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
2072 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
2073 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
2074
2075 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2076
2077 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
2078 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
2079 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
2080
2081 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2082 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2083
2084 <p><ol>
2085
2086 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
2087 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
2088 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
2089 developing.</li>
2090
2091 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
2092 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
2093 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
2094 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
2095 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
2096
2097 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
2098 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
2099 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
2100
2101 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
2102 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
2103 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
2104 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
2105
2106 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
2107 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
2108 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
2109
2110 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
2111
2112 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
2113 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
2114 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
2115 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
2116
2117 </ol></p>
2118
2119       </div>
2120       <div class="tags">
2121
2122
2123         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2124
2125
2126       </div>
2127     </div>
2128     <div class="padding"></div>
2129
2130     <div class="entry">
2131       <div class="title">
2132         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
2133       </div>
2134       <div class="date">
2135         26th May 2012
2136       </div>
2137       <div class="body">
2138         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
2139 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
2140 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
2141 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
2142 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
2143
2144 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
2145 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
2146 comment:</p>
2147
2148 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
2149 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
2150 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
2151 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
2152 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
2153 </blockquote></p>
2154
2155 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
2156 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
2157 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
2158 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
2159 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
2160 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
2161 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
2162 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
2163 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
2164 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
2165 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
2166 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
2167 of wasted effort.</p>
2168
2169 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
2170 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
2171 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
2172
2173 <p>See
2174 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
2175 and
2176 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
2177 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
2178 </blockquote></p>
2179
2180       </div>
2181       <div class="tags">
2182
2183
2184         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
2185
2186
2187       </div>
2188     </div>
2189     <div class="padding"></div>
2190
2191     <div class="entry">
2192       <div class="title">
2193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
2194       </div>
2195       <div class="date">
2196         18th May 2012
2197       </div>
2198       <div class="body">
2199         <p>In january, I
2200 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
2201 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
2202 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
2203 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
2204 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
2205 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
2206 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
2207 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
2208 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
2209 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
2210
2211 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
2212 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
2213 drivers. :)</p>
2214
2215       </div>
2216       <div class="tags">
2217
2218
2219         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2220
2221
2222       </div>
2223     </div>
2224     <div class="padding"></div>
2225
2226     <div class="entry">
2227       <div class="title">
2228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
2229       </div>
2230       <div class="date">
2231         13th May 2012
2232       </div>
2233       <div class="body">
2234         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
2235 publish another interview with the people behind
2236 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
2237 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
2238 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
2239 details get right before release.
2240
2241 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2242
2243 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
2244 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
2245 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
2246 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
2247 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
2248 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
2249 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
2250 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
2251
2252 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
2253 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
2254 home since 2006.</p>
2255
2256 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2257 project?</strong></p>
2258
2259 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
2260 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
2261 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
2262 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
2263 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
2264 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
2265
2266 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
2267 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
2268 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
2269 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
2270 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
2271 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
2272 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
2273 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
2274 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
2275 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
2276 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
2277 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
2278 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
2279 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
2280 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
2281 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
2282
2283 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2284 Edu?</strong></p>
2285
2286 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
2287 for me as today.</p>
2288
2289 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
2290
2291 <p><ul>
2292
2293 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
2294 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
2295
2296 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
2297 cost.</li>
2298
2299 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
2300 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
2301 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
2302 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
2303 server</li>
2304
2305 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
2306 school.</li>
2307
2308 </ul></p>
2309
2310 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
2311 came up in this way:</p>
2312
2313 <p><ul>
2314
2315 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
2316 now.</li>
2317
2318 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
2319 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
2320 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
2321
2322 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
2323 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
2324 interfaces used in the past.</li>
2325
2326 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
2327 different needs.</li>
2328
2329 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
2330
2331 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
2332 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
2333 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
2334
2335 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
2336 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
2337
2338 </ul></p>
2339
2340 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2341 Edu?</strong></p>
2342
2343 <p><ul>
2344
2345 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
2346 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
2347 whole municipality areas.</li>
2348
2349 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
2350 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
2351 politicians.</li>
2352
2353 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
2354
2355 </ul></p>
2356
2357 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2358
2359 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
2360 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
2361 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
2362 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
2363 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
2364 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
2365
2366 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
2367 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
2368 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
2369 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
2370 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
2371
2372 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2373 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2374
2375 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
2376 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
2377 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
2378
2379       </div>
2380       <div class="tags">
2381
2382
2383         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2384
2385
2386       </div>
2387     </div>
2388     <div class="padding"></div>
2389
2390     <div class="entry">
2391       <div class="title">
2392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
2393       </div>
2394       <div class="date">
2395         30th April 2012
2396       </div>
2397       <div class="body">
2398         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
2399 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
2400
2401 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
2402 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
2403 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
2404 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
2405 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
2406 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
2407 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
2408 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
2409 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
2410 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
2411 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
2412 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
2413 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
2414 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
2415 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
2416 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
2417
2418 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
2419 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
2420 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
2421 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
2422 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
2423 finally found a Danish supplier
2424 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
2425 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
2426 days ago.</p>
2427
2428 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
2429 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
2430 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
2431 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
2432 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
2433 toys.</p>
2434
2435       </div>
2436       <div class="tags">
2437
2438
2439         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2440
2441
2442       </div>
2443     </div>
2444     <div class="padding"></div>
2445
2446     <div class="entry">
2447       <div class="title">
2448         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
2449       </div>
2450       <div class="date">
2451         26th April 2012
2452       </div>
2453       <div class="body">
2454         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
2455 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
2456 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
2457 that the video editor application included with
2458 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
2459 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
2460 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
2461
2462 <p><blockquote>
2463 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
2464 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
2465 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
2466 </blockquote></p>
2467
2468 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
2469
2470 <p><blockquote>
2471 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
2472 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
2473 </blockquote></p>
2474
2475 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
2476 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
2477 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
2478 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
2479 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
2480 video.  AMR is
2481 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
2482 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
2483 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
2484 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
2485 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
2486 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
2487 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
2488
2489 <p>I know why I prefer
2490 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
2491 standards</a> also for video.</p>
2492
2493       </div>
2494       <div class="tags">
2495
2496
2497         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2498
2499
2500       </div>
2501     </div>
2502     <div class="padding"></div>
2503
2504     <div class="entry">
2505       <div class="title">
2506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
2507       </div>
2508       <div class="date">
2509         19th April 2012
2510       </div>
2511       <div class="body">
2512         <p>Here in Norway, the
2513 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
2514 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
2515 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
2516 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
2517 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
2518 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
2519 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
2520 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
2521 on the same level.</p>
2522
2523 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
2524 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
2525 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
2526 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
2527 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
2528 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
2529 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
2530 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
2531 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
2532 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
2533 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
2534 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
2535 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
2536 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
2537 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
2538 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
2539 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
2540 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
2541
2542 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
2543 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
2544 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
2545 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
2546 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
2547 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
2548 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
2549 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
2550
2551 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
2552 from Simon Phipps
2553 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
2554 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
2555
2556 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
2557 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
2558 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
2559 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
2560 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
2561 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
2562 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
2563 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
2564 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
2565
2566       </div>
2567       <div class="tags">
2568
2569
2570         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2571
2572
2573       </div>
2574     </div>
2575     <div class="padding"></div>
2576
2577     <div class="entry">
2578       <div class="title">
2579         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
2580       </div>
2581       <div class="date">
2582         15th April 2012
2583       </div>
2584       <div class="body">
2585         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2586 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
2587 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
2588 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
2589 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
2590 up in the recently released
2591 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
2592 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
2593
2594 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2595
2596 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
2597 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
2598 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
2599 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
2600 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
2601 information technology and science/technology.</p>
2602
2603 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2604 project?</strong></p>
2605
2606 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
2607 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
2608 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
2609 contributing.</p>
2610
2611 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2612 Edu?</strong></p>
2613
2614 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
2615 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
2616 Debian Project!</p>
2617
2618 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2619 Edu?</strong></p>
2620
2621 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
2622 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
2623 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
2624 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
2625 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
2626 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
2627 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
2628
2629 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
2630 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
2631
2632 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2633
2634 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
2635 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
2636 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
2637 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
2638
2639 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2640 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2641
2642 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
2643 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
2644 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
2645 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
2646 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
2647 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
2648 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
2649
2650 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
2651 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
2652 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
2653 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
2654 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
2655 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
2656 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
2657 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
2658
2659       </div>
2660       <div class="tags">
2661
2662
2663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2664
2665
2666       </div>
2667     </div>
2668     <div class="padding"></div>
2669
2670     <div class="entry">
2671       <div class="title">
2672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
2673       </div>
2674       <div class="date">
2675          8th April 2012
2676       </div>
2677       <div class="body">
2678         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
2679 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
2680 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
2681 contributor to the
2682 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
2683 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
2684
2685 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2686
2687 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
2688 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
2689
2690 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2691 project?</strong></p>
2692
2693 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
2694 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
2695 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
2696 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
2697 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
2698 "localisation".</p>
2699
2700 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2701 Edu?</strong></p>
2702
2703 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2704 Edu?</strong></p>
2705
2706 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
2707 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
2708 education system.</p>
2709
2710 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
2711 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
2712 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
2713 money on the latest hardware.</p>
2714
2715 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2716
2717 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
2718 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
2719 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
2720
2721 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2722 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2723
2724 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
2725 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
2726 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
2727
2728       </div>
2729       <div class="tags">
2730
2731
2732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2733
2734
2735       </div>
2736     </div>
2737     <div class="padding"></div>
2738
2739     <div class="entry">
2740       <div class="title">
2741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
2742       </div>
2743       <div class="date">
2744          6th April 2012
2745       </div>
2746       <div class="body">
2747         <p>Recently I have spent time with
2748 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
2749 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2750 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
2751 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
2752 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
2753 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
2754 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
2755 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
2756
2757 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
2758 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
2759 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
2760 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
2761 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
2762 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
2763 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
2764 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
2765
2766 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
2767 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
2768 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
2769 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
2770 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
2771 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
2772 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
2773 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
2774
2775 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
2776 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
2777 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
2778 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
2779 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
2780 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
2781 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
2782 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
2783 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
2784 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
2785
2786 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
2787 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
2788 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
2789 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
2790
2791 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
2792 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
2793
2794       </div>
2795       <div class="tags">
2796
2797
2798         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2799
2800
2801       </div>
2802     </div>
2803     <div class="padding"></div>
2804
2805     <div class="entry">
2806       <div class="title">
2807         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
2808       </div>
2809       <div class="date">
2810          5th April 2012
2811       </div>
2812       <div class="body">
2813         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
2814 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
2815 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
2816 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
2817 for schools.  Check out his article
2818 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
2819 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
2820
2821       </div>
2822       <div class="tags">
2823
2824
2825         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2826
2827
2828       </div>
2829     </div>
2830     <div class="padding"></div>
2831
2832     <div class="entry">
2833       <div class="title">
2834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
2835       </div>
2836       <div class="date">
2837          1st April 2012
2838       </div>
2839       <div class="body">
2840         <p>Germany is a core area for the
2841 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2842 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
2843 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
2844
2845 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2846
2847 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
2848 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
2849 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
2850 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
2851 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
2852 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
2853 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
2854 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
2855
2856 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
2857 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
2858 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
2859 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
2860 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
2861 the end of April this year.</p>
2862
2863 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2864 project?</strong></p>
2865
2866 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
2867 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
2868 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
2869 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
2870 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
2871 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
2872 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
2873 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
2874 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
2875 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
2876 Skolelinux.</p>
2877
2878 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
2879 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
2880 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
2881 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
2882 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
2883 the admin teachers.</p>
2884
2885 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2886 Edu?</strong></p>
2887
2888 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
2889 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
2890 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
2891
2892 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
2893 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
2894 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
2895 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
2896 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
2897
2898 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2899 Edu?</strong></p>
2900
2901 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
2902
2903 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2904
2905 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
2906 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
2907 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
2908 LibreOffice.</p>
2909
2910 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2911 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2912
2913 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
2914 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
2915 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
2916
2917       </div>
2918       <div class="tags">
2919
2920
2921         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2922
2923
2924       </div>
2925     </div>
2926     <div class="padding"></div>
2927
2928     <div class="entry">
2929       <div class="title">
2930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
2931       </div>
2932       <div class="date">
2933         25th March 2012
2934       </div>
2935       <div class="body">
2936         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
2937
2938 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
2939 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
2940 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
2941 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
2942 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
2943 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
2944 and download as a
2945 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
2946 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
2947
2948 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
2949   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
2950     <p>Download video as
2951       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
2952 </video></p>
2953
2954       </div>
2955       <div class="tags">
2956
2957
2958         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2959
2960
2961       </div>
2962     </div>
2963     <div class="padding"></div>
2964
2965     <div class="entry">
2966       <div class="title">
2967         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
2968       </div>
2969       <div class="date">
2970         19th March 2012
2971       </div>
2972       <div class="body">
2973         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2974 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
2975 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
2976 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
2977 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
2978
2979 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2980
2981 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
2982 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
2983 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
2984 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
2985 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
2986 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
2987 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
2988 installations.</p>
2989
2990 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2991 project?</strong></p>
2992
2993 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
2994 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
2995 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
2996 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
2997 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
2998 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
2999 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
3000 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
3001 these things we decided to try it.</p>
3002
3003 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3004 Edu?</strong></p>
3005
3006 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
3007 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
3008 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
3009 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
3010 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
3011 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
3012 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
3013 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
3014
3015 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3016 Edu?</strong></p>
3017
3018 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
3019 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
3020 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
3021 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
3022 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
3023
3024 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3025
3026 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
3027 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
3028 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
3029 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
3030 that counts...)</p>
3031
3032 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3033 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3034
3035 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
3036 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
3037 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
3038 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
3039 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
3040 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
3041 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
3042 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
3043 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
3044 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
3045 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
3046
3047 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
3048 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
3049 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
3050
3051       </div>
3052       <div class="tags">
3053
3054
3055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3056
3057
3058       </div>
3059     </div>
3060     <div class="padding"></div>
3061
3062     <div class="entry">
3063       <div class="title">
3064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
3065       </div>
3066       <div class="date">
3067         16th March 2012
3068       </div>
3069       <div class="body">
3070         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
3071 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
3072 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
3073 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
3074
3075 <ol>
3076
3077 <li>The documentation is written in a
3078 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
3079 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
3080 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
3081 docbook XML.</li>
3082
3083 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
3084 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
3085 with the translated text.</li>
3086
3087 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
3088 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
3089 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
3090 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
3091 images.</li>
3092
3093 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
3094 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
3095
3096 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
3097 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
3098
3099 </ol>
3100
3101 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
3102 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
3103 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
3104 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
3105 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
3106
3107 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
3108 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
3109 package</a>.</p>
3110
3111       </div>
3112       <div class="tags">
3113
3114
3115         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3116
3117
3118       </div>
3119     </div>
3120     <div class="padding"></div>
3121
3122     <div class="entry">
3123       <div class="title">
3124         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
3125       </div>
3126       <div class="date">
3127         11th March 2012
3128       </div>
3129       <div class="body">
3130         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
3131 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
3132 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
3133 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
3134 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
3135 you have not done so already.</p>
3136
3137 <p>I plan to present the new version at
3138 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
3139 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
3140 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
3141
3142       </div>
3143       <div class="tags">
3144
3145
3146         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3147
3148
3149       </div>
3150     </div>
3151     <div class="padding"></div>
3152
3153     <div class="entry">
3154       <div class="title">
3155         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
3156       </div>
3157       <div class="date">
3158          9th March 2012
3159       </div>
3160       <div class="body">
3161         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
3162 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
3163 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3164 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
3165 more international audience.</p>
3166
3167 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
3168 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
3169 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
3170 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
3171 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
3172 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
3173 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
3174
3175
3176 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3177
3178 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
3179 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
3180 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
3181 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
3182 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
3183 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
3184 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
3185 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
3186 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
3187 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
3188 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
3189
3190 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3191 project?</strong></p>
3192
3193 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
3194 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
3195 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
3196 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
3197 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
3198 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
3199 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
3200 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
3201 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
3202 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
3203 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
3204 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
3205 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
3206
3207 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3208 Edu?</strong></p>
3209
3210 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
3211 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
3212 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
3213 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
3214 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
3215 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
3216 Japan.</p>
3217
3218 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3219 Edu?</strong></p>
3220
3221 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
3222 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
3223 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
3224 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
3225 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
3226 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
3227 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
3228 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
3229 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
3230 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
3231 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
3232 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
3233 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
3234 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
3235 help.</p>
3236
3237 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3238
3239 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
3240 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
3241 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
3242 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
3243 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
3244 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
3245 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
3246 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
3247 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
3248 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
3249 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
3250
3251 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3252 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3253
3254 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
3255 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
3256 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
3257 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
3258 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
3259 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
3260 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
3261 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
3262 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
3263 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
3264 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
3265 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
3266
3267       </div>
3268       <div class="tags">
3269
3270
3271         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3272
3273
3274       </div>
3275     </div>
3276     <div class="padding"></div>
3277
3278     <div class="entry">
3279       <div class="title">
3280         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
3281       </div>
3282       <div class="date">
3283          7th March 2012
3284       </div>
3285       <div class="body">
3286         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
3287
3288 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
3289 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
3290 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
3291 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
3292 download as a
3293 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
3294 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
3295
3296 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
3297   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
3298     <p>Download video as
3299       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
3300 </video></p>
3301
3302       </div>
3303       <div class="tags">
3304
3305
3306         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3307
3308
3309       </div>
3310     </div>
3311     <div class="padding"></div>
3312
3313     <div class="entry">
3314       <div class="title">
3315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3316       </div>
3317       <div class="date">
3318          4th March 2012
3319       </div>
3320       <div class="body">
3321         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
3322 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3323 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
3324 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
3325 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
3326 need a software solution for your school.</p>
3327
3328       </div>
3329       <div class="tags">
3330
3331
3332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3333
3334
3335       </div>
3336     </div>
3337     <div class="padding"></div>
3338
3339     <div class="entry">
3340       <div class="title">
3341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
3342       </div>
3343       <div class="date">
3344          3rd March 2012
3345       </div>
3346       <div class="body">
3347         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
3348 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
3349 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
3350 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
3351 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
3352 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
3353 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
3354 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
3355 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
3356 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
3357 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
3358 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
3359 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
3360 year...</p>
3361
3362 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
3363 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
3364 name,
3365 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
3366 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
3367 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
3368 mean). I've been following
3369 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
3370 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
3371 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
3372 Check it out. :)</p>
3373
3374       </div>
3375       <div class="tags">
3376
3377
3378         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3379
3380
3381       </div>
3382     </div>
3383     <div class="padding"></div>
3384
3385     <div class="entry">
3386       <div class="title">
3387         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3388       </div>
3389       <div class="date">
3390         27th February 2012
3391       </div>
3392       <div class="body">
3393         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
3394 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3395 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
3396 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
3397 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
3398 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
3399 need a software solution for your school.</p>
3400
3401       </div>
3402       <div class="tags">
3403
3404
3405         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3406
3407
3408       </div>
3409     </div>
3410     <div class="padding"></div>
3411
3412     <div class="entry">
3413       <div class="title">
3414         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3415       </div>
3416       <div class="date">
3417         19th February 2012
3418       </div>
3419       <div class="body">
3420         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
3421 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
3422 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
3423 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
3424 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
3425 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
3426 solution for your school.</p>
3427
3428       </div>
3429       <div class="tags">
3430
3431
3432         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3433
3434
3435       </div>
3436     </div>
3437     <div class="padding"></div>
3438
3439     <div class="entry">
3440       <div class="title">
3441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
3442       </div>
3443       <div class="date">
3444         14th February 2012
3445       </div>
3446       <div class="body">
3447         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
3448 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
3449 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
3450 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
3451 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
3452 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
3453 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
3454 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
3455 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
3456
3457 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
3458 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
3459 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
3460 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
3461 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
3462
3463 <blockquote><pre>
3464 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
3465 do
3466     printf "Failed disk $d: "
3467     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
3468 done
3469 </blockquote></pre>
3470
3471 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
3472 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
3473
3474 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
3475
3476 <blockquote><pre>
3477 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
3478 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
3479 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
3480 </blockquote></pre>
3481
3482 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
3483 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
3484 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
3485 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
3486 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
3487 mounted inside my box.</p>
3488
3489 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
3490 Software RAID in the
3491 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
3492 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
3493 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
3494 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
3495 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
3496 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
3497
3498       </div>
3499       <div class="tags">
3500
3501
3502         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
3503
3504
3505       </div>
3506     </div>
3507     <div class="padding"></div>
3508
3509     <div class="entry">
3510       <div class="title">
3511         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3512       </div>
3513       <div class="date">
3514         13th February 2012
3515       </div>
3516       <div class="body">
3517         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
3518 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
3519 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
3520 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
3521 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
3522 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
3523 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
3524 change the global proxy setting by editing
3525 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
3526 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
3527
3528 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
3529 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
3530 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
3531
3532 <blockquote><pre>
3533 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
3534 {
3535    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
3536        isPlainHostName(host) ||
3537        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
3538       return "DIRECT";
3539    else
3540       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
3541 }
3542 </pre></blockquote>
3543
3544 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
3545
3546 <blockquote><pre>
3547 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
3548 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
3549 </pre></blockquote>
3550
3551 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
3552 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
3553 would be used for
3554 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
3555 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
3556 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
3557 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
3558 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
3559 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
3560 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
3561 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
3562 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
3563 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
3564
3565 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
3566 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
3567 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
3568 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
3569 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
3570 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
3571
3572 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
3573 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
3574 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
3575 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
3576 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
3577 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
3578 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
3579 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
3580 the network setup changes.</p>
3581
3582 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
3583 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
3584 draft</a> and a
3585 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
3586 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
3587
3588       </div>
3589       <div class="tags">
3590
3591
3592         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3593
3594
3595       </div>
3596     </div>
3597     <div class="padding"></div>
3598
3599     <div class="entry">
3600       <div class="title">
3601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
3602       </div>
3603       <div class="date">
3604          5th February 2012
3605       </div>
3606       <div class="body">
3607         <p>Since the Lenny version of
3608 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
3609 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
3610 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
3611 in the morning.  This is done using the
3612 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
3613
3614 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
3615 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
3616 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
3617 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
3618 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
3619 the
3620 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
3621 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
3622 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
3623 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
3624 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
3625
3626 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
3627 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
3628 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
3629 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
3630 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
3631 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
3632 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
3633
3634 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
3635 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
3636 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
3637 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
3638 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
3639
3640       </div>
3641       <div class="tags">
3642
3643
3644         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3645
3646
3647       </div>
3648     </div>
3649     <div class="padding"></div>
3650
3651     <div class="entry">
3652       <div class="title">
3653         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3654       </div>
3655       <div class="date">
3656          4th February 2012
3657       </div>
3658       <div class="body">
3659         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
3660 publish the third beta version of
3661 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
3662 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
3663 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
3664 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
3665 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
3666 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
3667 on the project announcement list.</p>
3668
3669 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
3670 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
3671
3672 <ul>
3673
3674 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
3675   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
3676   the installation.</li>
3677
3678 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
3679   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
3680
3681 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
3682   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
3683   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
3684
3685 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
3686   for the local system administrator is created during installation
3687   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
3688   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
3689   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
3690   up to date on the system.</li>
3691
3692 </ul>
3693
3694 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
3695 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
3696 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
3697 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
3698
3699 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
3700 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
3701 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
3702 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
3703 will see you there?</p>
3704
3705       </div>
3706       <div class="tags">
3707
3708
3709         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3710
3711
3712       </div>
3713     </div>
3714     <div class="padding"></div>
3715
3716     <div class="entry">
3717       <div class="title">
3718         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
3719       </div>
3720       <div class="date">
3721         27th January 2012
3722       </div>
3723       <div class="body">
3724         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
3725 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
3726 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
3727 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
3728 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
3729 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
3730 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
3731
3732 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
3733 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
3734 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
3735 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
3736 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
3737 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
3738 not taken care of by this.</p>
3739
3740 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
3741 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
3742 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
3743 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
3744 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
3745 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
3746 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
3747 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
3748 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
3749 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
3750 firmware packages.</p>
3751
3752 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
3753 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
3754 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
3755 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
3756 initrd with extra firmware, the
3757 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
3758 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
3759 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
3760
3761 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
3762 network cards working.  For this,
3763 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
3764 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
3765 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
3766
3767 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
3768 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
3769 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
3770
3771 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
3772 try.</p>
3773
3774       </div>
3775       <div class="tags">
3776
3777
3778         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3779
3780
3781       </div>
3782     </div>
3783     <div class="padding"></div>
3784
3785     <div class="entry">
3786       <div class="title">
3787         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
3788       </div>
3789       <div class="date">
3790         25th January 2012
3791       </div>
3792       <div class="body">
3793         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
3794 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
3795 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
3796 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
3797 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
3798
3799 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
3800 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
3801 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
3802 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
3803 this is done, log on to the central server and run
3804 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
3805 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
3806 will look similar to this:</p>
3807
3808 <p><blockquote><pre>
3809 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
3810 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
3811 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
3812
3813 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
3814
3815 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3816 enter password: *******
3817 %
3818 </pre></blockquote></p>
3819
3820 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
3821 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
3822 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
3823 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
3824 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
3825 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
3826 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
3827 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
3828 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
3829 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
3830 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
3831 automatically.</p>
3832
3833 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
3834 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
3835
3836 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
3837 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
3838 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
3839
3840       </div>
3841       <div class="tags">
3842
3843
3844         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
3845
3846
3847       </div>
3848     </div>
3849     <div class="padding"></div>
3850
3851     <div class="entry">
3852       <div class="title">
3853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
3854       </div>
3855       <div class="date">
3856         10th January 2012
3857       </div>
3858       <div class="body">
3859         <p>In the Squeeze version of
3860 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
3861 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
3862 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
3863 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
3864 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
3865 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
3866 first time.</p>
3867
3868 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
3869 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
3870 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
3871 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
3872
3873 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
3874 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
3875 new setting.</p>
3876
3877 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
3878 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
3879 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
3880
3881       </div>
3882       <div class="tags">
3883
3884
3885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3886
3887
3888       </div>
3889     </div>
3890     <div class="padding"></div>
3891
3892     <div class="entry">
3893       <div class="title">
3894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3895       </div>
3896       <div class="date">
3897          7th January 2012
3898       </div>
3899       <div class="body">
3900         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
3901 the second beta version of
3902 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
3903 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
3904 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
3905 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
3906 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
3907 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
3908 on the project announcement list.</p>
3909
3910       </div>
3911       <div class="tags">
3912
3913
3914         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3915
3916
3917       </div>
3918     </div>
3919     <div class="padding"></div>
3920
3921     <div class="entry">
3922       <div class="title">
3923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
3924       </div>
3925       <div class="date">
3926          3rd January 2012
3927       </div>
3928       <div class="body">
3929         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
3930 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
3931 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
3932 interesting.</p>
3933
3934 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
3935 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
3936 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
3937 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
3938 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
3939 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
3940 wrap up its tasks.</p>
3941
3942 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
3943 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
3944 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
3945 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
3946 because I was typing.</P>
3947
3948 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
3949 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
3950 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
3951 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
3952 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
3953 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
3954 generate entropy.</p>
3955
3956 <p>The fix is in
3957 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
3958 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
3959 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
3960 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
3961
3962       </div>
3963       <div class="tags">
3964
3965
3966         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3967
3968
3969       </div>
3970     </div>
3971     <div class="padding"></div>
3972
3973     <div class="entry">
3974       <div class="title">
3975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
3976       </div>
3977       <div class="date">
3978         21st November 2011
3979       </div>
3980       <div class="body">
3981         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
3982 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
3983 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
3984 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
3985 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
3986 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
3987 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
3988 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
3989 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
3990 the tools to do so.</p>
3991
3992 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
3993 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
3994 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
3995 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
3996
3997 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
3998 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
3999 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
4000 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
4001 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
4002 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
4003 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
4004 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
4005
4006 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
4007 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
4008 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
4009
4010 <p><pre>
4011 #!/usr/bin/perl
4012 use strict;
4013 use warnings;
4014 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
4015 BEGIN {
4016     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
4017     my %rhelmodules = (
4018         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
4019         );
4020     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
4021         eval "use $module;";
4022         if ($@) {
4023             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
4024             system("yum install -y $pkg");
4025             eval "use $module;";
4026         }
4027     }
4028 }
4029 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
4030
4031 upgrade_dell();
4032
4033 exit 0;
4034
4035 sub run_firmware_script {
4036     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
4037     unless ($script) {
4038         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
4039         exit 1
4040     }
4041     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
4042
4043     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
4044         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
4045     } else {
4046         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
4047     }
4048 }
4049
4050 sub run_firmware_scripts {
4051     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
4052     # Run firmware packages
4053     for my $dir (@dirs) {
4054         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
4055         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
4056         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
4057             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
4058             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
4059         }
4060         closedir $dh;
4061     }
4062 }
4063
4064 sub download {
4065     my $url = shift;
4066     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
4067     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
4068 }
4069
4070 sub upgrade_dell {
4071     my @dirs;
4072     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4073     chomp $product;
4074
4075     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
4076
4077         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
4078         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
4079
4080         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
4081             CLEANUP => 1
4082             );
4083         chdir($tmpdir);
4084         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
4085         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
4086         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
4087         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
4088         my $fwopts = "-q";
4089         if (@paths) {
4090             for my $url (@paths) {
4091                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
4092             }
4093             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
4094         } else {
4095             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4096             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4097         }
4098         chdir('/');
4099     } else {
4100         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4101         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4102     }
4103 }
4104
4105 sub fetch_dell_fw {
4106     my $path = shift;
4107     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
4108     download($url);
4109 }
4110
4111 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
4112 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
4113 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
4114 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
4115     my $filename = shift;
4116
4117     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4118     chomp $product;
4119     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
4120
4121     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
4122
4123     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
4124     my @paths;
4125     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
4126         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
4127         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
4128         my $oscode;
4129         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
4130             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
4131         } else {
4132             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
4133         }
4134         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
4135         {
4136             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
4137         }
4138     }
4139     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
4140         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
4141
4142         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
4143         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
4144
4145         my $cpath = $component->{path};
4146         for my $path (@paths) {
4147             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
4148                 push(@paths, $cpath);
4149             }
4150         }
4151     }
4152     return @paths;
4153 }
4154 </pre>
4155
4156 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
4157 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
4158 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
4159 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
4160 outdated.</p>
4161
4162       </div>
4163       <div class="tags">
4164
4165
4166         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>.
4167
4168
4169       </div>
4170     </div>
4171     <div class="padding"></div>
4172
4173     <div class="entry">
4174       <div class="title">
4175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
4176       </div>
4177       <div class="date">
4178          7th October 2011
4179       </div>
4180       <div class="body">
4181         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
4182 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
4183 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
4184 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
4185 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
4186 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
4187 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
4188 models.</p>
4189
4190 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
4191 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
4192 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
4193 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
4194
4195 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
4196 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
4197 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
4198 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
4199 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
4200 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
4201 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
4202 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
4203 distributed.</p>
4204
4205 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
4206
4207 <ul>
4208
4209 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
4210   other relevant equipment.</li>
4211
4212 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
4213
4214 </ul>
4215
4216 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
4217 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
4218 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
4219 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
4220 books available.</p>
4221
4222 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
4223 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
4224 libraries. :)</p>
4225
4226       </div>
4227       <div class="tags">
4228
4229
4230         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
4231
4232
4233       </div>
4234     </div>
4235     <div class="padding"></div>
4236
4237     <div class="entry">
4238       <div class="title">
4239         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
4240       </div>
4241       <div class="date">
4242         17th September 2011
4243       </div>
4244       <div class="body">
4245         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
4246 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
4247 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
4248 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
4249 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
4250 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
4251 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
4252 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
4253
4254 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
4255
4256 <blockquote><pre>
4257 #!/bin/sh
4258 # apt-get install lsdvd
4259 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
4260 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
4261 </pre></blockquote>
4262
4263 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
4264 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
4265 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
4266 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
4267
4268 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
4269 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
4270 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
4271 back as an ISO.
4272
4273 <blockquote><pre>
4274 #!/bin/sh
4275 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
4276 set -e
4277 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
4278 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
4279 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
4280 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
4281 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
4282 </pre></blockquote>
4283
4284 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
4285
4286 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
4287 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
4288 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
4289 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
4290 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
4291
4292 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
4293 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
4294 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
4295 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
4296 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
4297 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
4298
4299       </div>
4300       <div class="tags">
4301
4302
4303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4304
4305
4306       </div>
4307     </div>
4308     <div class="padding"></div>
4309
4310     <div class="entry">
4311       <div class="title">
4312         <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>
4313       </div>
4314       <div class="date">
4315          4th August 2011
4316       </div>
4317       <div class="body">
4318         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
4319 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
4320 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
4321 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
4322 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
4323 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
4324 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
4325 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4326 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
4327
4328 <p><blockquote>
4329 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4330 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
4331 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4332 </blockquote></p>
4333
4334 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4335 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
4336 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4337 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4338 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
4339 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
4340 hard to explain.</p>
4341
4342 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
4343 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
4344 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
4345 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
4346 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
4347 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
4348 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
4349 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
4350 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
4351 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
4352 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
4353 mode).</p>
4354
4355 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
4356 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
4357 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
4358 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
4359 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
4360 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
4361 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
4362 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
4363 after visiting single user mode.</p>
4364
4365 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
4366 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
4367 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
4368 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
4369 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
4370 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
4371 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
4372 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
4373
4374 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
4375 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
4376 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
4377
4378       </div>
4379       <div class="tags">
4380
4381
4382         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>.
4383
4384
4385       </div>
4386     </div>
4387     <div class="padding"></div>
4388
4389     <div class="entry">
4390       <div class="title">
4391         <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>
4392       </div>
4393       <div class="date">
4394         30th July 2011
4395       </div>
4396       <div class="body">
4397         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
4398 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
4399 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
4400 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
4401 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
4402 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
4403 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
4404 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
4405 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
4406 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
4407 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
4408 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
4409 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
4410
4411 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
4412 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
4413 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
4414 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
4415 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
4416 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
4417 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
4418 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
4419 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
4420
4421 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
4422 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
4423 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
4424 is presented.</p>
4425
4426 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
4427 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
4428 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
4429 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
4430 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4431 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4432 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4433 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
4434 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4435 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4436 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4437 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
4438 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4439 find time to push this forward.</p>
4440
4441       </div>
4442       <div class="tags">
4443
4444
4445         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>.
4446
4447
4448       </div>
4449     </div>
4450     <div class="padding"></div>
4451
4452     <div class="entry">
4453       <div class="title">
4454         <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>
4455       </div>
4456       <div class="date">
4457         29th July 2011
4458       </div>
4459       <div class="body">
4460         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
4461 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
4462 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
4463 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
4464 issues.</p>
4465
4466 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
4467 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
4468 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
4469
4470 <ol>
4471
4472 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
4473 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
4474 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
4475 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
4476 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
4477 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
4478 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
4479 Debian.</li>
4480
4481 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
4482 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
4483 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
4484 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
4485 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
4486 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
4487 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
4488 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
4489 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
4490 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
4491 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
4492 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
4493 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
4494
4495 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
4496 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
4497 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
4498 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
4499 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
4500 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
4501 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
4502 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
4503 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
4504 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
4505
4506 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
4507 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
4508 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
4509 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
4510 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
4511 latter behaviour.</li>
4512
4513 </ol>
4514
4515 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
4516 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
4517 it do not matter much.</p>
4518
4519 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
4520 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
4521 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
4522
4523       </div>
4524       <div class="tags">
4525
4526
4527         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>.
4528
4529
4530       </div>
4531     </div>
4532     <div class="padding"></div>
4533
4534     <div class="entry">
4535       <div class="title">
4536         <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>
4537       </div>
4538       <div class="date">
4539         26th July 2011
4540       </div>
4541       <div class="body">
4542         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
4543 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
4544 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
4545 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
4546 security support for a few years.</p>
4547
4548 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
4549 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
4550 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
4551 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
4552 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
4553 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
4554 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
4555 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
4556 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
4557 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
4558 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
4559 easier in the future.</p>
4560
4561 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
4562 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
4563 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
4564 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
4565 do not have time for.</p>
4566
4567       </div>
4568       <div class="tags">
4569
4570
4571         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>.
4572
4573
4574       </div>
4575     </div>
4576     <div class="padding"></div>
4577
4578     <div class="entry">
4579       <div class="title">
4580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
4581       </div>
4582       <div class="date">
4583         20th June 2011
4584       </div>
4585       <div class="body">
4586         <p>Reading
4587 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
4588 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
4589 parts of the
4590 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
4591 and
4592 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
4593 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
4594 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
4595 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
4596
4597       </div>
4598       <div class="tags">
4599
4600
4601         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
4602
4603
4604       </div>
4605     </div>
4606     <div class="padding"></div>
4607
4608     <div class="entry">
4609       <div class="title">
4610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
4611       </div>
4612       <div class="date">
4613         30th April 2011
4614       </div>
4615       <div class="body">
4616         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
4617 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
4618 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
4619 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
4620 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
4621 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
4622 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
4623 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
4624 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
4625 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
4626
4627 <p>Where is it?  Visit
4628 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
4629 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
4630 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
4631 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
4632
4633       </div>
4634       <div class="tags">
4635
4636
4637         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
4638
4639
4640       </div>
4641     </div>
4642     <div class="padding"></div>
4643
4644     <div class="entry">
4645       <div class="title">
4646         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
4647       </div>
4648       <div class="date">
4649         29th April 2011
4650       </div>
4651       <div class="body">
4652         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
4653 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
4654 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
4655 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
4656 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
4657 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
4658 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
4659 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
4660 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
4661 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
4662 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
4663 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
4664 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
4665
4666 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
4667 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
4668 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
4669 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
4670 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
4671 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
4672 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
4673 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
4674 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
4675 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
4676 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
4677 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
4678 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
4679
4680 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
4681 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
4682 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
4683 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
4684 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
4685 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
4686 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
4687 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
4688 it.</p>
4689
4690 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
4691 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
4692 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
4693 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
4694 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
4695 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
4696 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
4697
4698 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
4699 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
4700 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
4701 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
4702 and range= options.</p>
4703
4704 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
4705 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
4706 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
4707 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
4708 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
4709 to best handle this.  I've noticed
4710 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
4711 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
4712 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
4713 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
4714
4715 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
4716 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
4717 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
4718 discussions instead of only
4719 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
4720 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
4721 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
4722 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
4723 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
4724 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
4725
4726       </div>
4727       <div class="tags">
4728
4729
4730         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
4731
4732
4733       </div>
4734     </div>
4735     <div class="padding"></div>
4736
4737     <div class="entry">
4738       <div class="title">
4739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
4740       </div>
4741       <div class="date">
4742          6th April 2011
4743       </div>
4744       <div class="body">
4745         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
4746 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
4747 A few days ago the project
4748 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
4749 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
4750 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
4751 into Gnash.</p>
4752
4753       </div>
4754       <div class="tags">
4755
4756
4757         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4758
4759
4760       </div>
4761     </div>
4762     <div class="padding"></div>
4763
4764     <div class="entry">
4765       <div class="title">
4766         <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>
4767       </div>
4768       <div class="date">
4769          3rd April 2011
4770       </div>
4771       <div class="body">
4772         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
4773 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
4774 update in English.</p>
4775
4776 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
4777 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
4778 of the British service
4779 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
4780 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
4781 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
4782 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
4783 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
4784 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
4785 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
4786 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
4787 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
4788 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
4789 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
4790 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
4791 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
4792
4793 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
4794 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
4795 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
4796 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
4797 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
4798 public infrastructure.</p>
4799
4800 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
4801 such service?</p>
4802
4803       </div>
4804       <div class="tags">
4805
4806
4807         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
4808
4809
4810       </div>
4811     </div>
4812     <div class="padding"></div>
4813
4814     <div class="entry">
4815       <div class="title">
4816         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
4817       </div>
4818       <div class="date">
4819         28th January 2011
4820       </div>
4821       <div class="body">
4822         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
4823 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
4824 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
4825 available on the Internet, and check our locally
4826 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
4827 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
4828 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
4829 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
4830 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
4831 out which security holes were present in our free software
4832 collection.</p>
4833
4834 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
4835 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
4836 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
4837 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
4838 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
4839 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
4840 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
4841 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
4842 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
4843 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
4844 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
4845 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
4846 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
4847 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
4848 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
4849 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
4850
4851 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
4852 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
4853 check out, one could look up
4854 <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
4855 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
4856 The most recent one is
4857 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
4858 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
4859 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
4860
4861 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
4862 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
4863 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
4864 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
4865 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
4866 security issues out.</p>
4867
4868 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
4869 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
4870 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
4871 RHEL is providing
4872 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
4873 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
4874 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
4875
4876 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
4877 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
4878 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
4879 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
4880 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
4881 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
4882 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
4883 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
4884 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
4885 established soon.</p>
4886
4887 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
4888 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
4889 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
4890 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
4891 for their packages.</p>
4892
4893       </div>
4894       <div class="tags">
4895
4896
4897         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>.
4898
4899
4900       </div>
4901     </div>
4902     <div class="padding"></div>
4903
4904     <div class="entry">
4905       <div class="title">
4906         <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>
4907       </div>
4908       <div class="date">
4909         23rd January 2011
4910       </div>
4911       <div class="body">
4912         <p>In the
4913 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
4914 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
4915 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
4916 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
4917 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
4918 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
4919 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
4920 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
4921 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
4922 one of my machines like this:</p>
4923
4924 <pre>
4925 loaded modules:
4926 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
4927 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
4928 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
4929 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
4930 10de:03ec pata_amd
4931 10de:03f6 sata_nv
4932 1022:1103 k8temp
4933 109e:036e bttv
4934 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
4935 11ab:4364 sky2
4936 </pre>
4937
4938 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
4939 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
4940
4941 <pre>
4942 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
4943     echo loaded pci modules:
4944     (
4945         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
4946         for address in * ; do
4947             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4948                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4949                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4950                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4951                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
4952                     echo "$id $module"
4953                 fi
4954             fi
4955         done
4956     )
4957     echo
4958 fi
4959 </pre>
4960
4961 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
4962 mappings:</p>
4963
4964 <pre>
4965 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
4966     echo loaded usb modules:
4967     (
4968         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
4969         for address in * ; do
4970             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4971                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4972                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4973                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4974                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
4975                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
4976                         echo "$id $module"
4977                     fi
4978                 fi
4979             fi
4980         done
4981     )
4982     echo
4983 fi
4984 </pre>
4985
4986 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
4987 well.</p>
4988
4989       </div>
4990       <div class="tags">
4991
4992
4993         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>.
4994
4995
4996       </div>
4997     </div>
4998     <div class="padding"></div>
4999
5000     <div class="entry">
5001       <div class="title">
5002         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
5003       </div>
5004       <div class="date">
5005         16th January 2011
5006       </div>
5007       <div class="body">
5008         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
5009 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
5010 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
5011 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
5012 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
5013 the Wikipedia article on
5014 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
5015 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
5016 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
5017 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
5018 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
5019 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
5020 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
5021 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
5022 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
5023 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
5024 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
5025 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
5026
5027 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
5028 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
5029 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
5030 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
5031 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
5032 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
5033 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
5034 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
5035 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
5036 from last week</a>.</p>
5037
5038 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
5039 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
5040 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
5041 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
5042 was without royalties and license terms, check out
5043 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
5044 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
5045
5046 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
5047 available from
5048 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
5049 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
5050 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
5051
5052 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
5053 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
5054 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
5055 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
5056
5057       </div>
5058       <div class="tags">
5059
5060
5061         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5062
5063
5064       </div>
5065     </div>
5066     <div class="padding"></div>
5067
5068     <div class="entry">
5069       <div class="title">
5070         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
5071       </div>
5072       <div class="date">
5073         12th January 2011
5074       </div>
5075       <div class="body">
5076         <p>Today I discovered
5077 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
5078 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
5079 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
5080 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
5081 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
5082 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
5083 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
5084 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
5085 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
5086 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
5087 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
5088 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
5089 on the Google announcement is available from
5090 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
5091 A good read. :)</p>
5092
5093 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
5094 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
5095 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
5096 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
5097 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
5098 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
5099 browsers support H.264, and others support
5100 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
5101 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
5102 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
5103 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
5104 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
5105 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
5106 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
5107 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
5108
5109 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
5110 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
5111 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
5112 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
5113 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
5114 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
5115 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
5116
5117 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
5118 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
5119 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
5120 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
5121 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
5122 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
5123 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
5124
5125 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
5126 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
5127 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
5128 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
5129 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
5130 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
5131 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
5132
5133 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
5134 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
5135 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
5136 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
5137 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
5138 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
5139 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
5140 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
5141 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
5142 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
5143 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
5144 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
5145 I guess time will tell.</p>
5146
5147 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
5148 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
5149 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
5150
5151       </div>
5152       <div class="tags">
5153
5154
5155         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5156
5157
5158       </div>
5159     </div>
5160     <div class="padding"></div>
5161
5162     <div class="entry">
5163       <div class="title">
5164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
5165       </div>
5166       <div class="date">
5167         30th December 2010
5168       </div>
5169       <div class="body">
5170         <p>After trying to
5171 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
5172 Ogg Theora</a> to
5173 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
5174 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
5175 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
5176 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
5177 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
5178 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
5179 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
5180
5181 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
5182 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
5183 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
5184 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
5185 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
5186 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
5187 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
5188
5189 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
5190 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
5191
5192       </div>
5193       <div class="tags">
5194
5195
5196         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
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/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
5206       </div>
5207       <div class="date">
5208         27th December 2010
5209       </div>
5210       <div class="body">
5211         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
5212 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
5213 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
5214 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
5215 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
5216 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
5217 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
5218 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
5219
5220 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
5221 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
5222 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
5223 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
5224 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
5225 page</a>.</p>
5226
5227 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
5228 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
5229 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
5230 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
5231 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
5232 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
5233 specification on equal terms.</p>
5234
5235 <blockquote>
5236
5237 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
5238 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
5239 open standard:</p>
5240
5241 <ul>
5242
5243 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
5244 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
5245 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
5246 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
5247
5248 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
5249 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
5250 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
5251 nominal fee.</li>
5252
5253 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
5254 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
5255 free basis.</li>
5256
5257 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
5258
5259 </ul>
5260 </blockquote>
5261
5262 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
5263 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
5264 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
5265 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
5266 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
5267 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
5268 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
5269
5270 <blockquote>
5271
5272 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
5273
5274 <ol>
5275
5276 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
5277 tilgængelig.</li>
5278
5279 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
5280 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
5281
5282 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
5283 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
5284
5285 </ol>
5286
5287 </blockquote>
5288
5289 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
5290 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
5291
5292 <blockquote>
5293
5294 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
5295
5296 <ol>
5297
5298 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
5299 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
5300
5301 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
5302 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
5303 Standard themselves;</li>
5304
5305 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
5306 any party or in any business model;</li>
5307
5308 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
5309 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
5310 parties;</li>
5311
5312 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
5313 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
5314 parties.</li>
5315
5316 </ol>
5317
5318 </blockquote>
5319
5320 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
5321 its
5322 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
5323 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
5324
5325 <blockquote>
5326 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
5327
5328 <ul>
5329
5330 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
5331   democratic:
5332
5333          <ul>
5334
5335          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
5336             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
5337             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
5338             and managed.</li>
5339
5340          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
5341             method, can be changed through input from all
5342             participants.</li>
5343
5344          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
5345             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
5346
5347          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
5348             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
5349
5350          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
5351             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
5352             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
5353
5354          </ul>
5355
5356 </li>
5357
5358 </ul>
5359
5360 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
5361 <ul>
5362
5363 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
5364   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
5365   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
5366   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
5367   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
5368
5369 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
5370   a technical or economic barriers</li>
5371
5372 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
5373   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
5374   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
5375   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
5376   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
5377   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
5378   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
5379   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
5380   intended to function.</li>
5381
5382 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
5383   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
5384   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
5385
5386 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
5387   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
5388   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
5389   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
5390   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
5391   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
5392   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
5393   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
5394
5395       <ul>
5396
5397       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
5398         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
5399         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
5400
5401       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
5402         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
5403         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
5404         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
5405
5406       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
5407         licensor</li>
5408
5409       </ul>
5410 </li>
5411
5412 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
5413   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
5414   or restricted licensing terms</li>
5415
5416 </ul>
5417
5418 </blockquote>
5419
5420 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
5421 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
5422 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
5423 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
5424 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
5425 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
5426 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
5427 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
5428 Standards.</p>
5429
5430       </div>
5431       <div class="tags">
5432
5433
5434         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5435
5436
5437       </div>
5438     </div>
5439     <div class="padding"></div>
5440
5441     <div class="entry">
5442       <div class="title">
5443         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
5444       </div>
5445       <div class="date">
5446         25th December 2010
5447       </div>
5448       <div class="body">
5449         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
5450 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
5451
5452 <blockquote>
5453
5454 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
5455 as follows:</p>
5456
5457 <ol>
5458
5459 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
5460 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
5461 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
5462
5463 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
5464 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
5465 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
5466 parties.</li>
5467
5468 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
5469 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
5470 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
5471
5472 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
5473 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
5474
5475 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
5476
5477 </ol>
5478
5479 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
5480 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
5481 products based on the standard.</p>
5482 </blockquote>
5483
5484 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
5485 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
5486 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
5487 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
5488 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
5489 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
5490 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
5491 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
5492
5493 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
5494
5495 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
5496 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
5497 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
5498 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
5499 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
5500 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
5501 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
5502 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
5503 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
5504 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
5505 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
5506 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
5507 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
5508 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
5509
5510 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
5511
5512 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
5513 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
5514 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
5515 documentation indicating this.</p>
5516
5517 <p>According to
5518 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
5519 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
5520 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
5521 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
5522 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
5523 report is correct.</p>
5524
5525 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
5526
5527 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
5528 container format</a> and both the
5529 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
5530 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
5531 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
5532
5533 <blockquote>
5534
5535 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
5536 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
5537 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
5538 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
5539 specification compliance.
5540
5541 </blockquote>
5542
5543 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
5544 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
5545 this is the term:<p>
5546
5547 <blockquote>
5548
5549 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
5550 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
5551 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
5552 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
5553 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
5554 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
5555 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
5556 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
5557 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
5558 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
5559 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
5560 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
5561
5562 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
5563 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
5564 </blockquote>
5565
5566 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
5567 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
5568 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
5569 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
5570 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
5571
5572 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
5573
5574 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
5575 Theora format.
5576 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
5577 and
5578 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
5579 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
5580 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
5581 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
5582 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
5583 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
5584 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
5585 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
5586
5587 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
5588
5589 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
5590
5591 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
5592
5593 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
5594 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
5595 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
5596 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
5597 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
5598 this.</p>
5599
5600 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
5601 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
5602
5603       </div>
5604       <div class="tags">
5605
5606
5607         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5608
5609
5610       </div>
5611     </div>
5612     <div class="padding"></div>
5613
5614     <div class="entry">
5615       <div class="title">
5616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
5617       </div>
5618       <div class="date">
5619         25th December 2010
5620       </div>
5621       <div class="body">
5622         <p>A few days ago
5623 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
5624 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
5625 2.0 of
5626 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
5627 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
5628 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
5629 Nothing very surprising there, given
5630 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
5631 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
5632 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
5633 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
5634 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
5635 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
5636 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
5637 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
5638 standard definition from its content.</p>
5639
5640 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
5641 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
5642 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
5643 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
5644 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
5645 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
5646 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
5647 background information about that story is available in
5648 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
5649 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
5650
5651 <blockquote>
5652 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
5653 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
5654 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
5655
5656 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
5657
5658 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
5659
5660 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
5661
5662 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
5663
5664 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
5665
5666 <p>
5667 <ul>
5668 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
5669 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
5670 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
5671 </ul>
5672 </p>
5673
5674 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
5675
5676 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
5677
5678 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
5679
5680 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
5681
5682 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
5683
5684
5685 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
5686 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
5687 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
5688 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
5689 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
5690 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
5691
5692 </p>
5693
5694 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
5695
5696 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
5697
5698 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
5699
5700 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
5701
5702 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
5703
5704 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
5705
5706 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
5707
5708 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
5709
5710 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
5711
5712 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
5713
5714 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
5715
5716 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
5717
5718 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
5719
5720 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
5721
5722 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
5723
5724 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
5725
5726 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
5727
5728 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
5729
5730 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
5731
5732 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
5733
5734 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
5735
5736 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
5737
5738 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
5739
5740 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
5741
5742 <p>On security:</p>
5743
5744 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
5745
5746 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
5747
5748 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
5749
5750 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
5751
5752 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
5753
5754 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
5755
5756 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
5757
5758 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
5759
5760 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
5761
5762 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
5763
5764 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
5765
5766 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
5767
5768 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
5769
5770 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
5771
5772 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
5773
5774 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
5775
5776 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
5777
5778 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
5779
5780 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
5781
5782 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
5783
5784 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
5785
5786 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
5787
5788 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
5789
5790 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
5791
5792 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
5793
5794 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
5795
5796 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
5797
5798 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
5799
5800 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
5801
5802 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
5803
5804 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
5805
5806 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
5807
5808 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
5809
5810 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
5811
5812 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
5813
5814 <p>Cordially,<br>
5815 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
5816 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
5817 </blockquote>
5818
5819       </div>
5820       <div class="tags">
5821
5822
5823         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5824
5825
5826       </div>
5827     </div>
5828     <div class="padding"></div>
5829
5830     <div class="entry">
5831       <div class="title">
5832         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
5833       </div>
5834       <div class="date">
5835         25th December 2010
5836       </div>
5837       <div class="body">
5838         <p>Half a year ago I
5839 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
5840 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
5841 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
5842 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
5843
5844 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
5845 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
5846 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
5847 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
5848 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
5849 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
5850 got such a great test tool available.</p>
5851
5852       </div>
5853       <div class="tags">
5854
5855
5856         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5857
5858
5859       </div>
5860     </div>
5861     <div class="padding"></div>
5862
5863     <div class="entry">
5864       <div class="title">
5865         <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>
5866       </div>
5867       <div class="date">
5868         22nd December 2010
5869       </div>
5870       <div class="body">
5871         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
5872 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
5873 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
5874 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5875 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
5876 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
5877 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5878 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5879 university.</p>
5880
5881 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5882 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
5883 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5884 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
5885 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5886 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5887 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5888 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
5889
5890 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
5891 I perform on a new model.</p>
5892
5893 <ul>
5894
5895 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5896 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
5897 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
5898
5899 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
5900 installation, X.org is working.</li>
5901
5902 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
5903 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5904 reported by the program.</li>
5905
5906 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5907 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
5908 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5909 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
5910 normally test this by playing
5911 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
5912 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
5913
5914 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
5915 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5916
5917 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5918 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5919
5920 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
5921 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
5922
5923 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5924 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
5925 few.</li>
5926
5927 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
5928 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5929 notice this.</li>
5930
5931 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
5932 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5933 resume.</li>
5934
5935 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5936 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5937 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
5938 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5939 not.</li>
5940
5941 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5942 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5943 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5944 existence.</li>
5945
5946 </ul>
5947
5948 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5949 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
5950 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
5951 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5952 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
5953 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
5954 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5955 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
5956
5957       </div>
5958       <div class="tags">
5959
5960
5961         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>.
5962
5963
5964       </div>
5965     </div>
5966     <div class="padding"></div>
5967
5968     <div class="entry">
5969       <div class="title">
5970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
5971       </div>
5972       <div class="date">
5973         11th December 2010
5974       </div>
5975       <div class="body">
5976         <p>As I continue to explore
5977 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
5978 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5979 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
5980
5981 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5982 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5983 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5984 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5985 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5986 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
5987 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
5988 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
5989 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
5990 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
5991 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
5992 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
5993 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
5994 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5995 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5996 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5997 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
5998 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5999 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
6000 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
6001
6002 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
6003 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
6004 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
6005 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
6006 If the Skolelinux foundation
6007 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
6008 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
6009 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
6010 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
6011 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
6012 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
6013 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
6014 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
6015
6016 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
6017 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
6018 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
6019 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
6020 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
6021 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
6022 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
6023 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
6024 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
6025 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
6026 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
6027 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
6028 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
6029 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
6030 currencies.</p>
6031
6032 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
6033 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
6034 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
6035 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
6036 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
6037 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
6038 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
6039 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
6040 BitCoins.  Check out
6041 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
6042 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
6043 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
6044 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
6045 yet.</p>
6046
6047 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
6048 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
6049 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
6050 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
6051 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
6052
6053       </div>
6054       <div class="tags">
6055
6056
6057         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>.
6058
6059
6060       </div>
6061     </div>
6062     <div class="padding"></div>
6063
6064     <div class="entry">
6065       <div class="title">
6066         <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>
6067       </div>
6068       <div class="date">
6069         10th December 2010
6070       </div>
6071       <div class="body">
6072         <p>With this weeks lawless
6073 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
6074 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
6075 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
6076 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
6077 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
6078 A blog post from
6079 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
6080 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
6081 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
6082 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
6083 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
6084 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
6085 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
6086
6087 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
6088 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
6089 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
6090 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
6091 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
6092 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
6093 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
6094 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
6095 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
6096 Debian</a> soon.</p>
6097
6098 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
6099 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
6100 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
6101 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
6102 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
6103 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
6104 you can even get
6105 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
6106 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
6107 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
6108 on the current exchange rates.</p>
6109
6110 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
6111 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
6112 donations to the address
6113 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
6114
6115       </div>
6116       <div class="tags">
6117
6118
6119         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>.
6120
6121
6122       </div>
6123     </div>
6124     <div class="padding"></div>
6125
6126     <div class="entry">
6127       <div class="title">
6128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
6129       </div>
6130       <div class="date">
6131          9th December 2010
6132       </div>
6133       <div class="body">
6134         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
6135 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
6136 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
6137 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
6138 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
6139 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
6140 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
6141 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
6142 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
6143 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
6144 operational.</p>
6145
6146 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
6147 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
6148 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
6149 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
6150 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
6151 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
6152 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
6153
6154       </div>
6155       <div class="tags">
6156
6157
6158         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
6159
6160
6161       </div>
6162     </div>
6163     <div class="padding"></div>
6164
6165     <div class="entry">
6166       <div class="title">
6167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
6168       </div>
6169       <div class="date">
6170         29th November 2010
6171       </div>
6172       <div class="body">
6173         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6174 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
6175 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
6176 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
6177 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
6178 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
6179
6180 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
6181 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
6182 will hold its
6183 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
6184 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
6185 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
6186 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
6187 vote this year.</p>
6188
6189       </div>
6190       <div class="tags">
6191
6192
6193         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6194
6195
6196       </div>
6197     </div>
6198     <div class="padding"></div>
6199
6200     <div class="entry">
6201       <div class="title">
6202         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6203       </div>
6204       <div class="date">
6205         27th November 2010
6206       </div>
6207       <div class="body">
6208         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6209 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6210 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6211 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6212 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6213 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6214 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6215 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6216
6217 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6218 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6219 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6220 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6221 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6222 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6223 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6224 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6225 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6226 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6227 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6228
6229 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6230 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6231 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6232 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6233 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6234 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6235 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6236 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6237 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6238 what is going on.</p>
6239
6240       </div>
6241       <div class="tags">
6242
6243
6244         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>.
6245
6246
6247       </div>
6248     </div>
6249     <div class="padding"></div>
6250
6251     <div class="entry">
6252       <div class="title">
6253         <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>
6254       </div>
6255       <div class="date">
6256         22nd November 2010
6257       </div>
6258       <div class="body">
6259         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6260 upgrade testing of the
6261 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6262 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6263 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6264 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6265
6266 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6267
6268 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6269
6270 <blockquote><p>
6271   apache2.2-bin
6272   aptdaemon
6273   baobab
6274   binfmt-support
6275   browser-plugin-gnash
6276   cheese-common
6277   cli-common
6278   cups-pk-helper
6279   dmz-cursor-theme
6280   empathy
6281   empathy-common
6282   freedesktop-sound-theme
6283   freeglut3
6284   gconf-defaults-service
6285   gdm-themes
6286   gedit-plugins
6287   geoclue
6288   geoclue-hostip
6289   geoclue-localnet
6290   geoclue-manual
6291   geoclue-yahoo
6292   gnash
6293   gnash-common
6294   gnome
6295   gnome-backgrounds
6296   gnome-cards-data
6297   gnome-codec-install
6298   gnome-core
6299   gnome-desktop-environment
6300   gnome-disk-utility
6301   gnome-screenshot
6302   gnome-search-tool
6303   gnome-session-canberra
6304   gnome-system-log
6305   gnome-themes-extras
6306   gnome-themes-more
6307   gnome-user-share
6308   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6309   gstreamer0.10-tools
6310   gtk2-engines
6311   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6312   gtk2-engines-smooth
6313   hamster-applet
6314   libapache2-mod-dnssd
6315   libapr1
6316   libaprutil1
6317   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6318   libaprutil1-ldap
6319   libart2.0-cil
6320   libboost-date-time1.42.0
6321   libboost-python1.42.0
6322   libboost-thread1.42.0
6323   libchamplain-0.4-0
6324   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
6325   libcheese-gtk18
6326   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6327   libcryptui0
6328   libdiscid0
6329   libelf1
6330   libepc-1.0-2
6331   libepc-common
6332   libepc-ui-1.0-2
6333   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6334   libfreerdp0
6335   libgconf2.0-cil
6336   libgdata-common
6337   libgdata7
6338   libgdu-gtk0
6339   libgee2
6340   libgeoclue0
6341   libgexiv2-0
6342   libgif4
6343   libglade2.0-cil
6344   libglib2.0-cil
6345   libgmime2.4-cil
6346   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6347   libgnome2.24-cil
6348   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6349   libgpod-common
6350   libgpod4
6351   libgtk2.0-cil
6352   libgtkglext1
6353   libgtksourceview2.0-common
6354   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6355   libmono-addins0.2-cil
6356   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6357   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6358   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6359   libmono-posix2.0-cil
6360   libmono-security2.0-cil
6361   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6362   libmono-system2.0-cil
6363   libmtp8
6364   libmusicbrainz3-6
6365   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6366   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6367   libopal3.6.8
6368   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
6369   libpt2.6.7
6370   libpython2.6
6371   librpm1
6372   librpmio1
6373   libsdl1.2debian
6374   libsrtp0
6375   libssh-4
6376   libtelepathy-farsight0
6377   libtelepathy-glib0
6378   libtidy-0.99-0
6379   media-player-info
6380   mesa-utils
6381   mono-2.0-gac
6382   mono-gac
6383   mono-runtime
6384   nautilus-sendto
6385   nautilus-sendto-empathy
6386   p7zip-full
6387   pkg-config
6388   python-aptdaemon
6389   python-aptdaemon-gtk
6390   python-axiom
6391   python-beautifulsoup
6392   python-bugbuddy
6393   python-clientform
6394   python-coherence
6395   python-configobj
6396   python-crypto
6397   python-cupshelpers
6398   python-elementtree
6399   python-epsilon
6400   python-evolution
6401   python-feedparser
6402   python-gdata
6403   python-gdbm
6404   python-gst0.10
6405   python-gtkglext1
6406   python-gtksourceview2
6407   python-httplib2
6408   python-louie
6409   python-mako
6410   python-markupsafe
6411   python-mechanize
6412   python-nevow
6413   python-notify
6414   python-opengl
6415   python-openssl
6416   python-pam
6417   python-pkg-resources
6418   python-pyasn1
6419   python-pysqlite2
6420   python-rdflib
6421   python-serial
6422   python-tagpy
6423   python-twisted-bin
6424   python-twisted-conch
6425   python-twisted-core
6426   python-twisted-web
6427   python-utidylib
6428   python-webkit
6429   python-xdg
6430   python-zope.interface
6431   remmina
6432   remmina-plugin-data
6433   remmina-plugin-rdp
6434   remmina-plugin-vnc
6435   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6436   rhythmbox-plugins
6437   rpm-common
6438   rpm2cpio
6439   seahorse-plugins
6440   shotwell
6441   software-center
6442   system-config-printer-udev
6443   telepathy-gabble
6444   telepathy-mission-control-5
6445   telepathy-salut
6446   tomboy
6447   totem
6448   totem-coherence
6449   totem-mozilla
6450   totem-plugins
6451   transmission-common
6452   xdg-user-dirs
6453   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
6454   xserver-xephyr
6455 </p></blockquote>
6456
6457 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6458
6459 <blockquote><p>
6460   cheese
6461   ekiga
6462   eog
6463   epiphany-extensions
6464   evolution-exchange
6465   fast-user-switch-applet
6466   file-roller
6467   gcalctool
6468   gconf-editor
6469   gdm
6470   gedit
6471   gedit-common
6472   gnome-games
6473   gnome-games-data
6474   gnome-nettool
6475   gnome-system-tools
6476   gnome-themes
6477   gnuchess
6478   gucharmap
6479   guile-1.8-libs
6480   libavahi-ui0
6481   libdmx1
6482   libgalago3
6483   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6484   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6485   liblircclient0
6486   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6487   libspeexdsp1
6488   libsvga1
6489   rhythmbox
6490   seahorse
6491   sound-juicer
6492   system-config-printer
6493   totem-common
6494   transmission-gtk
6495   vinagre
6496   vino
6497 </p></blockquote>
6498
6499 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6500
6501 <blockquote><p>
6502   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6503 </p></blockquote>
6504
6505 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6506
6507 <blockquote><p>
6508 [nothing]
6509 </p></blockquote>
6510
6511 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6512
6513 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6514
6515 <blockquote><p>
6516   ksmserver
6517 </p></blockquote>
6518
6519 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6520
6521 <blockquote><p>
6522   kwin
6523   network-manager-kde
6524 </p></blockquote>
6525
6526 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6527
6528 <blockquote><p>
6529   arts
6530   dolphin
6531   freespacenotifier
6532   google-gadgets-gst
6533   google-gadgets-xul
6534   kappfinder
6535   kcalc
6536   kcharselect
6537   kde-core
6538   kde-plasma-desktop
6539   kde-standard
6540   kde-window-manager
6541   kdeartwork
6542   kdeartwork-emoticons
6543   kdeartwork-style
6544   kdeartwork-theme-icon
6545   kdebase
6546   kdebase-apps
6547   kdebase-workspace
6548   kdebase-workspace-bin
6549   kdebase-workspace-data
6550   kdeeject
6551   kdelibs
6552   kdeplasma-addons
6553   kdeutils
6554   kdewallpapers
6555   kdf
6556   kfloppy
6557   kgpg
6558   khelpcenter4
6559   kinfocenter
6560   konq-plugins-l10n
6561   konqueror-nsplugins
6562   kscreensaver
6563   kscreensaver-xsavers
6564   ktimer
6565   kwrite
6566   libgle3
6567   libkde4-ruby1.8
6568   libkonq5
6569   libkonq5-templates
6570   libnetpbm10
6571   libplasma-ruby
6572   libplasma-ruby1.8
6573   libqt4-ruby1.8
6574   marble-data
6575   marble-plugins
6576   netpbm
6577   nuvola-icon-theme
6578   plasma-dataengines-workspace
6579   plasma-desktop
6580   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
6581   plasma-runners-addons
6582   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
6583   plasma-scriptengine-python
6584   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
6585   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
6586   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
6587   plasma-scriptengines
6588   plasma-wallpapers-addons
6589   plasma-widget-folderview
6590   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6591   ruby
6592   sweeper
6593   update-notifier-kde
6594   xscreensaver-data-extra
6595   xscreensaver-gl
6596   xscreensaver-gl-extra
6597   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6598 </p></blockquote>
6599
6600 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6601
6602 <blockquote><p>
6603   ark
6604   google-gadgets-common
6605   google-gadgets-qt
6606   htdig
6607   kate
6608   kdebase-bin
6609   kdebase-data
6610   kdepasswd
6611   kfind
6612   klipper
6613   konq-plugins
6614   konqueror
6615   ksysguard
6616   ksysguardd
6617   libarchive1
6618   libcln6
6619   libeet1
6620   libeina-svn-06
6621   libggadget-1.0-0b
6622   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
6623   libgps19
6624   libkdecorations4
6625   libkephal4
6626   libkonq4
6627   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
6628   libkscreensaver5
6629   libksgrd4
6630   libksignalplotter4
6631   libkunitconversion4
6632   libkwineffects1a
6633   libmarblewidget4
6634   libntrack-qt4-1
6635   libntrack0
6636   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
6637   libplasmaclock4a
6638   libplasmagenericshell4
6639   libprocesscore4a
6640   libprocessui4a
6641   libqalculate5
6642   libqedje0a
6643   libqtruby4shared2
6644   libqzion0a
6645   libruby1.8
6646   libscim8c2a
6647   libsmokekdecore4-3
6648   libsmokekdeui4-3
6649   libsmokekfile3
6650   libsmokekhtml3
6651   libsmokekio3
6652   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
6653   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
6654   libsmokekparts3
6655   libsmokektexteditor3
6656   libsmokekutils3
6657   libsmokenepomuk3
6658   libsmokephonon3
6659   libsmokeplasma3
6660   libsmokeqtcore4-3
6661   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
6662   libsmokeqtgui4-3
6663   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
6664   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
6665   libsmokeqtscript4-3
6666   libsmokeqtsql4-3
6667   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
6668   libsmokeqttest4-3
6669   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
6670   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
6671   libsmokeqtxml4-3
6672   libsmokesolid3
6673   libsmokesoprano3
6674   libtaskmanager4a
6675   libtidy-0.99-0
6676   libweather-ion4a
6677   libxklavier16
6678   libxxf86misc1
6679   okteta
6680   oxygencursors
6681   plasma-dataengines-addons
6682   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
6683   plasma-widget-lancelot
6684   plasma-widgets-addons
6685   plasma-widgets-workspace
6686   polkit-kde-1
6687   ruby1.8
6688   systemsettings
6689   update-notifier-common
6690 </p></blockquote>
6691
6692 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
6693 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
6694 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
6695 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
6696
6697       </div>
6698       <div class="tags">
6699
6700
6701         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>.
6702
6703
6704       </div>
6705     </div>
6706     <div class="padding"></div>
6707
6708     <div class="entry">
6709       <div class="title">
6710         <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>
6711       </div>
6712       <div class="date">
6713         22nd November 2010
6714       </div>
6715       <div class="body">
6716         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
6717 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
6718 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
6719 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
6720 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
6721 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
6722 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
6723 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
6724 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
6725
6726 <p>I found
6727 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
6728 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
6729 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
6730 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
6731 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
6732 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
6733
6734 <pre>
6735 #!/bin/sh
6736
6737 # Based on
6738 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
6739
6740 set -e
6741 set -x
6742
6743 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
6744     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
6745     exit 1
6746 else
6747     host="$1"
6748 fi
6749
6750 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
6751     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
6752     exit 1
6753 fi
6754
6755 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
6756 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6757 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6758 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
6759
6760 img=$host.img
6761 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
6762 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
6763
6764 parted $img mklabel msdos
6765 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
6766 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
6767 parted $img set 1 boot on
6768
6769 modprobe dm-mod
6770 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
6771 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
6772
6773 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
6774 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
6775 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
6776
6777 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
6778 losetup -d /dev/loop0
6779 </pre>
6780
6781 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
6782 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
6783
6784 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
6785 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
6786 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
6787 seem to work just fine.</p>
6788
6789       </div>
6790       <div class="tags">
6791
6792
6793         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>.
6794
6795
6796       </div>
6797     </div>
6798     <div class="padding"></div>
6799
6800     <div class="entry">
6801       <div class="title">
6802         <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>
6803       </div>
6804       <div class="date">
6805         20th November 2010
6806       </div>
6807       <div class="body">
6808         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
6809 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6810 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
6811 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
6812
6813 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
6814 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
6815 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
6816
6817 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6818
6819 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6820
6821 <blockquote><p>
6822   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
6823   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
6824   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
6825   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
6826   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
6827   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
6828   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
6829   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
6830   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
6831   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
6832   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6833   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6834   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
6835   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
6836   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
6837   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
6838   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6839   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
6840   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6841   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
6842   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
6843   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6844   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
6845   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
6846   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
6847   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6848   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6849   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
6850   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6851   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
6852   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
6853   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6854   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
6855   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
6856   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
6857   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
6858   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
6859   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
6860   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
6861   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
6862   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
6863   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
6864   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
6865   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
6866   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
6867   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
6868   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
6869   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
6870   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
6871   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
6872   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
6873   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
6874   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6875   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
6876   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
6877   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
6878   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
6879   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
6880   zip
6881 </p></blockquote>
6882
6883 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
6884
6885 <blockquote><p>
6886   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
6887   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
6888   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
6889   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
6890   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
6891   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
6892   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
6893   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
6894   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
6895   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
6896   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
6897   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6898   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6899   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6900   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6901   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
6902   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6903   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
6904   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
6905   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
6906   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
6907   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
6908   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
6909   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
6910   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
6911   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
6912   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
6913   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
6914   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
6915 </p></blockquote>
6916
6917 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6918
6919 <blockquote><p>
6920   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6921 </p></blockquote>
6922
6923 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6924
6925 <blockquote><p>
6926 [nothing]
6927 </p></blockquote>
6928
6929 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6930
6931 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6932
6933 <blockquote><p>
6934   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
6935   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6936   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
6937   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
6938   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
6939   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
6940   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6941   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
6942   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
6943   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6944   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
6945   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
6946   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
6947   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
6948   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
6949   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
6950   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
6951   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
6952   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
6953   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
6954   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
6955   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
6956   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
6957   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
6958   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
6959   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
6960   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
6961   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
6962   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
6963   ttf-sazanami-gothic
6964 </p></blockquote>
6965
6966 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6967
6968 <blockquote><p>
6969   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
6970   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
6971   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
6972   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
6973   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
6974   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
6975   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
6976   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
6977   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
6978   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
6979   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
6980   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
6981   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
6982   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
6983   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6984   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6985   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
6986   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
6987   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6988   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
6989   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6990   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
6991   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6992   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6993   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
6994   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
6995   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
6996   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
6997   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
6998   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
6999   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7000   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7001   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7002 </p></blockquote>
7003
7004 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7005
7006 <blockquote><p>
7007   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
7008   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
7009   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
7010   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
7011   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7012   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
7013   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7014 </p></blockquote>
7015
7016 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7017
7018 <blockquote><p>
7019   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
7020 </p></blockquote>
7021
7022       </div>
7023       <div class="tags">
7024
7025
7026         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>.
7027
7028
7029       </div>
7030     </div>
7031     <div class="padding"></div>
7032
7033     <div class="entry">
7034       <div class="title">
7035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
7036       </div>
7037       <div class="date">
7038         20th November 2010
7039       </div>
7040       <div class="body">
7041         <p>Answering
7042 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
7043 call from the Gnash project</a> for
7044 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
7045 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
7046 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
7047 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
7048 releases out more often.</p>
7049
7050 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
7051 I have considered setting up a <a
7052 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
7053 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
7054 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
7055 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
7056 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
7057 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
7058 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
7059 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
7060 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
7061 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
7062 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
7063 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
7064
7065       </div>
7066       <div class="tags">
7067
7068
7069         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>.
7070
7071
7072       </div>
7073     </div>
7074     <div class="padding"></div>
7075
7076     <div class="entry">
7077       <div class="title">
7078         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
7079       </div>
7080       <div class="date">
7081          9th November 2010
7082       </div>
7083       <div class="body">
7084         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
7085
7086 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
7087 3D linked in from
7088 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
7089 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
7090
7091       </div>
7092       <div class="tags">
7093
7094
7095         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>.
7096
7097
7098       </div>
7099     </div>
7100     <div class="padding"></div>
7101
7102     <div class="entry">
7103       <div class="title">
7104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
7105       </div>
7106       <div class="date">
7107          7th November 2010
7108       </div>
7109       <div class="body">
7110         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
7111 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
7112 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
7113 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
7114 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
7115 working using this DVD.</p>
7116
7117 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
7118 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
7119 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
7120 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
7121 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
7122 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
7123 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
7124
7125 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
7126 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
7127 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
7128 Debian archive.</p>
7129
7130 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
7131 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
7132 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
7133 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
7134 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
7135 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
7136 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
7137 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
7138 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
7139 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
7140 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
7141 free X driver should work.</p>
7142
7143 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
7144 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
7145 DVD more useful again.</p>
7146
7147       </div>
7148       <div class="tags">
7149
7150
7151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7152
7153
7154       </div>
7155     </div>
7156     <div class="padding"></div>
7157
7158     <div class="entry">
7159       <div class="title">
7160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
7161       </div>
7162       <div class="date">
7163         24th October 2010
7164       </div>
7165       <div class="body">
7166         <p>Some updates.</p>
7167
7168 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
7169 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
7170 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
7171 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7172 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
7173 :)</p>
7174
7175 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7176 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7177 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7178 It is called
7179 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
7180 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
7181 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7182 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7183 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7184 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
7185
7186 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
7187 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7188 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
7189 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7190 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
7191 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7192 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7193 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
7194 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7195 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
7196
7197       </div>
7198       <div class="tags">
7199
7200
7201         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>.
7202
7203
7204       </div>
7205     </div>
7206     <div class="padding"></div>
7207
7208     <div class="entry">
7209       <div class="title">
7210         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
7211       </div>
7212       <div class="date">
7213         19th October 2010
7214       </div>
7215       <div class="body">
7216         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
7217 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
7218 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
7219 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
7220 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
7221 AVM2 flash files.</p>
7222
7223 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
7224 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
7225 following text:</P>
7226
7227 <p><blockquote>
7228
7229   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
7230   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
7231
7232   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
7233
7234   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
7235
7236   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
7237   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
7238   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
7239   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
7240   days. The project web page is available from
7241   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
7242   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
7243   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
7244
7245   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
7246   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
7247   to get this to happen.</p>
7248
7249   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
7250   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
7251
7252 </blockquote></p>
7253
7254 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
7255 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
7256 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
7257 :)</p>
7258
7259       </div>
7260       <div class="tags">
7261
7262
7263         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7264
7265
7266       </div>
7267     </div>
7268     <div class="padding"></div>
7269
7270     <div class="entry">
7271       <div class="title">
7272         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
7273       </div>
7274       <div class="date">
7275          9th October 2010
7276       </div>
7277       <div class="body">
7278         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
7279 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
7280 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
7281 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
7282 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
7283 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
7284 robots.</p>
7285
7286 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
7287 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
7288 a few less important features too.</p>
7289
7290 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
7291 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
7292 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
7293 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
7294
7295 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
7296 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
7297 source or binary package:</p>
7298
7299 <p><ul>
7300 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
7301 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
7302 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
7303 </ul></p>
7304
7305 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
7306 please let me know.</p>
7307
7308       </div>
7309       <div class="tags">
7310
7311
7312         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7313
7314
7315       </div>
7316     </div>
7317     <div class="padding"></div>
7318
7319     <div class="entry">
7320       <div class="title">
7321         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
7322       </div>
7323       <div class="date">
7324          3rd October 2010
7325       </div>
7326       <div class="body">
7327         <p><ul>
7328
7329 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
7330 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
7331
7332 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
7333 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
7334 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
7335
7336 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
7337 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
7338 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
7339 simple setup.
7340
7341 </ul></p>
7342
7343       </div>
7344       <div class="tags">
7345
7346
7347         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7348
7349
7350       </div>
7351     </div>
7352     <div class="padding"></div>
7353
7354     <div class="entry">
7355       <div class="title">
7356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
7357       </div>
7358       <div class="date">
7359          9th September 2010
7360       </div>
7361       <div class="body">
7362         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
7363 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
7364 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
7365 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
7366 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
7367 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
7368 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
7369 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
7370 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
7371
7372 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
7373 written:</p>
7374
7375 <blockquote>
7376 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
7377 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
7378 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
7379 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
7380 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
7381
7382 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
7383 standard.</p>
7384 </blockquote>
7385
7386 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
7387 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
7388 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
7389 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
7390
7391 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
7392 read
7393 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
7394 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
7395 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
7396 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
7397 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
7398 the issue.  The solution is to support the
7399 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
7400 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
7401 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
7402
7403       </div>
7404       <div class="tags">
7405
7406
7407         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7408
7409
7410       </div>
7411     </div>
7412     <div class="padding"></div>
7413
7414     <div class="entry">
7415       <div class="title">
7416         <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>
7417       </div>
7418       <div class="date">
7419          4th September 2010
7420       </div>
7421       <div class="body">
7422         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
7423 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7424 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
7425 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
7426 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
7427 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7428 installed.</p>
7429
7430 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7431 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7432 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7433 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7434 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7435 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
7436 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7437 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7438 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7439
7440 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7441 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7442 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
7443 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7444 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7445 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7446 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7447 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7448 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7449 pages they want to visit.</p>
7450
7451 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7452 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7453 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7454 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7455 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7456 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7457 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7458 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7459 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7460 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7461 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7462
7463       </div>
7464       <div class="tags">
7465
7466
7467         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>.
7468
7469
7470       </div>
7471     </div>
7472     <div class="padding"></div>
7473
7474     <div class="entry">
7475       <div class="title">
7476         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
7477       </div>
7478       <div class="date">
7479          1st September 2010
7480       </div>
7481       <div class="body">
7482         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
7483 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
7484 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
7485 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
7486 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
7487 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
7488 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
7489 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
7490 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
7491 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
7492 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
7493 drive around.</p>
7494
7495 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
7496 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
7497
7498 <p><pre>
7499 use Spykee;
7500 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
7501 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
7502 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
7503 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
7504 $spykee->left();
7505 sleep 2;
7506 $spykee->right();
7507 sleep 2;
7508 $spykee->forward();
7509 sleep 2;
7510 $spykee->back();
7511 sleep 2;
7512 $spykee->stop();
7513 </pre></p>
7514
7515 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
7516 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
7517 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
7518 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
7519 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
7520 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
7521 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
7522 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
7523 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
7524 going. :).</p>
7525
7526 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
7527 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
7528 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
7529 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
7530
7531       </div>
7532       <div class="tags">
7533
7534
7535         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7536
7537
7538       </div>
7539     </div>
7540     <div class="padding"></div>
7541
7542     <div class="entry">
7543       <div class="title">
7544         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
7545       </div>
7546       <div class="date">
7547         30th August 2010
7548       </div>
7549       <div class="body">
7550         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
7551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
7552 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
7553 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
7554 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
7555 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
7556 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
7557
7558 <pre>
7559 % ln foo bar
7560 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
7561 %
7562 </pre>
7563
7564 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
7565 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
7566 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
7567 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
7568 nevertheless. :)</p>
7569
7570 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
7571 git from
7572 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
7573
7574       </div>
7575       <div class="tags">
7576
7577
7578         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7579
7580
7581       </div>
7582     </div>
7583     <div class="padding"></div>
7584
7585     <div class="entry">
7586       <div class="title">
7587         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
7588       </div>
7589       <div class="date">
7590         26th August 2010
7591       </div>
7592       <div class="body">
7593         <p>My file system sematics program
7594 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
7595 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
7596 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
7597 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
7598 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
7599 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
7600 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
7601 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
7602 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
7603 script:</p>
7604
7605 <pre>
7606 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
7607   mode_t retval = 0;
7608   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
7609   if (-1 != fd) {
7610     unlink(name);
7611     struct stat statbuf;
7612     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
7613       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
7614     }
7615     close(fd);
7616   }
7617   return retval;
7618 }
7619
7620 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
7621 int test_umask(void) {
7622   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
7623
7624   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
7625   mode_t newmode;
7626   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
7627     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
7628            newmode);
7629   }
7630   umask(007);
7631   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
7632     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
7633            newmode);
7634   }
7635
7636   umask (orig_umask);
7637   return 0;
7638 }
7639
7640 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
7641   [...]
7642   test_umask();
7643   return 0;
7644 }
7645 </pre>
7646
7647 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
7648
7649 <pre>
7650 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7651 info: testing symlink creation
7652 info: testing subdirectory creation
7653 info: testing fcntl locking
7654   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7655   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7656   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
7657   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7658   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7659   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
7660 info: testing umask effect on file creation
7661 </pre>
7662
7663 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
7664 result:</p>
7665
7666 <pre>
7667 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7668 info: testing symlink creation
7669 info: testing subdirectory creation
7670 info: testing fcntl locking
7671   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7672   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7673   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
7674   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7675   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7676   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
7677 info: testing umask effect on file creation
7678   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
7679   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
7680 </pre>
7681
7682 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
7683 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
7684 directory.</p>
7685
7686 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
7687 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
7688
7689 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
7690 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
7691 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
7692
7693       </div>
7694       <div class="tags">
7695
7696
7697         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7698
7699
7700       </div>
7701     </div>
7702     <div class="padding"></div>
7703
7704     <div class="entry">
7705       <div class="title">
7706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
7707       </div>
7708       <div class="date">
7709         15th August 2010
7710       </div>
7711       <div class="body">
7712         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
7713 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
7714 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
7715 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
7716 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
7717 long time.</p>
7718
7719       </div>
7720       <div class="tags">
7721
7722
7723         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7724
7725
7726       </div>
7727     </div>
7728     <div class="padding"></div>
7729
7730     <div class="entry">
7731       <div class="title">
7732         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
7733       </div>
7734       <div class="date">
7735          9th August 2010
7736       </div>
7737       <div class="body">
7738         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
7739 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
7740 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
7741 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
7742 generated configuration.</p>
7743
7744 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
7745 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
7746 without any manual configuration.</p>
7747
7748 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
7749 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
7750 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
7751 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
7752 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
7753 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
7754 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
7755 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
7756 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
7757 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
7758 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
7759 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
7760 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
7761 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
7762 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
7763 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
7764 use.</p>
7765
7766 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
7767 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
7768 working properly out of the box:</p>
7769
7770 <ul>
7771 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
7772 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
7773 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
7774 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
7775 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
7776 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
7777 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
7778 </ul>
7779
7780 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
7781
7782 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
7783 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
7784 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
7785 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
7786 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
7787
7788 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
7789 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
7790 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
7791 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
7792 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
7793 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
7794 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
7795 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
7796
7797 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
7798 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
7799 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
7800 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
7801 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
7802 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
7803 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
7804 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
7805 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
7806 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
7807 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
7808 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
7809 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
7810 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
7811 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
7812 current DNS domain is used.</p>
7813
7814 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
7815 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
7816 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
7817 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
7818 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
7819 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
7820 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
7821 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
7822 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
7823 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
7824 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
7825 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
7826 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
7827
7828 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
7829 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
7830 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
7831 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
7832 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
7833 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
7834 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
7835 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
7836 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
7837 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
7838 do for now. :)</p>
7839
7840 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
7841 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
7842 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
7843 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
7844 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
7845 yet.</p>
7846
7847 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
7848 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7849
7850 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
7851 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
7852 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
7853 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
7854
7855       </div>
7856       <div class="tags">
7857
7858
7859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7860
7861
7862       </div>
7863     </div>
7864     <div class="padding"></div>
7865
7866     <div class="entry">
7867       <div class="title">
7868         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
7869       </div>
7870       <div class="date">
7871          8th August 2010
7872       </div>
7873       <div class="body">
7874         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
7875 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
7876 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
7877 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
7878 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
7879 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
7880 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
7881
7882 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
7883 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
7884 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
7885 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
7886 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
7887 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
7888 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
7889
7890 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
7891 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
7892 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
7893 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
7894 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
7895
7896 <pre>
7897 /*
7898  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
7899  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
7900  * directory.
7901  * License: GPL v2 or later
7902  *
7903  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
7904  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
7905 */
7906
7907 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
7908 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
7909 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
7910
7911 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
7912
7913 #include &lt;errno.h>
7914 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
7915 #include &lt;stdio.h>
7916 #include &lt;string.h>
7917 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
7918 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
7919 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
7920 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
7921 #include &lt;unistd.h>
7922
7923 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
7924 /*
7925  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
7926  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
7927  * below.
7928  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
7929  */
7930 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
7931 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
7932   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
7933 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
7934   char *zErrMsg;
7935   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
7936   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
7937   unlink(name);
7938   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
7939   if( rc ){
7940     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
7941     sqlite3_close(db);
7942     return -1;
7943   }
7944
7945   /* create tables */
7946   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
7947   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
7948     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
7949     sqlite3_close(db);
7950     return -1;
7951   }
7952   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
7953   sqlite3_close(db);
7954   return 0;
7955 }
7956 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
7957
7958 /*
7959  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
7960  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
7961  * done in the sqlite3 library.
7962  * See also
7963  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
7964  * POSIX specification
7965  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
7966  */
7967 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
7968   struct flock fl;
7969   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
7970   unlink(name);
7971   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
7972   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
7973
7974   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
7975   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
7976   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
7977   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7978   fl.l_len    = 1;
7979   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
7980   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7981
7982   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
7983   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
7984   fl.l_len    = 510;
7985   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
7986   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7987
7988   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
7989   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7990   fl.l_len    = 1;
7991   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
7992   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7993
7994   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
7995   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7996   fl.l_len    = 1;
7997   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
7998   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7999
8000   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
8001   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
8002   fl.l_len    = 510;
8003   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
8004
8005   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
8006   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
8007   fl.l_len    = 2;
8008   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
8009   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
8010
8011   close(fd);
8012   return 0;
8013 }
8014
8015 /*
8016  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
8017  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
8018  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
8019  * slowing down file operations.
8020  */
8021 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
8022 #define LEVELS 5
8023   char *path = strdup("test");
8024   char *dirs[LEVELS];
8025   int level;
8026   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
8027   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
8028     char *newpath = NULL;
8029     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
8030       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
8031              path, strerror(errno));
8032       break;
8033     }
8034     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
8035     free(path);
8036     path = newpath;
8037   }
8038   return 0;
8039 }
8040
8041 /*
8042  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
8043  * KDE.
8044  */
8045 int test_symlinks(void) {
8046   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
8047   unlink("symlink");
8048   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
8049     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
8050   return 0;
8051 }
8052
8053 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
8054   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
8055   test_symlinks();
8056   test_subdirectory_creation();
8057 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
8058   test_sqlite_open();
8059 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
8060   test_gcompris_locking();
8061   return 0;
8062 }
8063 </pre>
8064
8065 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
8066 this:</p>
8067
8068 <pre>
8069 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
8070 info: testing symlink creation
8071 info: testing subdirectory creation
8072 info: sqlite worked
8073 info: testing fcntl locking
8074   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8075   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8076   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
8077   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8078   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8079   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
8080 </pre>
8081
8082 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
8083 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
8084 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
8085 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
8086 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
8087 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
8088 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
8089 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
8090
8091 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
8092 it. :)</p>
8093
8094 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
8095 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
8096 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
8097
8098       </div>
8099       <div class="tags">
8100
8101
8102         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8103
8104
8105       </div>
8106     </div>
8107     <div class="padding"></div>
8108
8109     <div class="entry">
8110       <div class="title">
8111         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
8112       </div>
8113       <div class="date">
8114          7th August 2010
8115       </div>
8116       <div class="body">
8117         <p>A few days ago, I
8118 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
8119 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
8120 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
8121 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
8122 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
8123 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
8124 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
8125 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
8126 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
8127
8128 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
8129 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
8130 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
8131 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
8132 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
8133 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
8134 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
8135 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
8136 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
8137 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
8138 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
8139 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
8140 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
8141 gave it a IP address.</p>
8142
8143 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
8144 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
8145 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
8146 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
8147 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
8148 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
8149 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
8150 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
8151
8152 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
8153 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
8154 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
8155 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
8156 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
8157 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
8158
8159 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
8160 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
8161 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
8162 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
8163 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
8164 with UID and GID values.</p>
8165
8166 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
8167 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8168
8169       </div>
8170       <div class="tags">
8171
8172
8173         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8174
8175
8176       </div>
8177     </div>
8178     <div class="padding"></div>
8179
8180     <div class="entry">
8181       <div class="title">
8182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
8183       </div>
8184       <div class="date">
8185          3rd August 2010
8186       </div>
8187       <div class="body">
8188         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
8189 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
8190 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
8191 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
8192 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
8193 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
8194 servers.</p>
8195
8196 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
8197 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
8198 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
8199 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
8200 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
8201 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
8202 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
8203 .uio.no.</p>
8204
8205 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
8206 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
8207 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
8208 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
8209 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
8210 university servers.</p>
8211
8212 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
8213 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
8214 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
8215 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
8216 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
8217 uses.</p>
8218
8219       </div>
8220       <div class="tags">
8221
8222
8223         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8224
8225
8226       </div>
8227     </div>
8228     <div class="padding"></div>
8229
8230     <div class="entry">
8231       <div class="title">
8232         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
8233       </div>
8234       <div class="date">
8235         27th July 2010
8236       </div>
8237       <div class="body">
8238         <p>I discovered this while doing
8239 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
8240 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
8241 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
8242 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
8243 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
8244
8245 <p>An example is from todays
8246 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
8247 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
8248 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
8249 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
8250 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
8251 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
8252 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
8253
8254 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
8255
8256 <blockquote><pre>
8257 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
8258  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
8259   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
8260 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
8261  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
8262 </pre></blockquote>
8263
8264 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
8265 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
8266 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
8267 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
8268 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
8269 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
8270 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
8271 of dependency loops.</p>
8272
8273 <p>Thanks to
8274 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
8275 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
8276 dependencies
8277 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
8278 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
8279
8280 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
8281 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
8282 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
8283 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
8284 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
8285 it.</p>
8286
8287       </div>
8288       <div class="tags">
8289
8290
8291         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>.
8292
8293
8294       </div>
8295     </div>
8296     <div class="padding"></div>
8297
8298     <div class="entry">
8299       <div class="title">
8300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
8301       </div>
8302       <div class="date">
8303         27th July 2010
8304       </div>
8305       <div class="body">
8306         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
8307 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
8308 completed.</p>
8309
8310 <blockquote>
8311 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
8312 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
8313 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
8314 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
8315 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
8316 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
8317 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
8318 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
8319
8320 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
8321 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
8322 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
8323
8324 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
8325 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
8326 much.</p>
8327
8328 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
8329
8330 <ul>
8331 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
8332 <ul>
8333   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
8334          combination with some new artwork
8335   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
8336   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
8337   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
8338   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
8339   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
8340   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
8341   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
8342   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
8343   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
8344 </ul></li>
8345 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
8346     Enabled for:
8347 <ul>
8348   <li>PAM
8349   <li>LDAP
8350   <li>IMAP
8351   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
8352 </ul>
8353 </li>
8354 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
8355 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
8356     fetched from LDAP.</li>
8357 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
8358 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
8359 </ul>
8360 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
8361
8362 <ul>
8363 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
8364     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
8365     for testing.</li>
8366 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
8367     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
8368     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
8369 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
8370 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
8371 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
8372 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
8373     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
8374 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
8375     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
8376     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
8377 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
8378     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
8379     and help out with translations.</li>
8380 </ul>
8381
8382 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
8383
8384 <ul>
8385 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
8386 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
8387 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
8388 </ul>
8389 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
8390
8391 <ul>
8392 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
8393 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
8394 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
8395 </ul>
8396
8397 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
8398 get closer to the final release.</p>
8399
8400 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
8401
8402 <ul>
8403 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
8404 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
8405 </ul>
8406
8407 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
8408 <ul>
8409 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
8410 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
8411 </ul>
8412 <p>How to report bugs:
8413 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
8414
8415 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
8416 </blockquote>
8417
8418       </div>
8419       <div class="tags">
8420
8421
8422         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8423
8424
8425       </div>
8426     </div>
8427     <div class="padding"></div>
8428
8429     <div class="entry">
8430       <div class="title">
8431         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
8432       </div>
8433       <div class="date">
8434         25th July 2010
8435       </div>
8436       <div class="body">
8437         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
8438 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
8439 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
8440 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
8441 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
8442
8443 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
8444 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
8445 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
8446 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
8447 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
8448 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
8449 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
8450
8451 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
8452 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
8453 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
8454 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
8455 up. :)</p>
8456
8457 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
8458 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
8459 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
8460
8461 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
8462 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
8463 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
8464 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
8465 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
8466 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
8467 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
8468 release another day.</p>
8469
8470 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
8471 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8472
8473       </div>
8474       <div class="tags">
8475
8476
8477         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8478
8479
8480       </div>
8481     </div>
8482     <div class="padding"></div>
8483
8484     <div class="entry">
8485       <div class="title">
8486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
8487       </div>
8488       <div class="date">
8489         18th July 2010
8490       </div>
8491       <div class="body">
8492         <p>Thanks to
8493 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
8494 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
8495 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
8496 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
8497 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
8498 only available from the development server, until more experience is
8499 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
8500
8501 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
8502 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
8503 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
8504 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
8505 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
8506 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
8507 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
8508
8509       </div>
8510       <div class="tags">
8511
8512
8513         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8514
8515
8516       </div>
8517     </div>
8518     <div class="padding"></div>
8519
8520     <div class="entry">
8521       <div class="title">
8522         <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>
8523       </div>
8524       <div class="date">
8525         17th July 2010
8526       </div>
8527       <div class="body">
8528         <p>This is a
8529 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
8530 on my
8531 <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
8532 work</a> on
8533 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
8534 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
8535
8536 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
8537 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
8538 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
8539 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
8540
8541 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
8542 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
8543 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
8544
8545 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
8546
8547 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
8548 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
8549 the web.
8550
8551 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
8552 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
8553 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
8554 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
8555 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
8556 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
8557
8558 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
8559 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
8560 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
8561 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
8562 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
8563 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
8564 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
8565 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
8566 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
8567 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
8568 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
8569 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
8570 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
8571 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
8572 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
8573 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
8574
8575 <blockquote><pre>
8576 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8577   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8578   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8579   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8580   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8581   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8582   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8583
8584 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8585   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8586   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
8587   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
8588   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
8589   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
8590 </pre></blockquote>
8591
8592 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
8593 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
8594 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
8595 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8596 also exist.</p>
8597
8598 <blockquote><pre>
8599 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8600 objectclass: top
8601 objectclass: dnsdomain
8602 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8603 dc: tjener
8604 arecord: 10.0.2.2
8605 associateddomain: tjener.intern
8606
8607 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8608 objectclass: top
8609 objectclass: dnsdomain2
8610 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8611 dc: 2
8612 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
8613 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
8614 </pre></blockquote>
8615
8616 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
8617 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
8618 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
8619 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
8620 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
8621 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
8622 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
8623 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
8624 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
8625 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
8626 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
8627 instead.</p>
8628
8629 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
8630 like this:</p>
8631
8632 <blockquote><pre>
8633 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8634   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8635   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8636   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8637   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8638   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8639
8640 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8641   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
8642 </pre></blockquote>
8643
8644 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
8645 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
8646 reverse lookups.</p>
8647
8648 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
8649 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
8650 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
8651 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
8652
8653 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
8654 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
8655 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
8656
8657 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
8658 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
8659 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
8660 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
8661 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
8662
8663 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
8664 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
8665 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
8666 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
8667 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
8668
8669 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
8670 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
8671 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
8672 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
8673 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
8674 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
8675
8676 <blockquote><pre>
8677 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
8678     SUP top
8679     AUXILIARY
8680     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
8681           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
8682           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
8683           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
8684           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
8685     ))
8686 </pre></blockquote>
8687
8688 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
8689 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
8690 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
8691 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
8692 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
8693 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
8694
8695 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
8696
8697 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
8698 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
8699 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
8700 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
8701 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
8702
8703 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
8704 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
8705 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
8706 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
8707
8708 <blockquote><pre>
8709 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
8710 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
8711 </pre></blockquote>
8712
8713 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
8714 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
8715 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
8716 search result is this entry:</p>
8717
8718 <blockquote><pre>
8719 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8720 cn: dhcp
8721 objectClass: top
8722 objectClass: dhcpServer
8723 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8724 </pre></blockquote>
8725
8726 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
8727 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
8728 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
8729 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
8730 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
8731 The search result is this entry:</p>
8732
8733 <blockquote><pre>
8734 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8735 cn: DHCP Config
8736 objectClass: top
8737 objectClass: dhcpService
8738 objectClass: dhcpOptions
8739 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8740 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
8741 dhcpStatements: authoritative
8742 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
8743 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
8744 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
8745 </pre></blockquote>
8746
8747 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
8748 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8749 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8750 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8751 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
8752 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
8753 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8754 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8755 related computer objects.</p>
8756
8757 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8758 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
8759 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8760 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8761 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
8762 like:</p>
8763
8764 <blockquote><pre>
8765 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8766 cn: hostname
8767 objectClass: top
8768 objectClass: dhcpHost
8769 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8770 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8771 </pre></blockquote>
8772
8773 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8774 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8775 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
8776 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8777 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
8778 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8779 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8780 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8781 structural object class.
8782
8783 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8784
8785 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8786 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8787 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8788 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8789 in the configuration.</p>
8790
8791 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8792 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8793 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8794 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8795 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8796 structure.</p>
8797
8798 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8799 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
8800
8801 <blockquote><pre>
8802 ou=services
8803   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8804     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8805     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8806       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8807         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8808     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8809       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8810         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8811     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8812       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8813 </pre></blockquote>
8814
8815 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8816 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8817 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8818 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
8819
8820 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8821 like this:</p>
8822
8823 <blockquote><pre>
8824 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8825 dc: hostname
8826 objectClass: top
8827 objectClass: dhcpHost
8828 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8829 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8830 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8831 arecord: 10.11.12.13
8832 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8833 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8834 </pre></blockquote>
8835
8836 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8837 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8838 auxiliary object class.</p>
8839
8840       </div>
8841       <div class="tags">
8842
8843
8844         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>.
8845
8846
8847       </div>
8848     </div>
8849     <div class="padding"></div>
8850
8851     <div class="entry">
8852       <div class="title">
8853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
8854       </div>
8855       <div class="date">
8856         14th July 2010
8857       </div>
8858       <div class="body">
8859         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8860 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8861 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8862 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8863 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
8864
8865 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8866 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
8867
8868 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8869 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
8870 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8871 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8872 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8873 to a slave DNS server.</p>
8874
8875 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8876 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8877 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8878 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8879 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
8880 seem to work.</p>
8881
8882 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8883 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8884 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
8885 this:</p>
8886
8887 <blockquote><pre>
8888   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8889   cn: hostname
8890   objectClass: dhcphost
8891   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8892   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8893   associateddomain: hostname.intern
8894   arecord: 10.11.12.13
8895   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8896   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8897   ldapconfigsound: Y
8898 </pre></blockquote>
8899
8900 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8901 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8902 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
8903 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
8904
8905 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8906 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8907 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8908 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8909 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8910 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8911 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8912 might be a good place to put it.</p>
8913
8914 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8915 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8916
8917       </div>
8918       <div class="tags">
8919
8920
8921         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>.
8922
8923
8924       </div>
8925     </div>
8926     <div class="padding"></div>
8927
8928     <div class="entry">
8929       <div class="title">
8930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
8931       </div>
8932       <div class="date">
8933         11th July 2010
8934       </div>
8935       <div class="body">
8936         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8937 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8938 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8939 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
8940
8941 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8942 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
8943 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8944 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8945 LTSP clients.</p>
8946
8947 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8948 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8949 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
8950
8951 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8952 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8953 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
8954
8955 <blockquote><pre>
8956 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8957 #
8958 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8959 #
8960 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8961 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8962 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8963 #
8964 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8965 # existence of attribute names.
8966 #
8967 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8968 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8969 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8970 #
8971 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8972 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
8973 #
8974 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8975 #     SUP top
8976 #     AUXILIARY
8977 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8978
8979 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8980 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8981     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8982     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
8983         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8984         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8985             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8986             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8987             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8988             # bass value on to clients
8989             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8990         done
8991     done
8992 fi
8993 </pre></blockquote>
8994
8995 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8996 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8997 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8998 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8999 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
9000
9001 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9002 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9003
9004 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
9005 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
9006 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
9007 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
9008 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
9009 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
9010
9011       </div>
9012       <div class="tags">
9013
9014
9015         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>.
9016
9017
9018       </div>
9019     </div>
9020     <div class="padding"></div>
9021
9022     <div class="entry">
9023       <div class="title">
9024         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
9025       </div>
9026       <div class="date">
9027          9th July 2010
9028       </div>
9029       <div class="body">
9030         <p>Since
9031 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
9032 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
9033 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
9034 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
9035 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
9036 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
9037 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
9038 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
9039 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
9040 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
9041 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
9042 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
9043 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
9044
9045       </div>
9046       <div class="tags">
9047
9048
9049         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>.
9050
9051
9052       </div>
9053     </div>
9054     <div class="padding"></div>
9055
9056     <div class="entry">
9057       <div class="title">
9058         <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>
9059       </div>
9060       <div class="date">
9061          3rd July 2010
9062       </div>
9063       <div class="body">
9064         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
9065 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
9066 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
9067 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
9068 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
9069 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
9070 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
9071 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
9072
9073 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
9074 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
9075 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
9076 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
9077 publish the difference.</p>
9078
9079 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9080
9081 <blockquote><p>
9082   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9083   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
9084   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
9085   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
9086   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
9087   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
9088   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
9089   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
9090 </p></blockquote>
9091
9092 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9093
9094 <blockquote><p>
9095   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
9096   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
9097   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
9098   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
9099   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
9100   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
9101   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
9102   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
9103   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9104   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
9105   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
9106   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
9107   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
9108   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
9109   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
9110   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
9111   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
9112   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
9113   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
9114   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
9115 </p></blockquote>
9116
9117 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9118
9119 <blockquote><p>
9120   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
9121   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
9122   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9123   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9124   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
9125   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
9126   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
9127   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9128   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9129   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9130   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9131   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
9132   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
9133   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
9134   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
9135   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
9136   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
9137   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
9138   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
9139   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
9140   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
9141 </p></blockquote>
9142
9143 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9144
9145 <blockquote><p>
9146   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
9147   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
9148   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
9149 </p></blockquote>
9150
9151 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
9152 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
9153 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
9154 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
9155 the difference somewhat.
9156
9157       </div>
9158       <div class="tags">
9159
9160
9161         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>.
9162
9163
9164       </div>
9165     </div>
9166     <div class="padding"></div>
9167
9168     <div class="entry">
9169       <div class="title">
9170         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
9171       </div>
9172       <div class="date">
9173          1st July 2010
9174       </div>
9175       <div class="body">
9176         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
9177 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
9178 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
9179 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
9180 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
9181 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
9182 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
9183 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
9184 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
9185
9186 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
9187
9188 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
9189 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
9190 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
9191 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
9192 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
9193 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
9194 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
9195 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
9196 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
9197 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
9198 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
9199 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
9200 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
9201 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
9202 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
9203
9204 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
9205
9206 <blockquote><pre>
9207 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
9208 </pre></blockquote>
9209
9210 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
9211 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
9212 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
9213 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
9214 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
9215 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
9216 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
9217 on how to get this working.</p>
9218
9219 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
9220 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
9221 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
9222 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
9223 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
9224 instructions I found in the
9225 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
9226 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
9227
9228 <blockquote><pre>
9229         debug-level             0
9230         reload-count            unlimited
9231         paranoia                no
9232
9233         enable-cache            passwd          yes
9234         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
9235         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
9236         suggested-size          passwd          211
9237         check-files             passwd          yes
9238         persistent              passwd          yes
9239         shared                  passwd          yes
9240         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
9241         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
9242
9243         enable-cache            group           yes
9244         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
9245         negative-time-to-live   group           20
9246         suggested-size          group           211
9247         check-files             group           yes
9248         persistent              group           yes
9249         shared                  group           yes
9250         max-db-size             group           33554432
9251         auto-propagate          group           yes
9252
9253         enable-cache            hosts           no
9254         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
9255         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
9256         suggested-size          hosts           211
9257         check-files             hosts           yes
9258         persistent              hosts           yes
9259         shared                  hosts           yes
9260         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
9261
9262         enable-cache            services        yes
9263         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
9264         negative-time-to-live   services        20
9265         suggested-size          services        211
9266         check-files             services        yes
9267         persistent              services        yes
9268         shared                  services        yes
9269         max-db-size             services        33554432
9270 </pre></blockquote>
9271
9272 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
9273 automatically like the one provided in
9274 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
9275 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
9276 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
9277 look like this:</p>
9278
9279 <blockquote><pre>
9280 passwd:         files ldap
9281 group:          files ldap
9282 shadow:         files ldap
9283 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
9284 networks:       files
9285 protocols:      files
9286 services:       files
9287 ethers:         files
9288 rpc:            files
9289 netgroup:       files ldap
9290 </pre></blockquote>
9291
9292 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
9293 shadow and netgroup.</p>
9294
9295 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
9296 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
9297 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
9298 attributes cached.
9299
9300 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
9301   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
9302
9303 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
9304 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
9305 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
9306 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
9307 discovered sssd.</p>
9308
9309 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
9310
9311 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
9312 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
9313 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
9314 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
9315 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
9316 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
9317 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
9318 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
9319 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
9320 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
9321 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
9322 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
9323 version 1.2 is now in testing.
9324
9325 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
9326 roaming setup I want</p>
9327
9328 <blockquote><pre>
9329 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
9330 </pre></blockquote>
9331
9332 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
9333 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
9334
9335 <blockquote><pre>
9336 [sssd]
9337 config_file_version = 2
9338 reconnection_retries = 3
9339 sbus_timeout = 30
9340 services = nss, pam
9341 domains = INTERN
9342
9343 [nss]
9344 filter_groups = root
9345 filter_users = root
9346 reconnection_retries = 3
9347
9348 [pam]
9349 reconnection_retries = 3
9350
9351 [domain/INTERN]
9352 enumerate = false
9353 cache_credentials = true
9354
9355 id_provider = ldap
9356 auth_provider = ldap
9357 chpass_provider = ldap
9358
9359 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
9360 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9361 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
9362 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
9363 </pre></blockquote>
9364
9365 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
9366 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
9367
9368 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
9369 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
9370 modify it manually.</p>
9371
9372 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9373 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9374
9375       </div>
9376       <div class="tags">
9377
9378
9379         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9380
9381
9382       </div>
9383     </div>
9384     <div class="padding"></div>
9385
9386     <div class="entry">
9387       <div class="title">
9388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
9389       </div>
9390       <div class="date">
9391         28th June 2010
9392       </div>
9393       <div class="body">
9394         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
9395 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
9396 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
9397 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
9398 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
9399 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
9400 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
9401 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
9402 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
9403 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
9404
9405 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
9406 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
9407 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
9408 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
9409 released.</p>
9410
9411 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
9412 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
9413 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
9414 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
9415
9416 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
9417 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9418
9419 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
9420 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
9421 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
9422 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
9423 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
9424
9425       </div>
9426       <div class="tags">
9427
9428
9429         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>.
9430
9431
9432       </div>
9433     </div>
9434     <div class="padding"></div>
9435
9436     <div class="entry">
9437       <div class="title">
9438         <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>
9439       </div>
9440       <div class="date">
9441         24th June 2010
9442       </div>
9443       <div class="body">
9444         <p>A while back, I
9445 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
9446 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
9447 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
9448 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
9449
9450 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
9451 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
9452 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
9453 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
9454
9455 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
9456 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
9457 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
9458 Debian Edu.</p>
9459
9460 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
9461 the
9462 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
9463 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
9464 available today from IETF.</p>
9465
9466 <pre>
9467 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
9468 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
9469 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
9470  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
9471         NAME 'dhcpHost'
9472         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
9473 -       SUP top
9474 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
9475         MUST cn
9476         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
9477         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
9478 </pre>
9479
9480 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
9481 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
9482 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
9483
9484 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9485 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9486
9487       </div>
9488       <div class="tags">
9489
9490
9491         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>.
9492
9493
9494       </div>
9495     </div>
9496     <div class="padding"></div>
9497
9498     <div class="entry">
9499       <div class="title">
9500         <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>
9501       </div>
9502       <div class="date">
9503         16th June 2010
9504       </div>
9505       <div class="body">
9506         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
9507 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
9508 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
9509 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
9510 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
9511 this:
9512
9513 <blockquote><pre>
9514 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9515 tasksel --new-install
9516 </pre></blockquote>
9517
9518 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
9519 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
9520 any output what so ever.
9521
9522 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
9523 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
9524 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
9525 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
9526 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
9527 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
9528 code like this:
9529
9530 <blockquote><pre>
9531 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9532 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
9533 $cmd
9534 </pre></blockquote>
9535
9536 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
9537 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
9538 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
9539 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
9540 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
9541 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
9542 installation.</p>
9543
9544 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
9545 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
9546 like this.</p>
9547
9548       </div>
9549       <div class="tags">
9550
9551
9552         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>.
9553
9554
9555       </div>
9556     </div>
9557     <div class="padding"></div>
9558
9559     <div class="entry">
9560       <div class="title">
9561         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
9562       </div>
9563       <div class="date">
9564         13th June 2010
9565       </div>
9566       <div class="body">
9567         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
9568 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
9569 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
9570 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
9571 pages.</p>
9572
9573 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
9574 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
9575 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
9576 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
9577 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
9578 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
9579 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
9580 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
9581 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
9582 see how the project is doing.</p>
9583
9584 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
9585 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
9586 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
9587 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
9588 Windows.  This is great.</p>
9589
9590       </div>
9591       <div class="tags">
9592
9593
9594         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9595
9596
9597       </div>
9598     </div>
9599     <div class="padding"></div>
9600
9601     <div class="entry">
9602       <div class="title">
9603         <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>
9604       </div>
9605       <div class="date">
9606         13th June 2010
9607       </div>
9608       <div class="body">
9609         <p>My
9610 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
9611 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
9612 finally made the upgrade logs available from
9613 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
9614 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
9615 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
9616 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
9617
9618 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
9619 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
9620 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
9621 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
9622 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
9623 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
9624 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
9625 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
9626
9627 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
9628 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
9629 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
9630 too surprising.</p>
9631
9632 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
9633 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
9634 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
9635 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
9636 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
9637 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
9638 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
9639 continue.</p>
9640
9641 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
9642 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
9643   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
9644   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
9645   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
9646   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
9647   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
9648   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9649   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9650   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9651   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9652   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9653   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9654   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9655   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9656   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9657   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9658   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9659   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9660   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9661   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9662   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9663   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9664   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9665   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9666   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9667   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9668   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9669   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
9670   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
9671
9672 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
9673
9674 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
9675   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
9676   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
9677   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
9678   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9679   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
9680   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
9681   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
9682   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
9683   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
9684   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9685   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
9686   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
9687   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
9688   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
9689   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
9690   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
9691   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
9692   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
9693   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
9694   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
9695   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
9696   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
9697   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
9698   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
9699   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
9700   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
9701   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
9702   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
9703   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9704   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9705   zip</p>
9706
9707 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
9708
9709 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
9710   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
9711   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
9712   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
9713   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
9714   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
9715   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9716   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9717   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9718   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9719   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9720   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9721   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9722   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9723   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9724   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9725   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9726   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9727   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9728   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9729   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9730   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9731   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9732   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9733   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9734   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9735   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9736   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
9737
9738 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
9739 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
9740   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9741   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
9742   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
9743   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9744   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
9745   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
9746   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9747   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
9748   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
9749   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
9750   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
9751   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
9752   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
9753   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
9754   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
9755   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9756   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9757   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9758   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
9759   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9760   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
9761   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
9762   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9763   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9764   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
9765   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
9766   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
9767   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
9768   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
9769   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
9770   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
9771   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
9772   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
9773   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9774   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9775   xulrunner-1.9</p>
9776
9777
9778       </div>
9779       <div class="tags">
9780
9781
9782         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>.
9783
9784
9785       </div>
9786     </div>
9787     <div class="padding"></div>
9788
9789     <div class="entry">
9790       <div class="title">
9791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
9792       </div>
9793       <div class="date">
9794         11th June 2010
9795       </div>
9796       <div class="body">
9797         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
9798 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
9799 have been discovered and reported in the process
9800 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
9801 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
9802 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
9803 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
9804 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
9805
9806 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
9807 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
9808 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
9809 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
9810 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
9811 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
9812
9813 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
9814 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
9815 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9816 is created.  The bug report
9817 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
9818 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
9819 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
9820 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
9821 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
9822 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
9823 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
9824 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
9825 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
9826 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
9827 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
9828 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
9829 Debian Squeeze.</p>
9830
9831 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
9832 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
9833 trick:</p>
9834
9835 <blockquote><pre>
9836 #!/bin/sh
9837 set -ex
9838
9839 if [ "$1" ] ; then
9840     desktop=$1
9841 else
9842     desktop=gnome
9843 fi
9844
9845 from=lenny
9846 to=squeeze
9847
9848 exec &lt; /dev/null
9849 unset LANG
9850 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
9851 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
9852 fuser -mv .
9853 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
9854 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9855 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
9856 #!/bin/sh
9857 exit 101
9858 EOF
9859 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
9860 exit_cleanup() {
9861     umount $tmpdir/proc
9862 }
9863 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
9864 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
9865 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
9866
9867 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
9868
9869 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
9870 # to return the correct answers.
9871 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
9872     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
9873
9874 # Include the desktop and laptop task
9875 for test in desktop laptop ; do
9876     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
9877 #!/bin/sh
9878 exit 2
9879 EOF
9880     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
9881 done
9882
9883 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9884 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
9885 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
9886 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
9887
9888 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
9889 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9890 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9891 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
9892 fuser -mv
9893 </pre></blockquote>
9894
9895 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
9896 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
9897 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
9898 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
9899 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
9900 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
9901
9902 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
9903 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
9904 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
9905 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
9906 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
9907 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
9908 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
9909
9910 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
9911 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
9912 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
9913 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
9914 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
9915 packages.</p>
9916
9917       </div>
9918       <div class="tags">
9919
9920
9921         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>.
9922
9923
9924       </div>
9925     </div>
9926     <div class="padding"></div>
9927
9928     <div class="entry">
9929       <div class="title">
9930         <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>
9931       </div>
9932       <div class="date">
9933          6th June 2010
9934       </div>
9935       <div class="body">
9936         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
9937 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
9938 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
9939 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
9940 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
9941 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
9942 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
9943
9944 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
9945 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
9946 COLUMNS):</p>
9947
9948 <blockquote><pre>
9949 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
9950 previous=N
9951 PREVLEVEL=
9952 RUNLEVEL=
9953 runlevel=S
9954 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
9955 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
9956 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
9957 </pre></blockquote>
9958
9959 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
9960 script.</p>
9961
9962 <blockquote><pre>
9963 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
9964 previous=N
9965 PREVLEVEL=N
9966 RUNLEVEL=S
9967 runlevel=S
9968 </pre></blockquote>
9969
9970 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
9971 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
9972 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
9973
9974 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
9975 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
9976 choice.</p>
9977
9978       </div>
9979       <div class="tags">
9980
9981
9982         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>.
9983
9984
9985       </div>
9986     </div>
9987     <div class="padding"></div>
9988
9989     <div class="entry">
9990       <div class="title">
9991         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
9992       </div>
9993       <div class="date">
9994          6th June 2010
9995       </div>
9996       <div class="body">
9997         <p>Via the
9998 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
9999 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
10000 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
10001 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
10002 following the standards wars of today.</p>
10003
10004       </div>
10005       <div class="tags">
10006
10007
10008         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>.
10009
10010
10011       </div>
10012     </div>
10013     <div class="padding"></div>
10014
10015     <div class="entry">
10016       <div class="title">
10017         <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>
10018       </div>
10019       <div class="date">
10020          3rd June 2010
10021       </div>
10022       <div class="body">
10023         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
10024 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
10025 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
10026 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
10027 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
10028
10029 <blockquote><pre>
10030 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
10031   vendor                    count
10032   Dell Computer Corporation     1
10033     PowerEdge 1750              1
10034   IBM                           1
10035     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
10036   Intel                         2
10037   [no-dmi-info]                 3
10038 maintainer:~#
10039 </pre></blockquote>
10040
10041 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
10042 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
10043 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
10044 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
10045 option to list the individual machines.</p>
10046
10047 <p>A larger list is
10048 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
10049 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
10050 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
10051 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
10052 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
10053 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
10054 collector.</p>
10055
10056       </div>
10057       <div class="tags">
10058
10059
10060         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>.
10061
10062
10063       </div>
10064     </div>
10065     <div class="padding"></div>
10066
10067     <div class="entry">
10068       <div class="title">
10069         <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>
10070       </div>
10071       <div class="date">
10072          1st June 2010
10073       </div>
10074       <div class="body">
10075         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
10076 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
10077 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
10078 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
10079 wait.</p>
10080
10081 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
10082 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
10083 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
10084 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
10085 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
10086 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
10087
10088 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
10089 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
10090 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
10091 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
10092 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
10093 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
10094 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
10095 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
10096
10097 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
10098
10099       </div>
10100       <div class="tags">
10101
10102
10103         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>.
10104
10105
10106       </div>
10107     </div>
10108     <div class="padding"></div>
10109
10110     <div class="entry">
10111       <div class="title">
10112         <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>
10113       </div>
10114       <div class="date">
10115         27th May 2010
10116       </div>
10117       <div class="body">
10118         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
10119 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
10120 issues are known and should be solved:
10121
10122 <p><ul>
10123
10124 <li>The wicd package seen to
10125 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
10126 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
10127 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
10128 seem to be on the case.</li>
10129
10130 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
10131 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
10132 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
10133 maintainer is on the case.</li>
10134
10135 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
10136 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
10137 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
10138 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
10139 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
10140 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
10141 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
10142 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
10143
10144 </ul></p>
10145
10146 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
10147 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
10148 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
10149 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
10150
10151 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10152 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10153 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10154 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10155
10156 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
10157
10158       </div>
10159       <div class="tags">
10160
10161
10162         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>.
10163
10164
10165       </div>
10166     </div>
10167     <div class="padding"></div>
10168
10169     <div class="entry">
10170       <div class="title">
10171         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
10172       </div>
10173       <div class="date">
10174         22nd May 2010
10175       </div>
10176       <div class="body">
10177         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
10178 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
10179 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
10180 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
10181
10182 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
10183 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
10184 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
10185 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
10186 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
10187 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
10188 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
10189 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
10190 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
10191 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
10192 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
10193 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
10194 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
10195 going to work.</p>
10196
10197 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
10198 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
10199 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
10200 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
10201 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
10202 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
10203 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
10204 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
10205 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
10206 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
10207 Edu.</p>
10208
10209 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
10210 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
10211 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
10212 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
10213 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
10214 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
10215
10216 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
10217 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
10218
10219       </div>
10220       <div class="tags">
10221
10222
10223         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>.
10224
10225
10226       </div>
10227     </div>
10228     <div class="padding"></div>
10229
10230     <div class="entry">
10231       <div class="title">
10232         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
10233       </div>
10234       <div class="date">
10235         19th May 2010
10236       </div>
10237       <div class="body">
10238         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
10239 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
10240 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
10241 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
10242 into unstable.  The
10243 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
10244 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
10245 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
10246 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
10247 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
10248 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
10249 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
10250
10251 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
10252 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
10253 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
10254 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
10255 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
10256 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
10257 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
10258 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
10259
10260 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
10261 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
10262 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
10263 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
10264 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
10265 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
10266 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
10267
10268 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
10269 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
10270 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
10271 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
10272 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
10273 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
10274 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
10275 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
10276 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
10277 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
10278 on the home directory servers.</p>
10279
10280 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
10281 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
10282 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
10283 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
10284 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
10285 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
10286
10287 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10288 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10289
10290       </div>
10291       <div class="tags">
10292
10293
10294         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10295
10296
10297       </div>
10298     </div>
10299     <div class="padding"></div>
10300
10301     <div class="entry">
10302       <div class="title">
10303         <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>
10304       </div>
10305       <div class="date">
10306         14th May 2010
10307       </div>
10308       <div class="body">
10309         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
10310 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
10311 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
10312 expected, if I am to believe the
10313 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10314 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
10315 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
10316 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
10317 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
10318 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
10319 version.</p>
10320
10321 More information about
10322 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10323 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
10324 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
10325 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10326
10327 <blockquote><pre>
10328 CONCURRENCY=none
10329 </pre></blockquote>
10330
10331 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10332 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10333 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10334 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10335
10336       </div>
10337       <div class="tags">
10338
10339
10340         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>.
10341
10342
10343       </div>
10344     </div>
10345     <div class="padding"></div>
10346
10347     <div class="entry">
10348       <div class="title">
10349         <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>
10350       </div>
10351       <div class="date">
10352         14th May 2010
10353       </div>
10354       <div class="body">
10355         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
10356 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
10357 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
10358 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
10359 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
10360 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
10361 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
10362 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
10363
10364 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
10365 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
10366 this on the collector host:</p>
10367
10368 <blockquote><pre>
10369 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
10370 </pre></blockquote>
10371
10372 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
10373 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
10374
10375 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
10376 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
10377 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
10378 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
10379 written yet.</p>
10380
10381       </div>
10382       <div class="tags">
10383
10384
10385         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>.
10386
10387
10388       </div>
10389     </div>
10390     <div class="padding"></div>
10391
10392     <div class="entry">
10393       <div class="title">
10394         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
10395       </div>
10396       <div class="date">
10397         13th May 2010
10398       </div>
10399       <div class="body">
10400         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
10401 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
10402 has been
10403 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
10404
10405 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
10406 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
10407 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
10408 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
10409 based boot system.  Tollef is
10410 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
10411 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
10412 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
10413 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
10414 at the moment do not.</p>
10415
10416 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
10417 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
10418 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
10419 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
10420 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
10421 way forward.</p>
10422
10423 <p>In the mean time, based on the
10424 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10425 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
10426 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
10427 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
10428 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
10429 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
10430 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
10431 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
10432
10433       </div>
10434       <div class="tags">
10435
10436
10437         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>.
10438
10439
10440       </div>
10441     </div>
10442     <div class="padding"></div>
10443
10444     <div class="entry">
10445       <div class="title">
10446         <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>
10447       </div>
10448       <div class="date">
10449          6th May 2010
10450       </div>
10451       <div class="body">
10452         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
10453 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
10454 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
10455 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
10456 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10457 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
10458 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10459
10460 <blockquote><pre>
10461 CONCURRENCY=makefile
10462 </pre></blockquote>
10463
10464 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
10465 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
10466 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
10467 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
10468 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
10469 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
10470 make this happen.</p>
10471
10472 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
10473 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
10474 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
10475 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
10476 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
10477
10478 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
10479 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
10480 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
10481 fix the remaining issues.</p>
10482
10483 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10484 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10485 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10486 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10487
10488       </div>
10489       <div class="tags">
10490
10491
10492         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>.
10493
10494
10495       </div>
10496     </div>
10497     <div class="padding"></div>
10498
10499     <div class="entry">
10500       <div class="title">
10501         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
10502       </div>
10503       <div class="date">
10504          2nd May 2010
10505       </div>
10506       <div class="body">
10507         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
10508 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
10509 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
10510
10511 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
10512 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
10513 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
10514 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
10515 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
10516
10517 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
10518 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
10519
10520 <blockquote><pre>
10521 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10522 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
10523 Password expires                                        : never
10524 Password inactive                                       : never
10525 Account expires                                         : never
10526 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
10527 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
10528 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
10529 root@tjener:~#
10530 </pre></blockquote>
10531
10532 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
10533 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
10534 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
10535 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
10536 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
10537 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
10538
10539 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
10540 intended:</p>
10541
10542 <blockquote><pre>
10543 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
10544 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10545 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
10546 Password expires                                        : never
10547 Password inactive                                       : never
10548 Account expires                                         : never
10549 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
10550 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
10551 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
10552 root@tjener:~#
10553 </pre></blockquote>
10554
10555 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
10556 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
10557 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
10558
10559 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
10560 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
10561
10562 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
10563 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10564
10565 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
10566 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
10567 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
10568 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
10569 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
10570 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
10571 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
10572
10573 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
10574 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
10575 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
10576 change.</p>
10577
10578       </div>
10579       <div class="tags">
10580
10581
10582         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10583
10584
10585       </div>
10586     </div>
10587     <div class="padding"></div>
10588
10589     <div class="entry">
10590       <div class="title">
10591         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
10592       </div>
10593       <div class="date">
10594         28th April 2010
10595       </div>
10596       <div class="body">
10597         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
10598 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
10599 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
10600 and go.</p>
10601
10602 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
10603 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
10604 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
10605 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
10606
10607 <ul>
10608
10609  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
10610    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
10611    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
10612    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
10613    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
10614    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
10615    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
10616    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
10617    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
10618    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
10619    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
10620    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
10621
10622  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
10623    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
10624    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
10625    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
10626    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
10627    or the Fedora developed
10628    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
10629    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
10630
10631  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
10632    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
10633    directory, using unison.</li>
10634
10635  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
10636    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
10637    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
10638    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
10639    implemented.</li>
10640
10641  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
10642    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
10643
10644  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
10645    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
10646    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
10647
10648 </ul>
10649
10650 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
10651 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
10652 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
10653 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
10654 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
10655 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
10656 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
10657 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
10658 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
10659
10660 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10661 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10662
10663       </div>
10664       <div class="tags">
10665
10666
10667         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10668
10669
10670       </div>
10671     </div>
10672     <div class="padding"></div>
10673
10674     <div class="entry">
10675       <div class="title">
10676         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
10677       </div>
10678       <div class="date">
10679         19th April 2010
10680       </div>
10681       <div class="body">
10682         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
10683 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
10684 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
10685 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
10686 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
10687 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
10688 restrictions on the web, for example from
10689 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
10690 epub-version from
10691 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
10692 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
10693 strongly recommend this book.</p>
10694
10695       </div>
10696       <div class="tags">
10697
10698
10699         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10700
10701
10702       </div>
10703     </div>
10704     <div class="padding"></div>
10705
10706     <div class="entry">
10707       <div class="title">
10708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
10709       </div>
10710       <div class="date">
10711         14th April 2010
10712       </div>
10713       <div class="body">
10714         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
10715 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
10716 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
10717 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
10718 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
10719 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
10720 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
10721 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
10722 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
10723
10724 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
10725 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
10726 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
10727 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
10728 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
10729
10730 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
10731 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
10732
10733 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
10734 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
10735 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
10736 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
10737 to work properly.</p>
10738
10739 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
10740 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
10741 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
10742 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
10743 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
10744 time.</p>
10745
10746 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
10747 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
10748 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
10749 up in a few days.</p>
10750
10751       </div>
10752       <div class="tags">
10753
10754
10755         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10756
10757
10758       </div>
10759     </div>
10760     <div class="padding"></div>
10761
10762     <div class="entry">
10763       <div class="title">
10764         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
10765       </div>
10766       <div class="date">
10767          6th March 2010
10768       </div>
10769       <div class="body">
10770         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
10771 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
10772 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
10773 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
10774 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
10775 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
10776
10777 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
10778 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
10779 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
10780 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
10781
10782 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
10783 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
10784 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
10785 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
10786 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
10787 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
10788
10789       </div>
10790       <div class="tags">
10791
10792
10793         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10794
10795
10796       </div>
10797     </div>
10798     <div class="padding"></div>
10799
10800     <div class="entry">
10801       <div class="title">
10802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
10803       </div>
10804       <div class="date">
10805         11th February 2010
10806       </div>
10807       <div class="body">
10808         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
10809 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
10810 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
10811 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
10812 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
10813 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
10814 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
10815
10816 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
10817
10818 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
10819 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
10820 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
10821 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
10822
10823       </div>
10824       <div class="tags">
10825
10826
10827         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10828
10829
10830       </div>
10831     </div>
10832     <div class="padding"></div>
10833
10834     <div class="entry">
10835       <div class="title">
10836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
10837       </div>
10838       <div class="date">
10839         27th January 2010
10840       </div>
10841       <div class="body">
10842         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
10843 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
10844 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
10845 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
10846 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
10847 further.</p>
10848
10849 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
10850 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
10851 configured to be a server for the
10852 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
10853 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
10854 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
10855 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
10856 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
10857 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
10858 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
10859 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
10860 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
10861 and Nagios configuration.</p>
10862
10863 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
10864 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
10865 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
10866 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
10867
10868 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
10869 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
10870 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
10871 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
10872 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
10873 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
10874 the machine.</p>
10875
10876 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
10877 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
10878 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
10879 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
10880
10881 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
10882 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
10883 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
10884 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
10885 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
10886 everything is taken care of.</p>
10887
10888       </div>
10889       <div class="tags">
10890
10891
10892         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
10893
10894
10895       </div>
10896     </div>
10897     <div class="padding"></div>
10898
10899     <div class="entry">
10900       <div class="title">
10901         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
10902       </div>
10903       <div class="date">
10904         12th August 2009
10905       </div>
10906       <div class="body">
10907         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
10908 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
10909 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
10910 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
10911
10912 <table>
10913 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10914 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
10915 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
10916 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
10917 </table>
10918
10919 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
10920 got these numbers:</p>
10921
10922 <table>
10923 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10924 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
10925 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
10926 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
10927 </table>
10928
10929 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
10930
10931 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
10932 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
10933 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
10934 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
10935 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
10936
10937
10938 <table>
10939 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10940 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
10941 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
10942 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
10943 </table>
10944
10945 <p>And with 'site:no':
10946
10947 <table>
10948 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10949 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
10950 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
10951 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
10952 </table>
10953
10954 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
10955 numbers.</p>
10956
10957       </div>
10958       <div class="tags">
10959
10960
10961         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10962
10963
10964       </div>
10965     </div>
10966     <div class="padding"></div>
10967
10968     <div class="entry">
10969       <div class="title">
10970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
10971       </div>
10972       <div class="date">
10973          8th August 2009
10974       </div>
10975       <div class="body">
10976         <p>According to <a
10977 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
10978 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
10979 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
10980 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
10981 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
10982 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
10983 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
10984 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
10985 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
10986 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
10987
10988 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
10989 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
10990 seminar this autumn.</p>
10991
10992       </div>
10993       <div class="tags">
10994
10995
10996         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10997
10998
10999       </div>
11000     </div>
11001     <div class="padding"></div>
11002
11003     <div class="entry">
11004       <div class="title">
11005         <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>
11006       </div>
11007       <div class="date">
11008         27th July 2009
11009       </div>
11010       <div class="body">
11011         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
11012 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
11013 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
11014 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
11015 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
11016 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
11017 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
11018
11019 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
11020 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
11021 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
11022
11023       </div>
11024       <div class="tags">
11025
11026
11027         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>.
11028
11029
11030       </div>
11031     </div>
11032     <div class="padding"></div>
11033
11034     <div class="entry">
11035       <div class="title">
11036         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
11037       </div>
11038       <div class="date">
11039         22nd July 2009
11040       </div>
11041       <div class="body">
11042         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
11043 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
11044 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
11045 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
11046 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
11047 the package up to date.</p>
11048
11049 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
11050 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
11051 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
11052 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
11053 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
11054 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
11055 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
11056 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
11057 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
11058 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
11059 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
11060 working on the future release.</p>
11061
11062 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
11063 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
11064
11065       </div>
11066       <div class="tags">
11067
11068
11069         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>.
11070
11071
11072       </div>
11073     </div>
11074     <div class="padding"></div>
11075
11076     <div class="entry">
11077       <div class="title">
11078         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
11079       </div>
11080       <div class="date">
11081         24th June 2009
11082       </div>
11083       <div class="body">
11084         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
11085 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
11086 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
11087 funded
11088 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
11089 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
11090 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
11091 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
11092 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
11093 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
11094
11095 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
11096 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
11097 boot:</p>
11098
11099 <ul>
11100
11101 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
11102
11103 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
11104    clock is in UTC.</li>
11105
11106 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
11107    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11108    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
11109
11110 </ul>
11111
11112 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
11113 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
11114 Villegas</a>.
11115
11116 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
11117 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
11118 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
11119 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
11120 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
11121 using this.</p>
11122
11123 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
11124 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
11125 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
11126 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
11127 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
11128 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
11129 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
11130
11131       </div>
11132       <div class="tags">
11133
11134
11135         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>.
11136
11137
11138       </div>
11139     </div>
11140     <div class="padding"></div>
11141
11142     <div class="entry">
11143       <div class="title">
11144         <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>
11145       </div>
11146       <div class="date">
11147          2nd May 2009
11148       </div>
11149       <div class="body">
11150         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
11151 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
11152 do not yet know them.</p>
11153
11154 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
11155 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
11156 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
11157 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
11158 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
11159 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
11160 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
11161 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
11162 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
11163 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
11164 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
11165
11166 <p>The second one is
11167 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
11168 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
11169 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
11170 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
11171 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
11172 and the company behind it is running
11173 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
11174 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
11175 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
11176 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
11177 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
11178 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
11179 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
11180 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
11181
11182 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
11183 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
11184 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
11185 surrounded by today.</p>
11186
11187       </div>
11188       <div class="tags">
11189
11190
11191         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>.
11192
11193
11194       </div>
11195     </div>
11196     <div class="padding"></div>
11197
11198     <div class="entry">
11199       <div class="title">
11200         <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>
11201       </div>
11202       <div class="date">
11203         28th April 2009
11204       </div>
11205       <div class="body">
11206         <p>Julien Blache
11207 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
11208 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
11209 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
11210 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
11211 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
11212 properties.</p>
11213
11214       </div>
11215       <div class="tags">
11216
11217
11218         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>.
11219
11220
11221       </div>
11222     </div>
11223     <div class="padding"></div>
11224
11225     <div class="entry">
11226       <div class="title">
11227         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
11228       </div>
11229       <div class="date">
11230          5th April 2009
11231       </div>
11232       <div class="body">
11233         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
11234 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
11235 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
11236 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
11237 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
11238 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
11239 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
11240 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
11241
11242 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
11243 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
11244 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
11245   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
11246   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
11247
11248 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
11249 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
11250 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
11251 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
11252
11253 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
11254 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
11255 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
11256 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
11257
11258 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
11259 set -e
11260 URL="$1"
11261 SAVEFILE="$2"
11262 DURATION="$3"
11263 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
11264   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
11265   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
11266 pid=$!
11267 sleep $DURATION
11268 kill $pid
11269 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
11270
11271       </div>
11272       <div class="tags">
11273
11274
11275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11276
11277
11278       </div>
11279     </div>
11280     <div class="padding"></div>
11281
11282     <div class="entry">
11283       <div class="title">
11284         <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>
11285       </div>
11286       <div class="date">
11287         30th March 2009
11288       </div>
11289       <div class="body">
11290         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
11291 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
11292 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
11293 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
11294 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
11295 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
11296 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
11297 application.</p>
11298
11299 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
11300 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
11301 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
11302 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
11303 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
11304 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
11305 blocked from doing so.</p>
11306
11307 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
11308 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
11309 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
11310 requirements change.</p>
11311
11312 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
11313 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
11314 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
11315
11316       </div>
11317       <div class="tags">
11318
11319
11320         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>.
11321
11322
11323       </div>
11324     </div>
11325     <div class="padding"></div>
11326
11327     <div class="entry">
11328       <div class="title">
11329         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
11330       </div>
11331       <div class="date">
11332         29th March 2009
11333       </div>
11334       <div class="body">
11335         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
11336 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
11337 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
11338 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
11339 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
11340 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
11341 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
11342 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
11343 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
11344 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
11345 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
11346 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
11347 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
11348 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
11349 now. :)</p>
11350
11351       </div>
11352       <div class="tags">
11353
11354
11355         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>.
11356
11357
11358       </div>
11359     </div>
11360     <div class="padding"></div>
11361
11362     <div class="entry">
11363       <div class="title">
11364         <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>
11365       </div>
11366       <div class="date">
11367         29th March 2009
11368       </div>
11369       <div class="body">
11370         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
11371 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
11372 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
11373 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
11374 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
11375 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
11376
11377 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
11378 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
11379 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
11380 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
11381 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
11382 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
11383 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
11384 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
11385 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
11386 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
11387 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
11388 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
11389 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
11390
11391 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
11392 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
11393 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
11394 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
11395
11396 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
11397 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
11398
11399 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
11400 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
11401 new IETF work group?</p>
11402
11403       </div>
11404       <div class="tags">
11405
11406
11407         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>.
11408
11409
11410       </div>
11411     </div>
11412     <div class="padding"></div>
11413
11414     <div class="entry">
11415       <div class="title">
11416         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
11417       </div>
11418       <div class="date">
11419         28th February 2009
11420       </div>
11421       <div class="body">
11422         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
11423 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
11424 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
11425 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
11426 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
11427 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
11428 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
11429 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
11430 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
11431 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
11432 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
11433 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
11434 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
11435 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
11436 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
11437 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
11438 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
11439 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
11440 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
11441 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
11442 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
11443 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
11444 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
11445 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
11446 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
11447 machine.</p>
11448
11449 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
11450 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
11451 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
11452 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
11453 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
11454 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
11455 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
11456
11457 <pre>
11458 use LWP::Simple;
11459 use POSIX;
11460 use WWW::Mechanize;
11461 use Date::Parse;
11462 [...]
11463 sub get_support_info {
11464     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
11465     my $str;
11466
11467     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
11468         # fetch website from Dell support
11469         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
11470         my $webpage = get($url);
11471         return undef unless ($webpage);
11472
11473         my $daysleft = -1;
11474         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
11475         foreach my $line (@lines) {
11476             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
11477             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11478             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
11479
11480             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
11481             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
11482             my $lastend = "";
11483             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
11484                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
11485
11486                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11487                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11488                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11489                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
11490                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
11491                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
11492                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
11493             }
11494             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11495             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11496                 if ($lastend lt $today);
11497         }
11498     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
11499         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
11500         my $url =
11501             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
11502         $mech->get($url);
11503         my $fields = {
11504             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
11505             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
11506             'country' => 'NO',
11507             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
11508             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
11509         };
11510         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
11511                             fields      => $fields );
11512         # Next step is screen scraping
11513         my $content = $mech->content();
11514
11515         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11516         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11517         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11518         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11519
11520         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11521
11522         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
11523             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
11524                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
11525             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
11526             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11527                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11528             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11529                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
11530
11531             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
11532
11533             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11534                 if ($end lt $today);
11535         }
11536     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
11537         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
11538         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
11539         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
11540             my $content =
11541                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
11542             if ($content) {
11543                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11544                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11545                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11546                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11547
11548                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
11549                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
11550
11551                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
11552
11553                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11554                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11555                     if ($end lt $today);
11556             }
11557         }
11558     }
11559     return $str;
11560 }
11561 </pre>
11562
11563 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
11564 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
11565 from dmidecode.</p>
11566
11567 <pre>
11568 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
11569                        "447707-B21");
11570 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
11571 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
11572                        "1234567");
11573 </pre>
11574
11575 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
11576 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
11577
11578 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
11579 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
11580 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
11581 do so.</p>
11582
11583       </div>
11584       <div class="tags">
11585
11586
11587         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11588
11589
11590       </div>
11591     </div>
11592     <div class="padding"></div>
11593
11594     <div class="entry">
11595       <div class="title">
11596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
11597       </div>
11598       <div class="date">
11599         20th February 2009
11600       </div>
11601       <div class="body">
11602         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
11603 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
11604 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
11605 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
11606 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
11607 the "missing" computer.</p>
11608
11609 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
11610 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
11611 code blocks as defined in the
11612 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
11613 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
11614 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
11615 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
11616 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
11617 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
11618 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
11619 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
11620 codes.</p>
11621
11622 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
11623 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
11624 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
11625 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
11626 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
11627 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
11628
11629 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
11630 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
11631 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
11632 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
11633 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
11634 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
11635 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
11636 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
11637 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
11638 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
11639
11640 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
11641 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
11642 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
11643
11644       </div>
11645       <div class="tags">
11646
11647
11648         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11649
11650
11651       </div>
11652     </div>
11653     <div class="padding"></div>
11654
11655     <div class="entry">
11656       <div class="title">
11657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
11658       </div>
11659       <div class="date">
11660         17th January 2009
11661       </div>
11662       <div class="body">
11663         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
11664 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
11665 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
11666 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
11667 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
11668 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
11669 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
11670 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
11671 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
11672 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
11673 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
11674 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
11675 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
11676 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
11677
11678 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
11679 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
11680 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
11681 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
11682 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
11683 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
11684 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
11685 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
11686 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
11687 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
11688 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
11689 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
11690 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
11691 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
11692 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
11693 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
11694 playing when the download is done.</p>
11695
11696 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
11697 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
11698 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
11699 too.</p>
11700
11701 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
11702 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
11703 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
11704 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
11705
11706       </div>
11707       <div class="tags">
11708
11709
11710         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11711
11712
11713       </div>
11714     </div>
11715     <div class="padding"></div>
11716
11717     <div class="entry">
11718       <div class="title">
11719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
11720       </div>
11721       <div class="date">
11722         28th December 2008
11723       </div>
11724       <div class="body">
11725         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
11726 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
11727 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
11728 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
11729 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
11730 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
11731 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
11732 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
11733 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
11734 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
11735 source, sink and mixer applications and
11736 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
11737 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
11738 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
11739 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
11740 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
11741 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
11742 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
11743 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
11744 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
11745
11746 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
11747 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
11748 larger stick as well.</p>
11749
11750       </div>
11751       <div class="tags">
11752
11753
11754         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11755
11756
11757       </div>
11758     </div>
11759     <div class="padding"></div>
11760
11761     <div class="entry">
11762       <div class="title">
11763         <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>
11764       </div>
11765       <div class="date">
11766          7th December 2008
11767       </div>
11768       <div class="body">
11769         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
11770 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
11771 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
11772 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
11773 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
11774 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
11775 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
11776 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
11777
11778 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
11779 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
11780 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
11781 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
11782 of these cards.</p>
11783
11784       </div>
11785       <div class="tags">
11786
11787
11788         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>.
11789
11790
11791       </div>
11792     </div>
11793     <div class="padding"></div>
11794
11795     <div class="entry">
11796       <div class="title">
11797         <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>
11798       </div>
11799       <div class="date">
11800         25th November 2008
11801       </div>
11802       <div class="body">
11803         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
11804 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
11805 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
11806 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
11807 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
11808 notes are available on
11809 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
11810 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
11811 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
11812 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
11813 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
11814 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
11815 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
11816 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
11817 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
11818
11819 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
11820 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
11821
11822       </div>
11823       <div class="tags">
11824
11825
11826         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>.
11827
11828
11829       </div>
11830     </div>
11831     <div class="padding"></div>
11832
11833     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
11834     <div id="sidebar">
11835
11836
11837
11838 <h2>Archive</h2>
11839 <ul>
11840
11841 <li>2012
11842 <ul>
11843
11844 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
11845
11846 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
11847
11848 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
11849
11850 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
11851
11852 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
11853
11854 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
11855
11856 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
11857
11858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11859
11860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
11861
11862 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (16)</a></li>
11863
11864 </ul></li>
11865
11866 <li>2011
11867 <ul>
11868
11869 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
11870
11871 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
11872
11873 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
11874
11875 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
11876
11877 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
11878
11879 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
11880
11881 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
11882
11883 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11884
11885 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
11886
11887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11888
11889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11890
11891 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
11892
11893 </ul></li>
11894
11895 <li>2010
11896 <ul>
11897
11898 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
11899
11900 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
11901
11902 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
11903
11904 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
11905
11906 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11907
11908 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
11909
11910 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
11911
11912 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
11913
11914 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
11915
11916 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
11917
11918 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
11919
11920 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
11921
11922 </ul></li>
11923
11924 <li>2009
11925 <ul>
11926
11927 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
11928
11929 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
11930
11931 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
11932
11933 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
11934
11935 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11936
11937 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
11938
11939 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
11940
11941 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
11942
11943 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
11944
11945 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11946
11947 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11948
11949 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11950
11951 </ul></li>
11952
11953 <li>2008
11954 <ul>
11955
11956 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
11957
11958 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
11959
11960 </ul></li>
11961
11962 </ul>
11963
11964
11965
11966 <h2>Tags</h2>
11967 <ul>
11968
11969  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
11970
11971  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
11972
11973  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
11974
11975  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (2)</a></li>
11976
11977  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
11978
11979  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
11980
11981  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (57)</a></li>
11982
11983  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (115)</a></li>
11984
11985  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
11986
11987  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
11988
11989  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
11990
11991  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (156)</a></li>
11992
11993  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (19)</a></li>
11994
11995  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
11996
11997  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (8)</a></li>
11998
11999  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (8)</a></li>
12000
12001  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (31)</a></li>
12002
12003  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
12004
12005  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
12006
12007  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (4)</a></li>
12008
12009  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
12010
12011  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
12012
12013  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (209)</a></li>
12014
12015  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (145)</a></li>
12016
12017  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (6)</a></li>
12018
12019  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
12020
12021  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (37)</a></li>
12022
12023  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (54)</a></li>
12024
12025  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
12026
12027  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
12028
12029  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
12030
12031  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
12032
12033  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
12034
12035  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
12036
12037  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
12038
12039  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (24)</a></li>
12040
12041  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
12042
12043  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
12044
12045  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (38)</a></li>
12046
12047  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
12048
12049  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
12050
12051  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (11)</a></li>
12052
12053  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
12054
12055  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (35)</a></li>
12056
12057  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
12058
12059  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
12060
12061 </ul>
12062
12063
12064     </div>
12065     <p style="text-align: right">
12066  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
12067 </p>
12068
12069   </body>
12070 </html>