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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         16th September 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
  32 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
  33 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
  34 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
  35 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
  36 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
  37 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
  38 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
  39 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
  40 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
  41 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
  42 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
  43 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
  44 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
  45
  46 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
  47 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
  48 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
  49 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
  50 depend on the small and clever package
  51 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
  52 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
  53 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
  54 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
  55 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
  56 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
  57 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
  58 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
  59 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
  60 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
  61 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
  62
  63 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
  64 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
  65 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
  66 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
  67 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
  68 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
  69 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
  70 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
  71 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
  72 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
  73 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
  74 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
  75 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
  76 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
  77 dialog.</p>
  78
  79 <p><table>
  80
  81 <tr>
  82 <th>Machine/setup</th>
  83 <th>Original tasksel</th>
  84 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
  85 <th>Reduction</th>
  86 </tr>
  87
  88 <tr>
  89 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
  90 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
  91 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
  92 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
  93 </tr>
  94
  95 <tr>
  96 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
  97 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
  98 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
  99 <td>23 min 40%</td>
 100 </tr>
 101
 102 <tr>
 103 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
 104 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
 105 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
 106 <td>11 min 50%</td>
 107 </tr>
 108
 109 <tr>
 110 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
 111 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
 112 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
 113 <td>2 min 33%</td>
 114 </tr>
 115
 116 <tr>
 117 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
 118 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
 119 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
 120 <td>4 min 21%</td>
 121 </tr>
 122
 123 </table></p>
 124
 125 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
 126 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
 127 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
 128 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
 129 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
 130 installed.</p>
 131
 132 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
 133 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
 134 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
 135 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
 136 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
 137 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
 138 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
 139 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
 140 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
 141 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
 142 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
 143 for the entire installation.</p>
 144
 145 <p>I've implemented this in the
 146 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
 147 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
 148 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
 149 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
 150 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
 151
 152 <p><blockquote><pre>
 153 #!/bin/sh
 154 set -e
 155 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 156 info() {
 157     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
 158 }
 159 error() {
 160     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
 161 }
 162 override_install() {
 163     apt-install eatmydata || true
 164     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
 165         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 166             file=/usr/bin/$bin
 167             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
 168             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
 169                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
 170                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
 171                     > /target$file.edu
 172                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
 173                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 174                     --rename --quiet --add $file
 175                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
 176             else
 177                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
 178             fi
 179         done
 180     else
 181         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
 182     fi
 183 }
 184
 185 override_install
 186 </pre></blockquote></p>
 187
 188 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
 189 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
 190
 191 <p><blockquote><pre>
 192 #! /bin/sh -e
 193 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 194 error() {
 195     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
 196 }
 197 remove_install_override() {
 198     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 199         file=/usr/bin/$bin
 200         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
 201             rm /target$file
 202             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 203                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
 204             rm /target$file.edu
 205         else
 206             error "Missing divert for $file."
 207         fi
 208     done
 209     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
 210 }
 211
 212 remove_install_override
 213 </pre></blockquote></p>
 214
 215 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
 216 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
 217 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
 218
 219 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
 220 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
 221 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
 222 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
 223 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
 224 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
 225 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
 226 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
 227 everyone.</p>
 228
 229       </div>
 230       <div class="tags">
 231
 232
 233         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>.
 234
 235
 236       </div>
 237     </div>
 238     <div class="padding"></div>
 239
 240     <div class="entry">
 241       <div class="title">
 242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
 243       </div>
 244       <div class="date">
 245         10th September 2014
 246       </div>
 247       <div class="body">
 248         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
 249 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
 250 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
 251 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
 252 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
 253 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
 254 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
 255 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
 256 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
 257 those problems are gone now.</p>
 258
 259 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
 260 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
 261 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
 262 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
 263 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
 264
 265 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
 266 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
 267 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
 268
 269 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
 270 line:</p>
 271
 272 <p><blockquote><pre>
 273 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
 274 </pre></blockquote></p>
 275
 276 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
 277 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
 278 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
 279 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
 280
 281 <p><blockquote><pre>
 282 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
 283 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
 284 %
 285 </pre></blockquote></p>
 286
 287 <p>Now if only
 288 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
 289 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
 290 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
 291 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
 292 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
 293 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
 294 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
 295 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
 296 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
 297
 298       </div>
 299       <div class="tags">
 300
 301
 302         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 303
 304
 305       </div>
 306     </div>
 307     <div class="padding"></div>
 308
 309     <div class="entry">
 310       <div class="title">
 311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
 312       </div>
 313       <div class="date">
 314         17th June 2014
 315       </div>
 316       <div class="body">
 317         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 318 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
 319 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
 320 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
 321 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
 322
 323 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
 324 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
 325 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
 326 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
 327 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
 328 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
 329 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
 330 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
 331 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
 332 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
 333 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
 334 goals.</p>
 335
 336 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
 337 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
 338 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
 339 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
 340 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
 341 chapters together into one large web page (aka
 342 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
 343 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
 344 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
 345 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
 346 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
 347 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
 348 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
 349 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
 350 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
 351 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
 352 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
 353 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
 354 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
 355 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
 356 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
 357 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
 358 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
 359 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
 360
 361 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
 362 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
 363 track the English original.  For this we use the
 364 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
 365 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
 366 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
 367 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
 368 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
 369 files), which the translations update with the native language
 370 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
 371 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
 372 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
 373 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
 374 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
 375 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
 376 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
 377 of the documentation.</p>
 378
 379 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
 380 recommend using
 381 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
 382 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
 383 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
 384 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
 385 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
 386 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
 387 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
 388 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
 389
 390 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
 391 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
 392 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
 393 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
 394 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
 395 translated images by storing translated versions in
 396 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
 397 package maintainers know more.</p>
 398
 399 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
 400 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
 401 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
 402 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
 403 PDF version</a> or the
 404 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
 405 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
 406 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
 407
 408 <p>To learn more, check out
 409 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
 410 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
 411 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
 412 manual on the wiki</a> and
 413 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
 414 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
 415
 416       </div>
 417       <div class="tags">
 418
 419
 420         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 421
 422
 423       </div>
 424     </div>
 425     <div class="padding"></div>
 426
 427     <div class="entry">
 428       <div class="title">
 429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
 430       </div>
 431       <div class="date">
 432         23rd April 2014
 433       </div>
 434       <div class="body">
 435         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
 436 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
 437 So I implemented one, using
 438 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
 439 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
 440 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
 441 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
 442 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
 443 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
 444
 445 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
 446 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
 447 packages to install.  The first part is in
 448 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
 449 this:</p>
 450
 451 <p><blockquote><pre>
 452 Task: isenkram
 453 Section: hardware
 454 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 455  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 456  proposed.
 457 Test-new-install: mark show
 458 Relevance: 8
 459 Packages: for-current-hardware
 460 </pre></blockquote></p>
 461
 462 <p>The second part is in
 463 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
 464 this:</p>
 465
 466 <p><blockquote><pre>
 467 #!/bin/sh
 468 #
 469 (
 470     isenkram-lookup
 471     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 472 ) | sort -u
 473 </pre></blockquote></p>
 474
 475 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
 476 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
 477 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
 478 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
 479 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
 480 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
 481
 482 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
 483 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
 484 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
 485 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
 486 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
 487 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
 488 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
 489 the python-apt code (bug
 490 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
 491 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
 492 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
 493 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
 494 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
 495 unstable today.</p>
 496
 497 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
 498 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
 499 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
 500 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
 501 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
 502 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
 503 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
 504 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
 505 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
 506
 507 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
 508 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
 509 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
 510 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
 511 package.  See also
 512 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
 513 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
 514 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
 515 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
 516
 517       </div>
 518       <div class="tags">
 519
 520
 521         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 522
 523
 524       </div>
 525     </div>
 526     <div class="padding"></div>
 527
 528     <div class="entry">
 529       <div class="title">
 530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
 531       </div>
 532       <div class="date">
 533         15th April 2014
 534       </div>
 535       <div class="body">
 536         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
 537 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
 538 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
 539 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
 540 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
 541 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
 542
 543 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
 544 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
 545 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
 546 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
 547 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
 548 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
 549 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
 550
 551 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
 552 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
 553 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
 554 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
 555 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
 556 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
 557 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
 558 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
 559 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
 560 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
 561 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
 562 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
 563
 564 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
 565 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
 566 become root:</p>
 567
 568 <p><pre>
 569 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
 570   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
 571   u-boot-tools
 572 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
 573   freedom-maker
 574 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
 575 </pre></p>
 576
 577 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
 578 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
 579 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
 580 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
 581 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
 582 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
 583 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
 584 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
 585
 586 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
 587 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
 588 the preseed values:</p>
 589
 590 <p><pre>
 591 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
 592 </pre></p>
 593
 594 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
 595 it still work.</p>
 596
 597 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
 598 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
 599 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
 600 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
 601 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
 602 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
 603 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
 604
 605 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
 606 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
 607 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
 608 irc.debian.org)</a> and
 609 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 610 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 611
 612       </div>
 613       <div class="tags">
 614
 615
 616         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 617
 618
 619       </div>
 620     </div>
 621     <div class="padding"></div>
 622
 623     <div class="entry">
 624       <div class="title">
 625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
 626       </div>
 627       <div class="date">
 628          9th April 2014
 629       </div>
 630       <div class="body">
 631         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
 632 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
 633 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
 634 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
 635 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
 636 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
 637 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
 638 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
 639 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
 640 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
 641 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
 642 have looked at a system called
 643 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
 644 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
 645
 646 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
 647 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
 648 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
 649 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
 650 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
 651 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
 652 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
 653 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
 654 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
 655 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
 656 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
 657 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
 658 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
 659
 660 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
 661 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
 662 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
 663 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
 664 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
 665 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
 666 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
 667 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
 668 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
 669 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
 670 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
 671 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
 672 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
 673 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
 674 account.</p>
 675
 676 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
 677 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
 678 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
 679 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
 680 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
 681 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
 682 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
 683
 684 <p><blockquote><pre>
 685 [s3c]
 686 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
 687 backend-login: API-login
 688 backend-password: API-password
 689 fs-passphrase: local-password
 690 </pre></blockquote></p>
 691
 692 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
 693 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
 694 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
 695 details and password to create it:</p>
 696
 697 <p><blockquote><pre>
 698 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
 699 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
 700   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
 701 Enter backend login:
 702 Enter backend password:
 703 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
 704 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
 705 Enter encryption password:
 706 Confirm encryption password:
 707 Generating random encryption key...
 708 Creating metadata tables...
 709 Dumping metadata...
 710 ..objects..
 711 ..blocks..
 712 ..inodes..
 713 ..inode_blocks..
 714 ..symlink_targets..
 715 ..names..
 716 ..contents..
 717 ..ext_attributes..
 718 Compressing and uploading metadata...
 719 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
 720 # </pre></blockquote></p>
 721
 722 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
 723
 724 <p><blockquote><pre>
 725 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
 726   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
 727 Using 4 upload threads.
 728 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
 729 Reading metadata...
 730 ..objects..
 731 ..blocks..
 732 ..inodes..
 733 ..inode_blocks..
 734 ..symlink_targets..
 735 ..names..
 736 ..contents..
 737 ..ext_attributes..
 738 Mounting filesystem...
 739 # df -h /s3ql
 740 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
 741 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
 742 #
 743 </pre></blockquote></p>
 744
 745 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
 746 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
 747 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
 748 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
 749 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
 750 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
 751
 752 <p><blockquote><pre>
 753 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
 754 #
 755 </pre></blockquote></p>
 756
 757 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
 758 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
 759 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
 760 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
 761 file system:</p>
 762
 763 <p><blockquote><pre>
 764 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
 765 Using cached metadata.
 766 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
 767 Checking DB integrity...
 768 Creating temporary extra indices...
 769 Checking lost+found...
 770 Checking cached objects...
 771 Checking names (refcounts)...
 772 Checking contents (names)...
 773 Checking contents (inodes)...
 774 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
 775 Checking objects (reference counts)...
 776 Checking objects (backend)...
 777 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
 778 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
 779 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
 780 Checking objects (sizes)...
 781 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
 782 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
 783 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
 784 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
 785 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
 786 Checking inodes (sizes)...
 787 Checking extended attributes (names)...
 788 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
 789 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
 790 Checking directory reachability...
 791 Checking unix conventions...
 792 Checking referential integrity...
 793 Dropping temporary indices...
 794 Backing up old metadata...
 795 Dumping metadata...
 796 ..objects..
 797 ..blocks..
 798 ..inodes..
 799 ..inode_blocks..
 800 ..symlink_targets..
 801 ..names..
 802 ..contents..
 803 ..ext_attributes..
 804 Compressing and uploading metadata...
 805 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
 806 #
 807 </pre></blockquote></p>
 808
 809 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
 810 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
 811 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
 812 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
 813 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
 814 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
 815 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
 816 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
 817 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
 818 working set.</p>
 819
 820 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
 821 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
 822 busy:</p>
 823
 824 <p><blockquote><pre>
 825 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
 826   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
 827 Using 8 upload threads.
 828 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
 829 #
 830 </pre></blockquote></p>
 831
 832 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
 833 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
 834 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
 835 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
 836 s3qlctrl:
 837
 838 <p><blockquote><pre>
 839 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
 840 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
 841 #
 842 </pre></blockquote></p>
 843
 844 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
 845 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
 846 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
 847 a report:</p>
 848
 849 <p><blockquote><pre>
 850 # s3qlstat /s3ql
 851 Directory entries:    9141
 852 Inodes:               9143
 853 Data blocks:          8851
 854 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
 855 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
 856 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
 857 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
 858 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
 859 #
 860 </pre></blockquote></p>
 861
 862 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
 863 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
 864 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
 865 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
 866 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
 867 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
 868 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
 869 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
 870 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
 871 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
 872 best.</p>
 873
 874 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
 875 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
 876 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
 877 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
 878 poster is titled
 879 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
 880 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
 881 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
 882 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
 883 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
 884
 885 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
 886 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
 887 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
 888 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
 889 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
 890 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
 891 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
 892 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
 893
 894 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
 895 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
 896 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
 897 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
 898 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
 899 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
 900 only read from it.</p>
 901
 902 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 903 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 904 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 905
 906       </div>
 907       <div class="tags">
 908
 909
 910         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 911
 912
 913       </div>
 914     </div>
 915     <div class="padding"></div>
 916
 917     <div class="entry">
 918       <div class="title">
 919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
 920       </div>
 921       <div class="date">
 922         14th March 2014
 923       </div>
 924       <div class="body">
 925         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
 926 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
 927 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
 928 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
 929 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
 930 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
 931 release (0.2).</p>
 932
 933 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
 934 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
 935 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
 936 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
 937 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
 938 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
 939 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
 940 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
 941 and build using
 942 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
 943 with a user with sudo access to become root:
 944
 945 <pre>
 946 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
 947   freedom-maker
 948 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
 949   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
 950   u-boot-tools
 951 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
 952 </pre>
 953
 954 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
 955 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
 956 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
 957 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
 958 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
 959 kpartx call.</p>
 960
 961 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
 962 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
 963 the preseed values:</p>
 964
 965 <pre>
 966 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
 967 </pre>
 968
 969 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
 970 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
 971 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
 972 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
 973 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
 974 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
 975
 976 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
 977 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
 978 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
 979 irc.debian.org)</a> and
 980 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 981 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 982
 983       </div>
 984       <div class="tags">
 985
 986
 987         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 988
 989
 990       </div>
 991     </div>
 992     <div class="padding"></div>
 993
 994     <div class="entry">
 995       <div class="title">
 996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
 997       </div>
 998       <div class="date">
 999         22nd February 2014
1000       </div>
1001       <div class="body">
1002         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
1003 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
1004 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
1005 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
1006 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
1007 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
1008 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
1009 proper home since then.</p>
1010
1011 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
1012 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
1013 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
1014 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
1015 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
1016
1017 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
1018 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
1019 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
1020 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
1021 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
1022 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
1023 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
1024 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
1025 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
1026
1027       </div>
1028       <div class="tags">
1029
1030
1031         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>.
1032
1033
1034       </div>
1035     </div>
1036     <div class="padding"></div>
1037
1038     <div class="entry">
1039       <div class="title">
1040         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
1041       </div>
1042       <div class="date">
1043          3rd February 2014
1044       </div>
1045       <div class="body">
1046         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
1047 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
1048 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
1049 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
1050 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
1051 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
1052 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
1053 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
1054 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
1055
1056 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
1057 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
1058 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
1059 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
1060 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
1061 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
1062
1063 <p><blockquote><pre>
1064 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
1065 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
1066 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
1067 dhclient /dev/eth0
1068 </pre></blockquote></p>
1069
1070 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
1071 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
1072 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
1073
1074 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
1075 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
1076 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
1077 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
1078 side.</p>
1079
1080 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
1081 stuff:</p>
1082
1083 <p><blockquote><pre>
1084 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1085 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
1086 EOF
1087 apt-get update
1088 apt-get dist-upgrade
1089 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
1090     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
1091 update-alternatives --config runsystem
1092 </pre></blockquote></p>
1093
1094 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
1095 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
1096 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
1097 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
1098 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
1099 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
1100 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
1101 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
1102 ssh instead.
1103
1104 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
1105 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
1106 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
1107 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
1108 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
1109 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
1110
1111 <p><blockquote><pre>
1112 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1113 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
1114 EOF
1115 </pre></blockquote></p>
1116
1117 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
1118 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
1119 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
1120 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
1121
1122 <p><blockquote><pre>
1123 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
1124 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
1125 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
1126 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
1127 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
1128 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
1129 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
1130 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
1131 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
1132 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
1133 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
1134 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
1135 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
1136 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
1137 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
1138 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
1139 #
1140 </pre></blockquote></p>
1141
1142 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
1143 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
1144 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
1145 command line stuff.<p>
1146
1147       </div>
1148       <div class="tags">
1149
1150
1151         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>.
1152
1153
1154       </div>
1155     </div>
1156     <div class="padding"></div>
1157
1158     <div class="entry">
1159       <div class="title">
1160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
1161       </div>
1162       <div class="date">
1163         14th January 2014
1164       </div>
1165       <div class="body">
1166         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
1167 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
1168 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
1169 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
1170 the source.  The company behind it provide
1171 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
1172 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
1173 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
1174 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
1175 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
1176 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
1177 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
1178 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
1179 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
1180 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
1181 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
1182 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
1183 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
1184 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
1185 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
1186 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
1187 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
1188 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
1189 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
1190
1191 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
1192
1193 <ul>
1194
1195   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
1196   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
1197   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
1198
1199 </ul>
1200
1201 <p>You can
1202 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1203 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1204 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1205 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1206 include a test suite check.</p>
1207
1208       </div>
1209       <div class="tags">
1210
1211
1212         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1213
1214
1215       </div>
1216     </div>
1217     <div class="padding"></div>
1218
1219     <div class="entry">
1220       <div class="title">
1221         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
1222       </div>
1223       <div class="date">
1224         24th November 2013
1225       </div>
1226       <div class="body">
1227         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
1228 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
1229 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
1230 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
1231 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
1232 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
1233 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
1234 is working on.  I checked the
1235 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
1236 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
1237 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
1238 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
1239 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
1240 These are the release notes:</p>
1241
1242 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
1243
1244 <ul>
1245
1246   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
1247    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
1248    up.</li>
1249
1250   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
1251
1252   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
1253    Matthias Klose.</li>
1254
1255   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
1256    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
1257
1258   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
1259    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
1260    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
1261
1262 </ul>
1263
1264 <p>You can
1265 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1266 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1267 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1268 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1269 include a testsuite check.</p>
1270
1271       </div>
1272       <div class="tags">
1273
1274
1275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1276
1277
1278       </div>
1279     </div>
1280     <div class="padding"></div>
1281
1282     <div class="entry">
1283       <div class="title">
1284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
1285       </div>
1286       <div class="date">
1287          2nd November 2013
1288       </div>
1289       <div class="body">
1290         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
1291 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
1292 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
1293 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
1294 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
1295
1296 <p><pre>
1297 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
1298 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
1299 # Provides:          rsyslog
1300 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
1301 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
1302 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
1303 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
1304 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
1305 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
1306 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
1307 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
1308 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
1309 ### END INIT INFO
1310 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
1311 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
1312 </pre></p>
1313
1314 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
1315 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
1316 info/comments.</p>
1317
1318 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
1319 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
1320
1321 <p><pre>
1322 #!/bin/sh
1323
1324 # Define LSB log_* functions.
1325 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
1326 # and status_of_proc is working.
1327 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
1328
1329 #
1330 # Function that starts the daemon/service
1331
1332 #
1333 do_start()
1334 {
1335         # Return
1336         #   0 if daemon has been started
1337         #   1 if daemon was already running
1338         #   2 if daemon could not be started
1339         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
1340                 || return 1
1341         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
1342                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
1343                 || return 2
1344         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
1345         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
1346         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
1347 }
1348
1349 #
1350 # Function that stops the daemon/service
1351 #
1352 do_stop()
1353 {
1354         # Return
1355         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
1356         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
1357         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
1358         #   other if a failure occurred
1359         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1360         RETVAL="$?"
1361         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
1362         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
1363         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
1364         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
1365         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
1366         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
1367         # sleep for some time.
1368         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
1369         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
1370         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
1371         rm -f $PIDFILE
1372         return "$RETVAL"
1373 }
1374
1375 #
1376 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
1377 #
1378 do_reload() {
1379         #
1380         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
1381         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
1382         # then implement that here.
1383         #
1384         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1385         return 0
1386 }
1387
1388 SCRIPTNAME=$1
1389 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
1390 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
1391 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
1392     script="$1"
1393     shift
1394     . $script
1395 else
1396     exit 0
1397 fi
1398
1399 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
1400 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
1401
1402 # Exit if the package is not installed
1403 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
1404
1405 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
1406 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
1407
1408 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
1409 . /lib/init/vars.sh
1410
1411 case "$1" in
1412   start)
1413         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
1414         do_start
1415         case "$?" in
1416                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1417                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1418         esac
1419         ;;
1420   stop)
1421         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
1422         do_stop
1423         case "$?" in
1424                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1425                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1426         esac
1427         ;;
1428   status)
1429         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
1430         ;;
1431   #reload|force-reload)
1432         #
1433         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
1434         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
1435         #
1436         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
1437         #do_reload
1438         #log_end_msg $?
1439         #;;
1440   restart|force-reload)
1441         #
1442         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
1443         # 'force-reload' alias
1444         #
1445         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
1446         do_stop
1447         case "$?" in
1448           0|1)
1449                 do_start
1450                 case "$?" in
1451                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
1452                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
1453                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
1454                 esac
1455                 ;;
1456           *)
1457                 # Failed to stop
1458                 log_end_msg 1
1459                 ;;
1460         esac
1461         ;;
1462   *)
1463         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
1464         exit 3
1465         ;;
1466 esac
1467
1468 :
1469 </pre></p>
1470
1471 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
1472 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
1473 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
1474 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
1475
1476 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
1477 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
1478 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
1479 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
1480 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
1481
1482       </div>
1483       <div class="tags">
1484
1485
1486         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>.
1487
1488
1489       </div>
1490     </div>
1491     <div class="padding"></div>
1492
1493     <div class="entry">
1494       <div class="title">
1495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
1496       </div>
1497       <div class="date">
1498          1st November 2013
1499       </div>
1500       <div class="body">
1501         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
1502 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
1503 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
1504 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
1505 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
1506 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
1507 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
1508 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
1509 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
1510 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
1511 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
1512 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
1513
1514 <p>The source is now available from
1515 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
1516
1517       </div>
1518       <div class="tags">
1519
1520
1521         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>.
1522
1523
1524       </div>
1525     </div>
1526     <div class="padding"></div>
1527
1528     <div class="entry">
1529       <div class="title">
1530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
1531       </div>
1532       <div class="date">
1533         27th October 2013
1534       </div>
1535       <div class="body">
1536         <p>The
1537 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
1538 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
1539 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
1540 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
1541 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
1542 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
1543 of a plan to simplify the build system for
1544 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
1545 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
1546 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
1547 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
1548 Raspberry Pi.</p>
1549
1550 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
1551 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
1552 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
1553 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
1554 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
1555 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
1556 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
1557 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
1558 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
1559 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
1560 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
1561 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
1562 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
1563 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
1564 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
1565 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
1566 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
1567 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
1568 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
1569 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
1570 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
1571 available from
1572 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
1573 upstream project page</a>.</p>
1574
1575 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
1576 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
1577 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
1578 list:</p>
1579
1580 <p><pre>
1581 #!/bin/sh
1582 set -e # Exit on first error
1583 rootdir="$1"
1584 cd "$rootdir"
1585 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
1586 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
1587 EOF
1588 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
1589 # install a kernel somewhere too.
1590 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
1591     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1592 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1593 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
1594 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
1595 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
1596 </pre></p>
1597
1598 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
1599 to build the image:</p>
1600
1601 <pre>
1602 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
1603     --variant minbase \
1604     --arch armel \
1605     --distribution jessie \
1606     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
1607     --image test.img \
1608     --size 600M \
1609     --bootsize 64M \
1610     --boottype vfat \
1611     --log-level debug \
1612     --verbose \
1613     --no-kernel \
1614     --no-extlinux \
1615     --root-password raspberry \
1616     --hostname raspberrypi \
1617     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
1618     --customize `pwd`/customize \
1619     --package netbase \
1620     --package git-core \
1621     --package binutils \
1622     --package ca-certificates \
1623     --package wget \
1624     --package kmod
1625 </pre></p>
1626
1627 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
1628 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
1629 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
1630 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
1631 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
1632 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
1633 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
1634
1635 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
1636 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
1637 build dependency list.</p>
1638
1639 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
1640 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
1641 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
1642 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
1643
1644       </div>
1645       <div class="tags">
1646
1647
1648         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
1649
1650
1651       </div>
1652     </div>
1653     <div class="padding"></div>
1654
1655     <div class="entry">
1656       <div class="title">
1657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
1658       </div>
1659       <div class="date">
1660         15th October 2013
1661       </div>
1662       <div class="body">
1663         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
1664 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
1665 these. :)</p>
1666
1667 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
1668 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
1669 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
1670 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
1671 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
1672 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
1673 hope you will to. :)</p>
1674
1675 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
1676 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
1677 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
1678 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
1679 donated.  Are you next?</p>
1680
1681 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
1682 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
1683 statement under the heading
1684 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
1685 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
1686 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
1687 too.</p>
1688
1689       </div>
1690       <div class="tags">
1691
1692
1693         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1694
1695
1696       </div>
1697     </div>
1698     <div class="padding"></div>
1699
1700     <div class="entry">
1701       <div class="title">
1702         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
1703       </div>
1704       <div class="date">
1705         27th September 2013
1706       </div>
1707       <div class="body">
1708         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
1709 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
1710 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
1711 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
1712
1713 <ul>
1714
1715 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
1716 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
1717
1718 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
1719 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
1720
1721 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
1722 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
1723 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
1724 (Youtube)</li>
1725
1726 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
1727 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
1728
1729 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
1730 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
1731
1732 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
1733 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
1734 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
1735
1736 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
1737 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
1738 (Youtube)</li>
1739
1740 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
1741 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
1742
1743 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
1744 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
1745
1746 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
1747 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
1748 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
1749
1750 </ul>
1751
1752 <p>A larger list is available from
1753 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
1754 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
1755
1756 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
1757 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
1758 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
1759 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
1760 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
1761 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
1762 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
1763 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
1764 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
1765 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1766 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1767
1768       </div>
1769       <div class="tags">
1770
1771
1772         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1773
1774
1775       </div>
1776     </div>
1777     <div class="padding"></div>
1778
1779     <div class="entry">
1780       <div class="title">
1781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
1782       </div>
1783       <div class="date">
1784         10th September 2013
1785       </div>
1786       <div class="body">
1787         <p>I was introduced to the
1788 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
1789 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
1790 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
1791 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
1792 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
1793 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
1794 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
1795 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
1796
1797 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
1798 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
1799 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
1800 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
1801 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
1802
1803 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
1804 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
1805 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
1806 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
1807 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
1808 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
1809 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
1810 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
1811 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
1812 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
1813 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
1814 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
1815 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
1816 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
1817 missing in Debian).</p>
1818
1819 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
1820 scripts
1821 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
1822 and a administrative web interface
1823 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
1824 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
1825 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
1826 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
1827 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
1828 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
1829 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
1830 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
1831 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
1832 this is really working yet, see
1833 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
1834 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
1835 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
1836 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
1837 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
1838 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
1839 with lots of half baked features.</p>
1840
1841 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
1842 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
1843 at.</p>
1844
1845 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
1846
1847 <ol>
1848
1849 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
1850 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
1851 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
1852 to the Debian installer:<p>
1853 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
1854
1855 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
1856 install on.</li>
1857
1858 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
1859 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
1860
1861 </ol>
1862
1863 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
1864
1865 <ol>
1866
1867 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
1868 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
1869 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
1870 <pre>
1871 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
1872 </pre></li>
1873 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
1874 <pre>
1875 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
1876    apt-key add -
1877 apt-get update
1878 apt-get install freedombox-setup
1879 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
1880 </pre></li>
1881 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
1882
1883 </ol>
1884
1885 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
1886 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
1887 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
1888 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
1889 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
1890
1891 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
1892 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
1893 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
1894 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
1895
1896 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
1897 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
1898 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
1899 irc.debian.org and the
1900 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
1901 mailing list</a>.</p>
1902
1903 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
1904 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
1905 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
1906 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
1907 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
1908 default password is 'secret'.</p>
1909
1910       </div>
1911       <div class="tags">
1912
1913
1914         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1915
1916
1917       </div>
1918     </div>
1919     <div class="padding"></div>
1920
1921     <div class="entry">
1922       <div class="title">
1923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
1924       </div>
1925       <div class="date">
1926         18th August 2013
1927       </div>
1928       <div class="body">
1929         <p>Earlier, I reported about
1930 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
1931 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
1932 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
1933 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
1934 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
1935 currently on the disk.</p>
1936
1937 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
1938 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
1939 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
1940 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
1941 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
1942 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
1943 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
1944 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
1945 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
1946 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
1947 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
1948 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
1949 the broken disks.</p>
1950
1951       </div>
1952       <div class="tags">
1953
1954
1955         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>.
1956
1957
1958       </div>
1959     </div>
1960     <div class="padding"></div>
1961
1962     <div class="entry">
1963       <div class="title">
1964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
1965       </div>
1966       <div class="date">
1967         17th July 2013
1968       </div>
1969       <div class="body">
1970         <p>Today I switched to
1971 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
1972 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
1973 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
1974 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
1975 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
1976 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
1977 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
1978 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
1979 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
1980 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
1981 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
1982 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
1983 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
1984 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
1985 station from now on.</p>
1986
1987 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
1988 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
1989 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
1990 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
1991 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
1992 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
1993 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
1994 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
1995 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
1996 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
1997 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
1998 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
1999
2000 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2001 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
2002 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2003 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2004 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
2005 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
2006 parameters are tuned:</p>
2007
2008 <ul>
2009
2010 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2011     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
2012
2013 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2014     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2015     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
2016
2017 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2018     systems.</li>
2019
2020 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
2021     /etc/fstab.</li>
2022
2023 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
2024
2025 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2026     cron.daily).</li>
2027
2028 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2029     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
2030
2031 </ul>
2032
2033 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2034 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2035 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2036 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2037 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2038 from getting the data on the disk (see
2039 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
2040 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2041 right thing to do.</p>
2042
2043 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2044 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2045 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
2046
2047 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
2048 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2049 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2050 instead of during my work.</p>
2051
2052 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2053 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
2054
2055 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
2056 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2057 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
2058
2059 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2060 there.</p>
2061
2062 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
2063 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
2064 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
2065 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
2066 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
2067 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
2068 back.</p>
2069
2070       </div>
2071       <div class="tags">
2072
2073
2074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2075
2076
2077       </div>
2078     </div>
2079     <div class="padding"></div>
2080
2081     <div class="entry">
2082       <div class="title">
2083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
2084       </div>
2085       <div class="date">
2086         10th July 2013
2087       </div>
2088       <div class="body">
2089         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
2090 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
2091 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
2092 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2093 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
2094 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
2095 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
2096 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
2097
2098 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2099 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
2100 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
2101 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2102 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2103 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
2104 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
2105 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
2106 lock up when I download a new
2107 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
2108 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2109 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
2110
2111 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2112 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
2113 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2114 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
2115 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2116 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2117
2118 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2119 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
2120 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2121 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
2122 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2123 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2124
2125 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
2126 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
2127 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
2128 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
2129 exist).</p>
2130
2131       </div>
2132       <div class="tags">
2133
2134
2135         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>.
2136
2137
2138       </div>
2139     </div>
2140     <div class="padding"></div>
2141
2142     <div class="entry">
2143       <div class="title">
2144         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
2145       </div>
2146       <div class="date">
2147          9th July 2013
2148       </div>
2149       <div class="body">
2150         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
2151 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2152 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
2153 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
2154 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2155 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2156 Bitraf</a>.</p>
2157
2158 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
2159 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
2160 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
2161 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2162 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
2163
2164       </div>
2165       <div class="tags">
2166
2167
2168         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>.
2169
2170
2171       </div>
2172     </div>
2173     <div class="padding"></div>
2174
2175     <div class="entry">
2176       <div class="title">
2177         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
2178       </div>
2179       <div class="date">
2180          5th July 2013
2181       </div>
2182       <div class="body">
2183         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
2184 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
2185 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
2186 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
2187 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
2188 ended up picking a
2189 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
2190 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
2191 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
2192 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
2193 on that below.</p>
2194
2195 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2196 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2197 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2198 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2199 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2200 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
2201 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
2202 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
2203 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
2204
2205 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
2206 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
2207 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
2208 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
2209 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
2210 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
2211 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
2212
2213 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
2214 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
2215
2216 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
2217 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
2218 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
2219 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
2220 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
2221 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
2222 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
2223 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
2224 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
2225 kernel developers as
2226 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
2227 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
2228 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
2229 Lenovo forums, both for
2230 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
2231 2012-11-10</a> and for
2232 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
2233 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
2234 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
2235 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
2236 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
2237 There is even a
2238 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
2239 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
2240 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
2241
2242 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
2243 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
2244 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
2245 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
2246 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
2247 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
2248 fixed. :)</p>
2249
2250       </div>
2251       <div class="tags">
2252
2253
2254         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>.
2255
2256
2257       </div>
2258     </div>
2259     <div class="padding"></div>
2260
2261     <div class="entry">
2262       <div class="title">
2263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
2264       </div>
2265       <div class="date">
2266          4th July 2013
2267       </div>
2268       <div class="body">
2269         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
2270 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
2271 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
2272 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
2273 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
2274 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
2275 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
2276 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
2277 with an expencive door stop.</p>
2278
2279 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2280 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2281 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2282 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2283 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2284 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
2285 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
2286
2287 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
2288 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
2289 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
2290 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
2291 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
2292 new laptop now. :)</p>
2293
2294 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
2295
2296       </div>
2297       <div class="tags">
2298
2299
2300         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>.
2301
2302
2303       </div>
2304     </div>
2305     <div class="padding"></div>
2306
2307     <div class="entry">
2308       <div class="title">
2309         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
2310       </div>
2311       <div class="date">
2312         25th June 2013
2313       </div>
2314       <div class="body">
2315         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
2316 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
2317 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
2318 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
2319 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
2320 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
2321 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
2322 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
2323 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
2324 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
2325 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
2326
2327 <p><pre>
2328 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2329 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
2330 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
2331 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
2332 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
2333 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
2334 firmware-ipw2x00
2335 firmware-ipw2x00
2336 Preconfiguring packages ...
2337 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
2338 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
2339 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
2340 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
2341 #
2342 </pre></p>
2343
2344 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
2345 printed instead:</p>
2346
2347 <p><pre>
2348 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2349 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
2350 #
2351 </pre></p>
2352
2353 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
2354 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
2355
2356 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
2357 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
2358 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
2359 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
2360 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
2361 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
2362 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
2363 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
2364 machine.</p>
2365
2366 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
2367 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
2368 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
2369 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
2370 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
2371 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
2372
2373       </div>
2374       <div class="tags">
2375
2376
2377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2378
2379
2380       </div>
2381     </div>
2382     <div class="padding"></div>
2383
2384     <div class="entry">
2385       <div class="title">
2386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
2387       </div>
2388       <div class="date">
2389         11th June 2013
2390       </div>
2391       <div class="body">
2392         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
2393 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
2394 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
2395 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
2396 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
2397 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
2398 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
2399 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
2400 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
2401 i915 driver used by the
2402 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2403 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
2404
2405 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
2406 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
2407 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
2408 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
2409 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
2410
2411 <pre>
2412 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
2413 update-initramfs -u -k all
2414 </pre>
2415
2416 <p>Since March 2012 there is
2417 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
2418 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
2419 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
2420 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
2421 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
2422 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
2423 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
2424 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
2425 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
2426 number.</p>
2427
2428 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
2429 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
2430
2431 <p><pre>
2432 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
2433     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
2434     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
2435  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
2436  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
2437     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
2438  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
2439     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
2440  Latency: 0
2441  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
2442  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
2443  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
2444  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
2445  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
2446  Capabilities: <access denied>
2447  Kernel driver in use: i915
2448 </pre></p>
2449
2450 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
2451
2452 <p><pre>
2453 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
2454        ...
2455         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
2456         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
2457        ...
2458 }
2459 </pre></p>
2460
2461 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
2462 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
2463 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
2464 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
2465 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
2466 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
2467 yet shown up in
2468 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
2469 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
2470 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
2471 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
2472 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
2473 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
2474
2475 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
2476 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
2477 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
2478 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
2479 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
2480 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
2481 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
2482 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
2483 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
2484 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
2485 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
2486 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
2487
2488 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
2489 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
2490 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
2491 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
2492 backlight.</p>
2493
2494       </div>
2495       <div class="tags">
2496
2497
2498         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>.
2499
2500
2501       </div>
2502     </div>
2503     <div class="padding"></div>
2504
2505     <div class="entry">
2506       <div class="title">
2507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
2508       </div>
2509       <div class="date">
2510         27th May 2013
2511       </div>
2512       <div class="body">
2513         <p>Two days ago, I asked
2514 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
2515 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
2516 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
2517 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
2518 and Windows 8.</p>
2519
2520 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
2521 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
2522 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
2523 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
2524 enough to tell.</p>
2525
2526 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
2527 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
2528 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
2529 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
2530 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
2531 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
2532 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
2533 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
2534 to follow.</p>
2535
2536 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
2537 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
2538 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
2539 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
2540 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
2541 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
2542 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
2543 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
2544
2545 <p>I've updated the
2546 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
2547 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
2548 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
2549 machine.</p>
2550
2551 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
2552 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
2553
2554       </div>
2555       <div class="tags">
2556
2557
2558         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>.
2559
2560
2561       </div>
2562     </div>
2563     <div class="padding"></div>
2564
2565     <div class="entry">
2566       <div class="title">
2567         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
2568       </div>
2569       <div class="date">
2570         25th May 2013
2571       </div>
2572       <div class="body">
2573         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
2574 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
2575 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
2576 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
2577 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
2578 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
2579
2580 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
2581 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
2582 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
2583 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
2584 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
2585 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
2586 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
2587 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
2588 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
2589 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
2590
2591 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
2592 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2593 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
2594 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
2595 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
2596 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
2597
2598 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
2599 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
2600 on new Laptops?</p>
2601
2602       </div>
2603       <div class="tags">
2604
2605
2606         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>.
2607
2608
2609       </div>
2610     </div>
2611     <div class="padding"></div>
2612
2613     <div class="entry">
2614       <div class="title">
2615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
2616       </div>
2617       <div class="date">
2618         17th May 2013
2619       </div>
2620       <div class="body">
2621         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
2622 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
2623 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
2624 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
2625 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
2626 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
2627 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
2628 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
2629 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
2630 donate some money</a>.
2631
2632 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
2633 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
2634 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
2635 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
2636 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
2637
2638 <p>The script,
2639 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
2640 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
2641 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
2642 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
2643
2644 <ol>
2645
2646 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
2647 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
2648 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
2649     our configuration.</li>
2650 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
2651     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
2652     according to the profile specified in the config above,
2653     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
2654 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
2655     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
2656 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
2657
2658 </ol>
2659
2660 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
2661 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
2662 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
2663 the needed packages.</p>
2664
2665 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
2666 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
2667 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
2668 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
2669 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
2670 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
2671
2672 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
2673 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
2674 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
2675
2676 <p><pre>
2677 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
2678 DESKTOP="lxde"
2679 </pre></p>
2680
2681 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
2682 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
2683 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
2684 boot.</p>
2685
2686       </div>
2687       <div class="tags">
2688
2689
2690         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>.
2691
2692
2693       </div>
2694     </div>
2695     <div class="padding"></div>
2696
2697     <div class="entry">
2698       <div class="title">
2699         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
2700       </div>
2701       <div class="date">
2702         11th May 2013
2703       </div>
2704       <div class="body">
2705         <P>In January,
2706 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
2707 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
2708 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
2709 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
2710 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
2711 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
2712 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
2713 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
2714 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
2715 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
2716 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
2717 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
2718
2719 <p><table>
2720 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
2721 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
2722 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
2723 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
2724 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
2725 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
2726 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
2727 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
2728 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
2729 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
2730 </table></p>
2731
2732 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
2733 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
2734 available in experimental.</p>
2735
2736 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
2737 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
2738 for LEGO designers.</p>
2739
2740       </div>
2741       <div class="tags">
2742
2743
2744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2745
2746
2747       </div>
2748     </div>
2749     <div class="padding"></div>
2750
2751     <div class="entry">
2752       <div class="title">
2753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
2754       </div>
2755       <div class="date">
2756          5th May 2013
2757       </div>
2758       <div class="body">
2759         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
2760 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
2761 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
2762 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
2763 soon.</p>
2764
2765 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
2766 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
2767 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
2768 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
2769 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
2770 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
2771 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
2772 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
2773 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
2774 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
2775 Edu.</a>
2776
2777 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
2778 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
2779 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
2780 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
2781 follow.<p>
2782
2783       </div>
2784       <div class="tags">
2785
2786
2787         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>.
2788
2789
2790       </div>
2791     </div>
2792     <div class="padding"></div>
2793
2794     <div class="entry">
2795       <div class="title">
2796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
2797       </div>
2798       <div class="date">
2799          3rd April 2013
2800       </div>
2801       <div class="body">
2802         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
2803 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
2804 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
2805 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
2806
2807 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
2808 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
2809 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
2810 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
2811 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
2812 BTS. :)</p>
2813
2814       </div>
2815       <div class="tags">
2816
2817
2818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2819
2820
2821       </div>
2822     </div>
2823     <div class="padding"></div>
2824
2825     <div class="entry">
2826       <div class="title">
2827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
2828       </div>
2829       <div class="date">
2830          2nd February 2013
2831       </div>
2832       <div class="body">
2833         <p>My
2834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
2835 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
2836 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
2837 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
2838 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
2839 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
2840 version too.</p>
2841
2842 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
2843 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
2844 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
2845 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
2846 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
2847 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
2848 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
2849 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
2850
2851 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
2852 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
2853 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
2854 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
2855 it. :)</p>
2856
2857 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2858 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2859 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2860
2861       </div>
2862       <div class="tags">
2863
2864
2865         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>.
2866
2867
2868       </div>
2869     </div>
2870     <div class="padding"></div>
2871
2872     <div class="entry">
2873       <div class="title">
2874         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
2875       </div>
2876       <div class="date">
2877         22nd January 2013
2878       </div>
2879       <div class="body">
2880         <p>Yesterday, I
2881 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
2882 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
2883 pluggable hardware devices, which I
2884 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
2885 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
2886 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
2887 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
2888 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
2889 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
2890 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
2891 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
2892 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
2893 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
2894
2895 <pre>
2896 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
2897 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
2898 </pre>
2899
2900 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
2901 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
2902 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
2903 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
2904
2905 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
2906 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
2907 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
2908 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
2909 word.</p>
2910
2911 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
2912 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
2913 process.</p>
2914
2915 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
2916 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
2917
2918       </div>
2919       <div class="tags">
2920
2921
2922         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2923
2924
2925       </div>
2926     </div>
2927     <div class="padding"></div>
2928
2929     <div class="entry">
2930       <div class="title">
2931         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
2932       </div>
2933       <div class="date">
2934         21st January 2013
2935       </div>
2936       <div class="body">
2937         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
2938 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
2939 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
2940 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
2941 it, fetch the
2942 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
2943 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
2944 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
2945 autostart script.</p>
2946
2947 <p>The design is simple:</p>
2948
2949 <ul>
2950
2951 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
2952 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
2953
2954 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
2955 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
2956 initially did.</li>
2957
2958 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
2959 the APT database, a database
2960 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
2961 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
2962
2963 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
2964 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
2965 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
2966 package or packages.</li>
2967
2968 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
2969 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
2970
2971 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
2972 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
2973
2974 </ul>
2975
2976 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
2977 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
2978 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
2979 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
2980
2981 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
2982 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
2983 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
2984 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
2985 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
2986
2987 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
2988 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
2989 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
2990 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
2991 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
2992 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
2993 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
2994 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
2995
2996 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
2997 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
2998 '<tt>svn checkout
2999 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
3000 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
3001 devscripts package.</p>
3002
3003 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
3004 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
3005 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
3006 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
3007 instructions</a> for details.</p>
3008
3009       </div>
3010       <div class="tags">
3011
3012
3013         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3014
3015
3016       </div>
3017     </div>
3018     <div class="padding"></div>
3019
3020     <div class="entry">
3021       <div class="title">
3022         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
3023       </div>
3024       <div class="date">
3025         19th January 2013
3026       </div>
3027       <div class="body">
3028         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
3029 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
3030 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
3031 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
3032 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
3033 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
3034 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
3035 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
3036 not a durable solution.
3037
3038 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
3039 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
3040
3041 <ul>
3042
3043 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
3044   than A4).</li>
3045 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
3046 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
3047 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
3048 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
3049 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
3050 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
3051 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
3052 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
3053 size).</li>
3054 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
3055   X.org packages.</li>
3056 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
3057   the time).
3058
3059 </ul>
3060
3061 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
3062 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
3063 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
3064 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
3065 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
3066 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
3067 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
3068 still be useful.</p>
3069
3070 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
3071 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
3072 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
3073 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
3074 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
3075 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
3076
3077       </div>
3078       <div class="tags">
3079
3080
3081         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>.
3082
3083
3084       </div>
3085     </div>
3086     <div class="padding"></div>
3087
3088     <div class="entry">
3089       <div class="title">
3090         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
3091       </div>
3092       <div class="date">
3093         18th January 2013
3094       </div>
3095       <div class="body">
3096         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
3097 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
3098 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
3099 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
3100 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
3101 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
3102 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
3103
3104 <pre>
3105 #!/usr/bin/python
3106 import sys
3107 import apt
3108 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3109     cache = apt.Cache()
3110     cache.open(None)
3111     thepkgs = []
3112     for pkg in cache:
3113         version = pkg.candidate
3114         if version is None:
3115             version = pkg.installed
3116         if version is None:
3117             continue
3118         record = version.record
3119         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
3120             continue
3121         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
3122         for t in mime_types:
3123             t = t.rstrip().strip()
3124             if t == mimetype:
3125                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
3126     return thepkgs
3127 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
3128 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
3129     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
3130 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
3131 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3132     print "  %s" %pkg
3133 </pre>
3134
3135 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
3136
3137 <pre>
3138 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
3139 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
3140   gecko-mediaplayer
3141 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
3142 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
3143   browser-plugin-gnash
3144 %
3145 </pre>
3146
3147 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
3148 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
3149 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
3150 anyone working on adding it?</p>
3151
3152 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
3153 request for icweasel support for this feature is
3154 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
3155 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
3156 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
3157 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
3158
3159       </div>
3160       <div class="tags">
3161
3162
3163         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>.
3164
3165
3166       </div>
3167     </div>
3168     <div class="padding"></div>
3169
3170     <div class="entry">
3171       <div class="title">
3172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
3173       </div>
3174       <div class="date">
3175         16th January 2013
3176       </div>
3177       <div class="body">
3178         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
3179 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
3180 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
3181 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
3182 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
3183 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
3184 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
3185 downloaded by the browser.</p>
3186
3187 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
3188 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
3189 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
3190 can be found on the
3191 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
3192 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
3193 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
3194 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
3195 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
3196
3197 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
3198
3199 <pre>
3200   count MIME type
3201   ----- -----------------------
3202      32 text/plain
3203      30 audio/mpeg
3204      29 image/png
3205      28 image/jpeg
3206      27 application/ogg
3207      26 audio/x-mp3
3208      25 image/tiff
3209      25 image/gif
3210      22 image/bmp
3211      22 audio/x-wav
3212      20 audio/x-flac
3213      19 audio/x-mpegurl
3214      18 video/x-ms-asf
3215      18 audio/x-musepack
3216      18 audio/x-mpeg
3217      18 application/x-ogg
3218      17 video/mpeg
3219      17 audio/x-scpls
3220      17 audio/ogg
3221      16 video/x-ms-wmv
3222 </pre>
3223
3224 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
3225
3226 <pre>
3227   count MIME type
3228   ----- -----------------------
3229      33 text/plain
3230      32 image/png
3231      32 image/jpeg
3232      29 audio/mpeg
3233      27 image/gif
3234      26 image/tiff
3235      26 application/ogg
3236      25 audio/x-mp3
3237      22 image/bmp
3238      21 audio/x-wav
3239      19 audio/x-mpegurl
3240      19 audio/x-mpeg
3241      18 video/mpeg
3242      18 audio/x-scpls
3243      18 audio/x-flac
3244      18 application/x-ogg
3245      17 video/x-ms-asf
3246      17 text/html
3247      17 audio/x-musepack
3248      16 image/x-xbitmap
3249 </pre>
3250
3251 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
3252
3253 <pre>
3254   count MIME type
3255   ----- -----------------------
3256      31 text/plain
3257      31 image/png
3258      31 image/jpeg
3259      29 audio/mpeg
3260      28 application/ogg
3261      27 image/gif
3262      26 image/tiff
3263      26 audio/x-mp3
3264      23 audio/x-wav
3265      22 image/bmp
3266      21 audio/x-flac
3267      20 audio/x-mpegurl
3268      19 audio/x-mpeg
3269      18 video/x-ms-asf
3270      18 video/mpeg
3271      18 audio/x-scpls
3272      18 application/x-ogg
3273      17 audio/x-musepack
3274      16 video/x-ms-wmv
3275      16 video/x-msvideo
3276 </pre>
3277
3278 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
3279 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
3280 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
3281 issues.</p>
3282
3283 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
3284 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
3285
3286       </div>
3287       <div class="tags">
3288
3289
3290         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>.
3291
3292
3293       </div>
3294     </div>
3295     <div class="padding"></div>
3296
3297     <div class="entry">
3298       <div class="title">
3299         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
3300       </div>
3301       <div class="date">
3302         15th January 2013
3303       </div>
3304       <div class="body">
3305         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
3306 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
3307 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
3308 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
3309 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
3310 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
3311 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
3312 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
3313 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
3314 packages.</p>
3315
3316 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
3317 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
3318 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
3319 modalias.</p>
3320
3321 <p><blockquote>
3322 Package: package-name
3323 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
3324 </blockquote></p>
3325
3326 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
3327 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
3328
3329 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
3330 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
3331
3332 <p><blockquote>
3333 Package: cheese
3334 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
3335 </blockquote></p>
3336
3337 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
3338 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
3339
3340 <p><blockquote>
3341 Package: pcmciautils
3342 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
3343 </blockquote></p>
3344
3345 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
3346 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
3347
3348 <p><blockquote>
3349 Package: colorhug-client
3350 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
3351 </blockquote></p>
3352
3353 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
3354 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
3355 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
3356
3357 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
3358 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
3359 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
3360 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
3361 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
3362 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
3363 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
3364 Raring.</p>
3365
3366 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
3367 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
3368 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
3369 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
3370 try the
3371 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
3372 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
3373 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
3374 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
3375
3376 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
3377 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
3378
3379 <p><blockquote>
3380 % ./hw-support-lookup
3381 <br>yubikey-personalization
3382 <br>%
3383 </blockquote></p>
3384
3385 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
3386 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
3387
3388 <p><blockquote>
3389 % ./hw-support-lookup
3390 <br>pcmciautils
3391 <br>%
3392 </blockquote></p>
3393
3394 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
3395 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
3396 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
3397
3398 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
3399 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
3400 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
3401 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
3402 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
3403 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
3404 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
3405 see if it work.</p>
3406
3407 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
3408 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
3409 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
3410 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
3411
3412       </div>
3413       <div class="tags">
3414
3415
3416         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3417
3418
3419       </div>
3420     </div>
3421     <div class="padding"></div>
3422
3423     <div class="entry">
3424       <div class="title">
3425         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
3426       </div>
3427       <div class="date">
3428         14th January 2013
3429       </div>
3430       <div class="body">
3431         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
3432 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
3433 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
3434 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
3435 in
3436 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
3437 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
3438
3439 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
3440
3441 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
3442 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
3443 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
3444 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
3445 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
3446 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
3447
3448 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
3449 this shell script:</p>
3450
3451 <pre>
3452 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
3453 </pre>
3454
3455 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
3456 using modinfo:</p>
3457
3458 <pre>
3459 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
3460 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
3461 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
3462 %
3463 </pre>
3464
3465 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
3466
3467 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
3468 Bridge memory controller:</p>
3469
3470 <p><blockquote>
3471 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
3472 </blockquote></p>
3473
3474 <p>This represent these values:</p>
3475
3476 <pre>
3477  v   00008086  (vendor)
3478  d   00002770  (device)
3479  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
3480  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
3481  bc  06        (bus class)
3482  sc  00        (bus subclass)
3483  i   00        (interface)
3484 </pre>
3485
3486 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
3487 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
3488 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
3489 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
3490
3491 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
3492 means.</p>
3493
3494 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
3495
3496 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
3497 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
3498
3499 <p><blockquote>
3500 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
3501 </blockquote></p>
3502
3503 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
3504
3505 <pre>
3506  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
3507  p    0001  (device product)
3508  d    0206  (bcddevice)
3509  dc     09  (device class)
3510  dsc    00  (device subclass)
3511  dp     00  (device protocol)
3512  ic     09  (interface class)
3513  isc    00  (interface subclass)
3514  ip     00  (interface protocol)
3515 </pre>
3516
3517 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
3518 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
3519 these alias entries show up:</p>
3520
3521 <p><blockquote>
3522 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
3523 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
3524 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
3525 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
3526 </blockquote></p>
3527
3528 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
3529 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
3530 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
3531
3532 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
3533
3534 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
3535 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
3536
3537 <p><blockquote>
3538 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
3539 </blockquote></p>
3540
3541 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
3542
3543 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
3544
3545 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
3546 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
3547 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
3548
3549 <p><blockquote>
3550 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
3551 </blockquote></p>
3552
3553 <p>The values present are</p>
3554
3555 <pre>
3556  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
3557  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
3558  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
3559  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
3560  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
3561  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
3562  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
3563  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
3564  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
3565  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
3566  ct   10             (chassis type)
3567  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
3568 </pre>
3569
3570 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
3571 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
3572
3573 <pre>
3574   3 Desktop
3575   4 Low Profile Desktop
3576   5 Pizza Box
3577   6 Mini Tower
3578   7 Tower
3579   8 Portable
3580   9 Laptop
3581  10 Notebook
3582  11 Hand Held
3583  12 Docking Station
3584  13 All In One
3585  14 Sub Notebook
3586  15 Space-saving
3587  16 Lunch Box
3588  17 Main Server Chassis
3589  18 Expansion Chassis
3590  19 Sub Chassis
3591  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
3592  21 Peripheral Chassis
3593  22 RAID Chassis
3594  23 Rack Mount Chassis
3595  24 Sealed-case PC
3596  25 Multi-system
3597  26 CompactPCI
3598  27 AdvancedTCA
3599  28 Blade
3600  29 Blade Enclosing
3601 </pre>
3602
3603 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
3604 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
3605 claim it is a desktop.</p>
3606
3607 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
3608
3609 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
3610 test machine:</p>
3611
3612 <p><blockquote>
3613 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
3614 </blockquote></p>
3615
3616 <p>The values present are</p>
3617
3618 <pre>
3619   ty  01  (type)
3620   pr  00  (prototype)
3621   id  00  (id)
3622   ex  00  (extra)
3623 </pre>
3624
3625 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
3626 the valid values are.</p>
3627
3628 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
3629
3630 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
3631 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
3632 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
3633 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
3634 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
3635 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
3636 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
3637
3638 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
3639
3640 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
3641 one can use the following shell script:</p>
3642
3643 <pre>
3644   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
3645     echo "$id" ; \
3646     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
3647   done
3648 </pre>
3649
3650 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
3651 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
3652
3653 <pre>
3654   acpi:ACPI0003:
3655     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
3656   acpi:device:
3657   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
3658   acpi:IBM0068:
3659     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
3660     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
3661     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
3662     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
3663   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
3664     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
3665     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
3666     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
3667   [...]
3668 </pre>
3669
3670 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
3671 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
3672 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
3673 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
3674
3675 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
3676 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
3677 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
3678
3679       </div>
3680       <div class="tags">
3681
3682
3683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3684
3685
3686       </div>
3687     </div>
3688     <div class="padding"></div>
3689
3690     <div class="entry">
3691       <div class="title">
3692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
3693       </div>
3694       <div class="date">
3695         10th January 2013
3696       </div>
3697       <div class="body">
3698         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
3699 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
3700 Launcher and updated the Debian package
3701 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
3702 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
3703 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
3704 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
3705 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
3706 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
3707 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
3708 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
3709 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
3710 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
3711 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
3712 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
3713 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
3714 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
3715 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
3716
3717       </div>
3718       <div class="tags">
3719
3720
3721         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
3722
3723
3724       </div>
3725     </div>
3726     <div class="padding"></div>
3727
3728     <div class="entry">
3729       <div class="title">
3730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
3731       </div>
3732       <div class="date">
3733          9th January 2013
3734       </div>
3735       <div class="body">
3736         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
3737 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
3738 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
3739 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
3740 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
3741 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
3742 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
3743 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
3744 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
3745 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
3746 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
3747
3748 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
3749 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
3750 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
3751 simple:
3752
3753 <ul>
3754
3755 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
3756   starting when a user log in.</li>
3757
3758 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
3759   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
3760
3761 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
3762   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
3763   packages.</li>
3764
3765 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
3766   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
3767
3768 </ul>
3769
3770 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
3771 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
3772 discover database to find packages and
3773 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
3774 packages.</p>
3775
3776 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
3777 draft package is now checked into
3778 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
3779 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
3780 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
3781 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
3782 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
3783 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
3784 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
3785 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
3786 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
3787 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
3788 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
3789 because of the freeze).</p>
3790
3791 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
3792 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
3793 inserted):</p>
3794
3795 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
3796
3797 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
3798 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
3799 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
3800
3801 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
3802 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
3803 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
3804 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
3805 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
3806 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
3807 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
3808
3809 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
3810 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
3811 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
3812 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
3813 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
3814 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
3815 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
3816 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
3817 not be installed?</p>
3818
3819 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
3820 please send me an email. :)</p>
3821
3822       </div>
3823       <div class="tags">
3824
3825
3826         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3827
3828
3829       </div>
3830     </div>
3831     <div class="padding"></div>
3832
3833     <div class="entry">
3834       <div class="title">
3835         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
3836       </div>
3837       <div class="date">
3838          2nd January 2013
3839       </div>
3840       <div class="body">
3841         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
3842 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
3843 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
3844 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
3845 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
3846 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
3847 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
3848 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
3849 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
3850 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
3851
3852 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
3853 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
3854 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
3855
3856       </div>
3857       <div class="tags">
3858
3859
3860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
3861
3862
3863       </div>
3864     </div>
3865     <div class="padding"></div>
3866
3867     <div class="entry">
3868       <div class="title">
3869         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
3870       </div>
3871       <div class="date">
3872         25th December 2012
3873       </div>
3874       <div class="body">
3875         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
3876 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
3877
3878 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
3879 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
3880 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
3881 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
3882 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
3883 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
3884 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
3885 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
3886 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
3887 name.</p>
3888
3889 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
3890 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
3891 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
3892
3893 <blockquote><pre>
3894 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
3895 cd bitcoin
3896 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
3897 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
3898 </pre></blockquote>
3899
3900 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
3901 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
3902 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
3903 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
3904 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
3905 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
3906 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
3907 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
3908 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
3909
3910 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3911 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3912 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3913
3914       </div>
3915       <div class="tags">
3916
3917
3918         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>.
3919
3920
3921       </div>
3922     </div>
3923     <div class="padding"></div>
3924
3925     <div class="entry">
3926       <div class="title">
3927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
3928       </div>
3929       <div class="date">
3930         21st December 2012
3931       </div>
3932       <div class="body">
3933         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
3934 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
3935 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
3936 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
3937 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
3938 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
3939 is now maintained by a
3940 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
3941 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
3942 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
3943 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
3944 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
3945 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
3946 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
3947 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
3948 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
3949 Corallo in a
3950 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
3951 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
3952 Debian package.</p>
3953
3954 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
3955 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
3956 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
3957 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
3958 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
3959 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
3960 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
3961 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
3962 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
3963 new version to unstable.
3964
3965 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
3966 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
3967 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
3968 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
3969 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
3970 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
3971 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
3972 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
3973 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
3974 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
3975 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
3976 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
3977 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
3978 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
3979 have not tested them.</p>
3980
3981 <p>My
3982 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
3983 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
3984 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
3985 years ago, as can be
3986 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
3987 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
3988 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
3989 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
3990 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
3991 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
3992 the same address as last time,
3993 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3994
3995       </div>
3996       <div class="tags">
3997
3998
3999         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>.
4000
4001
4002       </div>
4003     </div>
4004     <div class="padding"></div>
4005
4006     <div class="entry">
4007       <div class="title">
4008         <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>
4009       </div>
4010       <div class="date">
4011          7th September 2012
4012       </div>
4013       <div class="body">
4014         <p>As I
4015 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
4016 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
4017 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
4018 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
4019 repository for the project</a>.</p>
4020
4021 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
4022 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
4023 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
4024 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
4025
4026 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
4027 PostScript formats at
4028 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
4029 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
4030
4031       </div>
4032       <div class="tags">
4033
4034
4035         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>.
4036
4037
4038       </div>
4039     </div>
4040     <div class="padding"></div>
4041
4042     <div class="entry">
4043       <div class="title">
4044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
4045       </div>
4046       <div class="date">
4047         16th August 2012
4048       </div>
4049       <div class="body">
4050         <p>I dag fyller
4051 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
4052 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
4053 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
4054
4055       </div>
4056       <div class="tags">
4057
4058
4059         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
4060
4061
4062       </div>
4063     </div>
4064     <div class="padding"></div>
4065
4066     <div class="entry">
4067       <div class="title">
4068         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
4069       </div>
4070       <div class="date">
4071         24th June 2012
4072       </div>
4073       <div class="body">
4074         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
4075 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
4076 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
4077 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
4078 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
4079 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
4080 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
4081 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
4082 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
4083 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
4084 missing in my book.</p>
4085
4086 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
4087 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
4088 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
4089 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
4090 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
4091 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
4092 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
4093
4094       </div>
4095       <div class="tags">
4096
4097
4098         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>.
4099
4100
4101       </div>
4102     </div>
4103     <div class="padding"></div>
4104
4105     <div class="entry">
4106       <div class="title">
4107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
4108       </div>
4109       <div class="date">
4110         21st November 2011
4111       </div>
4112       <div class="body">
4113         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
4114 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
4115 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
4116 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
4117 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
4118 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
4119 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
4120 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
4121 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
4122 the tools to do so.</p>
4123
4124 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
4125 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
4126 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
4127 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
4128
4129 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
4130 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
4131 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
4132 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
4133 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
4134 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
4135 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
4136 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
4137
4138 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
4139 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
4140 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
4141
4142 <p><pre>
4143 #!/usr/bin/perl
4144 use strict;
4145 use warnings;
4146 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
4147 BEGIN {
4148     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
4149     my %rhelmodules = (
4150         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
4151         );
4152     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
4153         eval "use $module;";
4154         if ($@) {
4155             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
4156             system("yum install -y $pkg");
4157             eval "use $module;";
4158         }
4159     }
4160 }
4161 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
4162
4163 upgrade_dell();
4164
4165 exit 0;
4166
4167 sub run_firmware_script {
4168     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
4169     unless ($script) {
4170         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
4171         exit 1
4172     }
4173     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
4174
4175     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
4176         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
4177     } else {
4178         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
4179     }
4180 }
4181
4182 sub run_firmware_scripts {
4183     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
4184     # Run firmware packages
4185     for my $dir (@dirs) {
4186         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
4187         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
4188         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
4189             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
4190             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
4191         }
4192         closedir $dh;
4193     }
4194 }
4195
4196 sub download {
4197     my $url = shift;
4198     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
4199     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
4200 }
4201
4202 sub upgrade_dell {
4203     my @dirs;
4204     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4205     chomp $product;
4206
4207     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
4208
4209         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
4210         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
4211
4212         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
4213             CLEANUP => 1
4214             );
4215         chdir($tmpdir);
4216         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
4217         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
4218         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
4219         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
4220         my $fwopts = "-q";
4221         if (@paths) {
4222             for my $url (@paths) {
4223                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
4224             }
4225             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
4226         } else {
4227             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4228             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4229         }
4230         chdir('/');
4231     } else {
4232         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4233         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4234     }
4235 }
4236
4237 sub fetch_dell_fw {
4238     my $path = shift;
4239     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
4240     download($url);
4241 }
4242
4243 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
4244 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
4245 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
4246 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
4247     my $filename = shift;
4248
4249     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4250     chomp $product;
4251     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
4252
4253     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
4254
4255     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
4256     my @paths;
4257     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
4258         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
4259         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
4260         my $oscode;
4261         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
4262             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
4263         } else {
4264             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
4265         }
4266         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
4267         {
4268             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
4269         }
4270     }
4271     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
4272         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
4273
4274         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
4275         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
4276
4277         my $cpath = $component->{path};
4278         for my $path (@paths) {
4279             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
4280                 push(@paths, $cpath);
4281             }
4282         }
4283     }
4284     return @paths;
4285 }
4286 </pre>
4287
4288 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
4289 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
4290 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
4291 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
4292 outdated.</p>
4293
4294       </div>
4295       <div class="tags">
4296
4297
4298         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>.
4299
4300
4301       </div>
4302     </div>
4303     <div class="padding"></div>
4304
4305     <div class="entry">
4306       <div class="title">
4307         <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>
4308       </div>
4309       <div class="date">
4310          4th August 2011
4311       </div>
4312       <div class="body">
4313         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
4314 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
4315 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
4316 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
4317 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
4318 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
4319 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
4320 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4321 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
4322
4323 <p><blockquote>
4324 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4325 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
4326 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4327 </blockquote></p>
4328
4329 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4330 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
4331 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4332 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4333 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
4334 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
4335 hard to explain.</p>
4336
4337 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
4338 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
4339 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
4340 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
4341 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
4342 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
4343 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
4344 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
4345 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
4346 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
4347 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
4348 mode).</p>
4349
4350 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
4351 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
4352 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
4353 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
4354 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
4355 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
4356 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
4357 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
4358 after visiting single user mode.</p>
4359
4360 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
4361 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
4362 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
4363 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
4364 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
4365 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
4366 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
4367 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
4368
4369 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
4370 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
4371 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
4372
4373       </div>
4374       <div class="tags">
4375
4376
4377         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>.
4378
4379
4380       </div>
4381     </div>
4382     <div class="padding"></div>
4383
4384     <div class="entry">
4385       <div class="title">
4386         <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>
4387       </div>
4388       <div class="date">
4389         30th July 2011
4390       </div>
4391       <div class="body">
4392         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
4393 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
4394 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
4395 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
4396 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
4397 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
4398 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
4399 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
4400 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
4401 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
4402 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
4403 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
4404 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
4405
4406 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
4407 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
4408 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
4409 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
4410 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
4411 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
4412 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
4413 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
4414 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
4415
4416 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
4417 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
4418 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
4419 is presented.</p>
4420
4421 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
4422 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
4423 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
4424 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
4425 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4426 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4427 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4428 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
4429 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4430 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4431 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4432 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
4433 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4434 find time to push this forward.</p>
4435
4436       </div>
4437       <div class="tags">
4438
4439
4440         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>.
4441
4442
4443       </div>
4444     </div>
4445     <div class="padding"></div>
4446
4447     <div class="entry">
4448       <div class="title">
4449         <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>
4450       </div>
4451       <div class="date">
4452         29th July 2011
4453       </div>
4454       <div class="body">
4455         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
4456 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
4457 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
4458 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
4459 issues.</p>
4460
4461 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
4462 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
4463 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
4464
4465 <ol>
4466
4467 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
4468 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
4469 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
4470 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
4471 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
4472 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
4473 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
4474 Debian.</li>
4475
4476 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
4477 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
4478 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
4479 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
4480 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
4481 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
4482 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
4483 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
4484 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
4485 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
4486 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
4487 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
4488 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
4489
4490 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
4491 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
4492 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
4493 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
4494 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
4495 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
4496 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
4497 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
4498 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
4499 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
4500
4501 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
4502 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
4503 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
4504 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
4505 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
4506 latter behaviour.</li>
4507
4508 </ol>
4509
4510 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
4511 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
4512 it do not matter much.</p>
4513
4514 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
4515 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
4516 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
4517
4518       </div>
4519       <div class="tags">
4520
4521
4522         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>.
4523
4524
4525       </div>
4526     </div>
4527     <div class="padding"></div>
4528
4529     <div class="entry">
4530       <div class="title">
4531         <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>
4532       </div>
4533       <div class="date">
4534         26th July 2011
4535       </div>
4536       <div class="body">
4537         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
4538 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
4539 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
4540 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
4541 security support for a few years.</p>
4542
4543 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
4544 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
4545 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
4546 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
4547 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
4548 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
4549 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
4550 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
4551 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
4552 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
4553 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
4554 easier in the future.</p>
4555
4556 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
4557 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
4558 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
4559 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
4560 do not have time for.</p>
4561
4562       </div>
4563       <div class="tags">
4564
4565
4566         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>.
4567
4568
4569       </div>
4570     </div>
4571     <div class="padding"></div>
4572
4573     <div class="entry">
4574       <div class="title">
4575         <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>
4576       </div>
4577       <div class="date">
4578          3rd April 2011
4579       </div>
4580       <div class="body">
4581         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
4582 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
4583 update in English.</p>
4584
4585 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
4586 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
4587 of the British service
4588 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
4589 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
4590 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
4591 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
4592 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
4593 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
4594 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
4595 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
4596 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
4597 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
4598 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
4599 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
4600 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
4601
4602 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
4603 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
4604 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
4605 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
4606 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
4607 public infrastructure.</p>
4608
4609 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
4610 such service?</p>
4611
4612       </div>
4613       <div class="tags">
4614
4615
4616         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>.
4617
4618
4619       </div>
4620     </div>
4621     <div class="padding"></div>
4622
4623     <div class="entry">
4624       <div class="title">
4625         <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>
4626       </div>
4627       <div class="date">
4628         28th January 2011
4629       </div>
4630       <div class="body">
4631         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
4632 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
4633 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
4634 available on the Internet, and check our locally
4635 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
4636 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
4637 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
4638 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
4639 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
4640 out which security holes were present in our free software
4641 collection.</p>
4642
4643 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
4644 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
4645 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
4646 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
4647 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
4648 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
4649 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
4650 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
4651 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
4652 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
4653 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
4654 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
4655 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
4656 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
4657 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
4658 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
4659
4660 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
4661 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
4662 check out, one could look up
4663 <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
4664 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
4665 The most recent one is
4666 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
4667 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
4668 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
4669
4670 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
4671 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
4672 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
4673 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
4674 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
4675 security issues out.</p>
4676
4677 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
4678 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
4679 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
4680 RHEL is providing
4681 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
4682 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
4683 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
4684
4685 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
4686 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
4687 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
4688 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
4689 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
4690 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
4691 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
4692 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
4693 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
4694 established soon.</p>
4695
4696 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
4697 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
4698 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
4699 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
4700 for their packages.</p>
4701
4702       </div>
4703       <div class="tags">
4704
4705
4706         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>.
4707
4708
4709       </div>
4710     </div>
4711     <div class="padding"></div>
4712
4713     <div class="entry">
4714       <div class="title">
4715         <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>
4716       </div>
4717       <div class="date">
4718         23rd January 2011
4719       </div>
4720       <div class="body">
4721         <p>In the
4722 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
4723 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
4724 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
4725 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
4726 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
4727 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
4728 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
4729 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
4730 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
4731 one of my machines like this:</p>
4732
4733 <pre>
4734 loaded modules:
4735 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
4736 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
4737 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
4738 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
4739 10de:03ec pata_amd
4740 10de:03f6 sata_nv
4741 1022:1103 k8temp
4742 109e:036e bttv
4743 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
4744 11ab:4364 sky2
4745 </pre>
4746
4747 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
4748 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
4749
4750 <pre>
4751 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
4752     echo loaded pci modules:
4753     (
4754         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
4755         for address in * ; do
4756             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4757                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4758                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4759                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4760                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
4761                     echo "$id $module"
4762                 fi
4763             fi
4764         done
4765     )
4766     echo
4767 fi
4768 </pre>
4769
4770 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
4771 mappings:</p>
4772
4773 <pre>
4774 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
4775     echo loaded usb modules:
4776     (
4777         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
4778         for address in * ; do
4779             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4780                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4781                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4782                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4783                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
4784                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
4785                         echo "$id $module"
4786                     fi
4787                 fi
4788             fi
4789         done
4790     )
4791     echo
4792 fi
4793 </pre>
4794
4795 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
4796 well.</p>
4797
4798       </div>
4799       <div class="tags">
4800
4801
4802         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>.
4803
4804
4805       </div>
4806     </div>
4807     <div class="padding"></div>
4808
4809     <div class="entry">
4810       <div class="title">
4811         <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>
4812       </div>
4813       <div class="date">
4814         22nd December 2010
4815       </div>
4816       <div class="body">
4817         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
4818 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
4819 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
4820 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
4821 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
4822 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
4823 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
4824 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
4825 university.</p>
4826
4827 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
4828 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
4829 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
4830 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
4831 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
4832 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
4833 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
4834 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
4835
4836 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
4837 I perform on a new model.</p>
4838
4839 <ul>
4840
4841 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
4842 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
4843 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
4844
4845 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
4846 installation, X.org is working.</li>
4847
4848 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
4849 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
4850 reported by the program.</li>
4851
4852 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
4853 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
4854 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
4855 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
4856 normally test this by playing
4857 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
4858 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
4859
4860 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
4861 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
4862
4863 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
4864 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
4865
4866 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
4867 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
4868
4869 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
4870 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
4871 few.</li>
4872
4873 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
4874 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
4875 notice this.</li>
4876
4877 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
4878 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
4879 resume.</li>
4880
4881 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
4882 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
4883 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
4884 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
4885 not.</li>
4886
4887 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
4888 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
4889 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
4890 existence.</li>
4891
4892 </ul>
4893
4894 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
4895 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
4896 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
4897 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
4898 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
4899 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
4900 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
4901 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
4902
4903       </div>
4904       <div class="tags">
4905
4906
4907         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>.
4908
4909
4910       </div>
4911     </div>
4912     <div class="padding"></div>
4913
4914     <div class="entry">
4915       <div class="title">
4916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
4917       </div>
4918       <div class="date">
4919         11th December 2010
4920       </div>
4921       <div class="body">
4922         <p>As I continue to explore
4923 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
4924 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
4925 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
4926
4927 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
4928 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
4929 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
4930 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
4931 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
4932 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
4933 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
4934 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
4935 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
4936 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
4937 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
4938 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
4939 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
4940 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
4941 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
4942 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
4943 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
4944 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
4945 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
4946 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
4947
4948 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
4949 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
4950 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
4951 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
4952 If the Skolelinux foundation
4953 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
4954 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
4955 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
4956 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
4957 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
4958 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
4959 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
4960 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
4961
4962 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
4963 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
4964 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
4965 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
4966 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
4967 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
4968 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
4969 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
4970 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
4971 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
4972 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
4973 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
4974 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
4975 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
4976 currencies.</p>
4977
4978 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
4979 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
4980 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
4981 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
4982 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
4983 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
4984 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
4985 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
4986 BitCoins.  Check out
4987 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
4988 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
4989 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
4990 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
4991 yet.</p>
4992
4993 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
4994 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
4995 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
4996 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
4997 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
4998
4999       </div>
5000       <div class="tags">
5001
5002
5003         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>.
5004
5005
5006       </div>
5007     </div>
5008     <div class="padding"></div>
5009
5010     <div class="entry">
5011       <div class="title">
5012         <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>
5013       </div>
5014       <div class="date">
5015         10th December 2010
5016       </div>
5017       <div class="body">
5018         <p>With this weeks lawless
5019 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
5020 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
5021 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
5022 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5023 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5024 A blog post from
5025 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
5026 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
5027 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
5028 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
5029 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5030 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5031 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
5032
5033 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
5034 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5035 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5036 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5037 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
5038 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
5039 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5040 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
5041 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
5042 Debian</a> soon.</p>
5043
5044 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5045 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
5046 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
5047 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
5048 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
5049 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5050 you can even get
5051 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
5052 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
5053 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
5054 on the current exchange rates.</p>
5055
5056 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5057 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5058 donations to the address
5059 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
5060
5061       </div>
5062       <div class="tags">
5063
5064
5065         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>.
5066
5067
5068       </div>
5069     </div>
5070     <div class="padding"></div>
5071
5072     <div class="entry">
5073       <div class="title">
5074         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
5075       </div>
5076       <div class="date">
5077         27th November 2010
5078       </div>
5079       <div class="body">
5080         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
5081 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
5082 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
5083 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
5084 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
5085 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
5086 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
5087 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
5088
5089 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
5090 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
5091 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
5092 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
5093 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
5094 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
5095 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
5096 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
5097 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
5098 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
5099 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
5100
5101 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
5102 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
5103 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
5104 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
5105 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
5106 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
5107 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
5108 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
5109 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
5110 what is going on.</p>
5111
5112       </div>
5113       <div class="tags">
5114
5115
5116         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>.
5117
5118
5119       </div>
5120     </div>
5121     <div class="padding"></div>
5122
5123     <div class="entry">
5124       <div class="title">
5125         <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>
5126       </div>
5127       <div class="date">
5128         22nd November 2010
5129       </div>
5130       <div class="body">
5131         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
5132 upgrade testing of the
5133 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
5134 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
5135 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
5136 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
5137
5138 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
5139
5140 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5141
5142 <blockquote><p>
5143   apache2.2-bin
5144   aptdaemon
5145   baobab
5146   binfmt-support
5147   browser-plugin-gnash
5148   cheese-common
5149   cli-common
5150   cups-pk-helper
5151   dmz-cursor-theme
5152   empathy
5153   empathy-common
5154   freedesktop-sound-theme
5155   freeglut3
5156   gconf-defaults-service
5157   gdm-themes
5158   gedit-plugins
5159   geoclue
5160   geoclue-hostip
5161   geoclue-localnet
5162   geoclue-manual
5163   geoclue-yahoo
5164   gnash
5165   gnash-common
5166   gnome
5167   gnome-backgrounds
5168   gnome-cards-data
5169   gnome-codec-install
5170   gnome-core
5171   gnome-desktop-environment
5172   gnome-disk-utility
5173   gnome-screenshot
5174   gnome-search-tool
5175   gnome-session-canberra
5176   gnome-system-log
5177   gnome-themes-extras
5178   gnome-themes-more
5179   gnome-user-share
5180   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5181   gstreamer0.10-tools
5182   gtk2-engines
5183   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5184   gtk2-engines-smooth
5185   hamster-applet
5186   libapache2-mod-dnssd
5187   libapr1
5188   libaprutil1
5189   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
5190   libaprutil1-ldap
5191   libart2.0-cil
5192   libboost-date-time1.42.0
5193   libboost-python1.42.0
5194   libboost-thread1.42.0
5195   libchamplain-0.4-0
5196   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
5197   libcheese-gtk18
5198   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
5199   libcryptui0
5200   libdiscid0
5201   libelf1
5202   libepc-1.0-2
5203   libepc-common
5204   libepc-ui-1.0-2
5205   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5206   libfreerdp0
5207   libgconf2.0-cil
5208   libgdata-common
5209   libgdata7
5210   libgdu-gtk0
5211   libgee2
5212   libgeoclue0
5213   libgexiv2-0
5214   libgif4
5215   libglade2.0-cil
5216   libglib2.0-cil
5217   libgmime2.4-cil
5218   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5219   libgnome2.24-cil
5220   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
5221   libgpod-common
5222   libgpod4
5223   libgtk2.0-cil
5224   libgtkglext1
5225   libgtksourceview2.0-common
5226   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5227   libmono-addins0.2-cil
5228   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
5229   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5230   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
5231   libmono-posix2.0-cil
5232   libmono-security2.0-cil
5233   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5234   libmono-system2.0-cil
5235   libmtp8
5236   libmusicbrainz3-6
5237   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
5238   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
5239   libopal3.6.8
5240   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
5241   libpt2.6.7
5242   libpython2.6
5243   librpm1
5244   librpmio1
5245   libsdl1.2debian
5246   libsrtp0
5247   libssh-4
5248   libtelepathy-farsight0
5249   libtelepathy-glib0
5250   libtidy-0.99-0
5251   media-player-info
5252   mesa-utils
5253   mono-2.0-gac
5254   mono-gac
5255   mono-runtime
5256   nautilus-sendto
5257   nautilus-sendto-empathy
5258   p7zip-full
5259   pkg-config
5260   python-aptdaemon
5261   python-aptdaemon-gtk
5262   python-axiom
5263   python-beautifulsoup
5264   python-bugbuddy
5265   python-clientform
5266   python-coherence
5267   python-configobj
5268   python-crypto
5269   python-cupshelpers
5270   python-elementtree
5271   python-epsilon
5272   python-evolution
5273   python-feedparser
5274   python-gdata
5275   python-gdbm
5276   python-gst0.10
5277   python-gtkglext1
5278   python-gtksourceview2
5279   python-httplib2
5280   python-louie
5281   python-mako
5282   python-markupsafe
5283   python-mechanize
5284   python-nevow
5285   python-notify
5286   python-opengl
5287   python-openssl
5288   python-pam
5289   python-pkg-resources
5290   python-pyasn1
5291   python-pysqlite2
5292   python-rdflib
5293   python-serial
5294   python-tagpy
5295   python-twisted-bin
5296   python-twisted-conch
5297   python-twisted-core
5298   python-twisted-web
5299   python-utidylib
5300   python-webkit
5301   python-xdg
5302   python-zope.interface
5303   remmina
5304   remmina-plugin-data
5305   remmina-plugin-rdp
5306   remmina-plugin-vnc
5307   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5308   rhythmbox-plugins
5309   rpm-common
5310   rpm2cpio
5311   seahorse-plugins
5312   shotwell
5313   software-center
5314   system-config-printer-udev
5315   telepathy-gabble
5316   telepathy-mission-control-5
5317   telepathy-salut
5318   tomboy
5319   totem
5320   totem-coherence
5321   totem-mozilla
5322   totem-plugins
5323   transmission-common
5324   xdg-user-dirs
5325   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
5326   xserver-xephyr
5327 </p></blockquote>
5328
5329 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
5330
5331 <blockquote><p>
5332   cheese
5333   ekiga
5334   eog
5335   epiphany-extensions
5336   evolution-exchange
5337   fast-user-switch-applet
5338   file-roller
5339   gcalctool
5340   gconf-editor
5341   gdm
5342   gedit
5343   gedit-common
5344   gnome-games
5345   gnome-games-data
5346   gnome-nettool
5347   gnome-system-tools
5348   gnome-themes
5349   gnuchess
5350   gucharmap
5351   guile-1.8-libs
5352   libavahi-ui0
5353   libdmx1
5354   libgalago3
5355   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
5356   libgtksourceview2.0-0
5357   liblircclient0
5358   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
5359   libspeexdsp1
5360   libsvga1
5361   rhythmbox
5362   seahorse
5363   sound-juicer
5364   system-config-printer
5365   totem-common
5366   transmission-gtk
5367   vinagre
5368   vino
5369 </p></blockquote>
5370
5371 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5372
5373 <blockquote><p>
5374   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5375 </p></blockquote>
5376
5377 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5378
5379 <blockquote><p>
5380 [nothing]
5381 </p></blockquote>
5382
5383 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
5384
5385 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5386
5387 <blockquote><p>
5388   ksmserver
5389 </p></blockquote>
5390
5391 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
5392
5393 <blockquote><p>
5394   kwin
5395   network-manager-kde
5396 </p></blockquote>
5397
5398 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5399
5400 <blockquote><p>
5401   arts
5402   dolphin
5403   freespacenotifier
5404   google-gadgets-gst
5405   google-gadgets-xul
5406   kappfinder
5407   kcalc
5408   kcharselect
5409   kde-core
5410   kde-plasma-desktop
5411   kde-standard
5412   kde-window-manager
5413   kdeartwork
5414   kdeartwork-emoticons
5415   kdeartwork-style
5416   kdeartwork-theme-icon
5417   kdebase
5418   kdebase-apps
5419   kdebase-workspace
5420   kdebase-workspace-bin
5421   kdebase-workspace-data
5422   kdeeject
5423   kdelibs
5424   kdeplasma-addons
5425   kdeutils
5426   kdewallpapers
5427   kdf
5428   kfloppy
5429   kgpg
5430   khelpcenter4
5431   kinfocenter
5432   konq-plugins-l10n
5433   konqueror-nsplugins
5434   kscreensaver
5435   kscreensaver-xsavers
5436   ktimer
5437   kwrite
5438   libgle3
5439   libkde4-ruby1.8
5440   libkonq5
5441   libkonq5-templates
5442   libnetpbm10
5443   libplasma-ruby
5444   libplasma-ruby1.8
5445   libqt4-ruby1.8
5446   marble-data
5447   marble-plugins
5448   netpbm
5449   nuvola-icon-theme
5450   plasma-dataengines-workspace
5451   plasma-desktop
5452   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
5453   plasma-runners-addons
5454   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
5455   plasma-scriptengine-python
5456   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
5457   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
5458   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
5459   plasma-scriptengines
5460   plasma-wallpapers-addons
5461   plasma-widget-folderview
5462   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
5463   ruby
5464   sweeper
5465   update-notifier-kde
5466   xscreensaver-data-extra
5467   xscreensaver-gl
5468   xscreensaver-gl-extra
5469   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
5470 </p></blockquote>
5471
5472 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5473
5474 <blockquote><p>
5475   ark
5476   google-gadgets-common
5477   google-gadgets-qt
5478   htdig
5479   kate
5480   kdebase-bin
5481   kdebase-data
5482   kdepasswd
5483   kfind
5484   klipper
5485   konq-plugins
5486   konqueror
5487   ksysguard
5488   ksysguardd
5489   libarchive1
5490   libcln6
5491   libeet1
5492   libeina-svn-06
5493   libggadget-1.0-0b
5494   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
5495   libgps19
5496   libkdecorations4
5497   libkephal4
5498   libkonq4
5499   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
5500   libkscreensaver5
5501   libksgrd4
5502   libksignalplotter4
5503   libkunitconversion4
5504   libkwineffects1a
5505   libmarblewidget4
5506   libntrack-qt4-1
5507   libntrack0
5508   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
5509   libplasmaclock4a
5510   libplasmagenericshell4
5511   libprocesscore4a
5512   libprocessui4a
5513   libqalculate5
5514   libqedje0a
5515   libqtruby4shared2
5516   libqzion0a
5517   libruby1.8
5518   libscim8c2a
5519   libsmokekdecore4-3
5520   libsmokekdeui4-3
5521   libsmokekfile3
5522   libsmokekhtml3
5523   libsmokekio3
5524   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
5525   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
5526   libsmokekparts3
5527   libsmokektexteditor3
5528   libsmokekutils3
5529   libsmokenepomuk3
5530   libsmokephonon3
5531   libsmokeplasma3
5532   libsmokeqtcore4-3
5533   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
5534   libsmokeqtgui4-3
5535   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
5536   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
5537   libsmokeqtscript4-3
5538   libsmokeqtsql4-3
5539   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
5540   libsmokeqttest4-3
5541   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
5542   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
5543   libsmokeqtxml4-3
5544   libsmokesolid3
5545   libsmokesoprano3
5546   libtaskmanager4a
5547   libtidy-0.99-0
5548   libweather-ion4a
5549   libxklavier16
5550   libxxf86misc1
5551   okteta
5552   oxygencursors
5553   plasma-dataengines-addons
5554   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
5555   plasma-widget-lancelot
5556   plasma-widgets-addons
5557   plasma-widgets-workspace
5558   polkit-kde-1
5559   ruby1.8
5560   systemsettings
5561   update-notifier-common
5562 </p></blockquote>
5563
5564 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
5565 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
5566 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
5567 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
5568
5569       </div>
5570       <div class="tags">
5571
5572
5573         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>.
5574
5575
5576       </div>
5577     </div>
5578     <div class="padding"></div>
5579
5580     <div class="entry">
5581       <div class="title">
5582         <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>
5583       </div>
5584       <div class="date">
5585         22nd November 2010
5586       </div>
5587       <div class="body">
5588         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
5589 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
5590 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
5591 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
5592 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
5593 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
5594 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
5595 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
5596 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
5597
5598 <p>I found
5599 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
5600 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
5601 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
5602 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
5603 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
5604 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
5605
5606 <pre>
5607 #!/bin/sh
5608
5609 # Based on
5610 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
5611
5612 set -e
5613 set -x
5614
5615 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
5616     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
5617     exit 1
5618 else
5619     host="$1"
5620 fi
5621
5622 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
5623     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
5624     exit 1
5625 fi
5626
5627 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
5628 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
5629 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
5630 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
5631
5632 img=$host.img
5633 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
5634 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
5635
5636 parted $img mklabel msdos
5637 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
5638 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
5639 parted $img set 1 boot on
5640
5641 modprobe dm-mod
5642 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
5643 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
5644
5645 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
5646 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
5647 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
5648
5649 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
5650 losetup -d /dev/loop0
5651 </pre>
5652
5653 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
5654 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
5655
5656 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
5657 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
5658 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
5659 seem to work just fine.</p>
5660
5661       </div>
5662       <div class="tags">
5663
5664
5665         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>.
5666
5667
5668       </div>
5669     </div>
5670     <div class="padding"></div>
5671
5672     <div class="entry">
5673       <div class="title">
5674         <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>
5675       </div>
5676       <div class="date">
5677         20th November 2010
5678       </div>
5679       <div class="body">
5680         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
5681 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
5682 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
5683 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
5684
5685 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
5686 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
5687 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
5688
5689 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
5690
5691 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5692
5693 <blockquote><p>
5694   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
5695   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
5696   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
5697   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
5698   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
5699   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
5700   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
5701   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
5702   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
5703   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
5704   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5705   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5706   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
5707   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
5708   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
5709   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
5710   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
5711   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
5712   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5713   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
5714   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
5715   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5716   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
5717   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
5718   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
5719   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5720   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5721   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
5722   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5723   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
5724   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
5725   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
5726   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
5727   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
5728   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
5729   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
5730   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
5731   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
5732   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
5733   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
5734   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
5735   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
5736   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
5737   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
5738   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
5739   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
5740   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
5741   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
5742   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
5743   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
5744   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
5745   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
5746   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5747   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
5748   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
5749   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
5750   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
5751   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
5752   zip
5753 </p></blockquote>
5754
5755 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
5756
5757 <blockquote><p>
5758   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
5759   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
5760   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
5761   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
5762   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
5763   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
5764   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
5765   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
5766   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
5767   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
5768   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
5769   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
5770   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
5771   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5772   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
5773   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
5774   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
5775   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
5776   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
5777   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
5778   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
5779   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
5780   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
5781   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
5782   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
5783   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
5784   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
5785   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
5786   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
5787 </p></blockquote>
5788
5789 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5790
5791 <blockquote><p>
5792   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5793 </p></blockquote>
5794
5795 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5796
5797 <blockquote><p>
5798 [nothing]
5799 </p></blockquote>
5800
5801 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
5802
5803 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5804
5805 <blockquote><p>
5806   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
5807   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
5808   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
5809   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
5810   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
5811   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
5812   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
5813   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
5814   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
5815   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
5816   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
5817   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
5818   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
5819   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
5820   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
5821   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
5822   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
5823   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
5824   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
5825   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
5826   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
5827   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
5828   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
5829   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
5830   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
5831   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
5832   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
5833   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
5834   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
5835   ttf-sazanami-gothic
5836 </p></blockquote>
5837
5838 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
5839
5840 <blockquote><p>
5841   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
5842   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
5843   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
5844   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
5845   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
5846   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
5847   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
5848   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
5849   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
5850   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
5851   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
5852   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
5853   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
5854   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
5855   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
5856   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
5857   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
5858   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
5859   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
5860   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
5861   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
5862   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
5863   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
5864   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
5865   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
5866   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
5867   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
5868   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
5869   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
5870   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
5871   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
5872   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
5873   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
5874 </p></blockquote>
5875
5876 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5877
5878 <blockquote><p>
5879   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
5880   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
5881   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
5882   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
5883   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
5884   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
5885   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
5886 </p></blockquote>
5887
5888 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5889
5890 <blockquote><p>
5891   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
5892 </p></blockquote>
5893
5894       </div>
5895       <div class="tags">
5896
5897
5898         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>.
5899
5900
5901       </div>
5902     </div>
5903     <div class="padding"></div>
5904
5905     <div class="entry">
5906       <div class="title">
5907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
5908       </div>
5909       <div class="date">
5910         20th November 2010
5911       </div>
5912       <div class="body">
5913         <p>Answering
5914 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
5915 call from the Gnash project</a> for
5916 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
5917 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
5918 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
5919 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
5920 releases out more often.</p>
5921
5922 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
5923 I have considered setting up a <a
5924 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
5925 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
5926 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
5927 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
5928 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
5929 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
5930 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
5931 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
5932 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
5933 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
5934 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
5935 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
5936
5937       </div>
5938       <div class="tags">
5939
5940
5941         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>.
5942
5943
5944       </div>
5945     </div>
5946     <div class="padding"></div>
5947
5948     <div class="entry">
5949       <div class="title">
5950         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
5951       </div>
5952       <div class="date">
5953          9th November 2010
5954       </div>
5955       <div class="body">
5956         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
5957
5958 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
5959 3D linked in from
5960 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
5961 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
5962
5963       </div>
5964       <div class="tags">
5965
5966
5967         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>.
5968
5969
5970       </div>
5971     </div>
5972     <div class="padding"></div>
5973
5974     <div class="entry">
5975       <div class="title">
5976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
5977       </div>
5978       <div class="date">
5979         24th October 2010
5980       </div>
5981       <div class="body">
5982         <p>Some updates.</p>
5983
5984 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
5985 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
5986 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
5987 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
5988 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
5989 :)</p>
5990
5991 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
5992 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
5993 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
5994 It is called
5995 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
5996 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
5997 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
5998 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
5999 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
6000 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
6001
6002 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
6003 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
6004 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
6005 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
6006 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
6007 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
6008 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
6009 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
6010 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
6011 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
6012
6013       </div>
6014       <div class="tags">
6015
6016
6017         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>.
6018
6019
6020       </div>
6021     </div>
6022     <div class="padding"></div>
6023
6024     <div class="entry">
6025       <div class="title">
6026         <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>
6027       </div>
6028       <div class="date">
6029          4th September 2010
6030       </div>
6031       <div class="body">
6032         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
6033 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
6034 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
6035 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
6036 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
6037 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
6038 installed.</p>
6039
6040 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
6041 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
6042 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
6043 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
6044 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6045 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
6046 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
6047 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
6048 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
6049
6050 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
6051 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
6052 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
6053 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
6054 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
6055 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
6056 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
6057 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
6058 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
6059 pages they want to visit.</p>
6060
6061 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
6062 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
6063 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
6064 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
6065 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
6066 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
6067 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
6068 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
6069 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
6070 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
6071 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
6072
6073       </div>
6074       <div class="tags">
6075
6076
6077         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>.
6078
6079
6080       </div>
6081     </div>
6082     <div class="padding"></div>
6083
6084     <div class="entry">
6085       <div class="title">
6086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
6087       </div>
6088       <div class="date">
6089         27th July 2010
6090       </div>
6091       <div class="body">
6092         <p>I discovered this while doing
6093 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
6094 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
6095 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
6096 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
6097 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
6098
6099 <p>An example is from todays
6100 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
6101 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
6102 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
6103 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
6104 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
6105 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
6106 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
6107
6108 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
6109
6110 <blockquote><pre>
6111 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
6112  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
6113   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
6114 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
6115  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
6116 </pre></blockquote>
6117
6118 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
6119 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
6120 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
6121 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
6122 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
6123 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
6124 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
6125 of dependency loops.</p>
6126
6127 <p>Thanks to
6128 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
6129 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
6130 dependencies
6131 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
6132 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
6133
6134 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
6135 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
6136 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
6137 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
6138 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
6139 it.</p>
6140
6141       </div>
6142       <div class="tags">
6143
6144
6145         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>.
6146
6147
6148       </div>
6149     </div>
6150     <div class="padding"></div>
6151
6152     <div class="entry">
6153       <div class="title">
6154         <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>
6155       </div>
6156       <div class="date">
6157         17th July 2010
6158       </div>
6159       <div class="body">
6160         <p>This is a
6161 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
6162 on my
6163 <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
6164 work</a> on
6165 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
6166 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
6167
6168 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
6169 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
6170 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
6171 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
6172
6173 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
6174 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
6175 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
6176
6177 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
6178
6179 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
6180 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
6181 the web.
6182
6183 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
6184 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
6185 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
6186 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
6187 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
6188 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
6189
6190 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
6191 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
6192 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
6193 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
6194 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
6195 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
6196 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
6197 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
6198 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
6199 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
6200 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
6201 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
6202 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
6203 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
6204 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
6205 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
6206
6207 <blockquote><pre>
6208 ldapsearch -h ldap \
6209   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
6210   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
6211   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
6212   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
6213   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
6214   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
6215
6216 ldapsearch -h ldap \
6217   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
6218   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
6219   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
6220   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
6221   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
6222 </pre></blockquote>
6223
6224 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
6225 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
6226 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
6227 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6228 also exist.</p>
6229
6230 <blockquote><pre>
6231 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6232 objectclass: top
6233 objectclass: dnsdomain
6234 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6235 dc: tjener
6236 arecord: 10.0.2.2
6237 associateddomain: tjener.intern
6238
6239 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6240 objectclass: top
6241 objectclass: dnsdomain2
6242 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6243 dc: 2
6244 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
6245 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
6246 </pre></blockquote>
6247
6248 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
6249 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
6250 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
6251 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
6252 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
6253 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
6254 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
6255 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
6256 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
6257 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
6258 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
6259 instead.</p>
6260
6261 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
6262 like this:</p>
6263
6264 <blockquote><pre>
6265 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6266   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
6267   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
6268   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
6269   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
6270   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
6271
6272 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6273   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
6274 </pre></blockquote>
6275
6276 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
6277 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
6278 reverse lookups.</p>
6279
6280 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
6281 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
6282 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
6283 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
6284
6285 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
6286 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
6287 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
6288
6289 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
6290 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
6291 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
6292 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
6293 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
6294
6295 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
6296 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
6297 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
6298 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
6299 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
6300
6301 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
6302 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
6303 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
6304 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
6305 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
6306 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
6307
6308 <blockquote><pre>
6309 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
6310     SUP top
6311     AUXILIARY
6312     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
6313           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
6314           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
6315           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
6316           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
6317     ))
6318 </pre></blockquote>
6319
6320 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
6321 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
6322 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
6323 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
6324 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
6325 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
6326
6327 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
6328
6329 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
6330 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
6331 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
6332 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
6333 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
6334
6335 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
6336 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
6337 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
6338 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
6339
6340 <blockquote><pre>
6341 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
6342 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
6343 </pre></blockquote>
6344
6345 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
6346 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
6347 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
6348 search result is this entry:</p>
6349
6350 <blockquote><pre>
6351 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6352 cn: dhcp
6353 objectClass: top
6354 objectClass: dhcpServer
6355 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6356 </pre></blockquote>
6357
6358 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
6359 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
6360 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
6361 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
6362 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
6363 The search result is this entry:</p>
6364
6365 <blockquote><pre>
6366 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6367 cn: DHCP Config
6368 objectClass: top
6369 objectClass: dhcpService
6370 objectClass: dhcpOptions
6371 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6372 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
6373 dhcpStatements: authoritative
6374 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
6375 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
6376 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
6377 </pre></blockquote>
6378
6379 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
6380 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
6381 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
6382 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
6383 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
6384 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
6385 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
6386 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
6387 related computer objects.</p>
6388
6389 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
6390 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
6391 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
6392 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
6393 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
6394 like:</p>
6395
6396 <blockquote><pre>
6397 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6398 cn: hostname
6399 objectClass: top
6400 objectClass: dhcpHost
6401 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
6402 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
6403 </pre></blockquote>
6404
6405 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
6406 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
6407 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
6408 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
6409 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
6410 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
6411 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
6412 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
6413 structural object class.
6414
6415 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
6416
6417 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
6418 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
6419 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
6420 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
6421 in the configuration.</p>
6422
6423 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
6424 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
6425 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
6426 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
6427 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
6428 structure.</p>
6429
6430 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
6431 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
6432
6433 <blockquote><pre>
6434 ou=services
6435   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
6436     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
6437     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
6438       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
6439         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
6440     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
6441       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
6442         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
6443     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
6444       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
6445 </pre></blockquote>
6446
6447 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
6448 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
6449 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
6450 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
6451
6452 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
6453 like this:</p>
6454
6455 <blockquote><pre>
6456 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6457 dc: hostname
6458 objectClass: top
6459 objectClass: dhcpHost
6460 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6461 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
6462 associateddomain: hostname.intern
6463 arecord: 10.11.12.13
6464 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
6465 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
6466 </pre></blockquote>
6467
6468 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
6469 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
6470 auxiliary object class.</p>
6471
6472       </div>
6473       <div class="tags">
6474
6475
6476         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>.
6477
6478
6479       </div>
6480     </div>
6481     <div class="padding"></div>
6482
6483     <div class="entry">
6484       <div class="title">
6485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
6486       </div>
6487       <div class="date">
6488         14th July 2010
6489       </div>
6490       <div class="body">
6491         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
6492 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
6493 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
6494 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
6495 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
6496
6497 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
6498 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
6499
6500 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
6501 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
6502 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
6503 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
6504 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
6505 to a slave DNS server.</p>
6506
6507 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
6508 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
6509 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
6510 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
6511 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
6512 seem to work.</p>
6513
6514 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
6515 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
6516 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
6517 this:</p>
6518
6519 <blockquote><pre>
6520   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6521   cn: hostname
6522   objectClass: dhcphost
6523   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6524   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
6525   associateddomain: hostname.intern
6526   arecord: 10.11.12.13
6527   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
6528   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
6529   ldapconfigsound: Y
6530 </pre></blockquote>
6531
6532 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
6533 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
6534 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
6535 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
6536
6537 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
6538 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
6539 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
6540 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
6541 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
6542 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
6543 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
6544 might be a good place to put it.</p>
6545
6546 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6547 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
6548
6549       </div>
6550       <div class="tags">
6551
6552
6553         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>.
6554
6555
6556       </div>
6557     </div>
6558     <div class="padding"></div>
6559
6560     <div class="entry">
6561       <div class="title">
6562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
6563       </div>
6564       <div class="date">
6565         11th July 2010
6566       </div>
6567       <div class="body">
6568         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
6569 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
6570 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
6571 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
6572
6573 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
6574 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
6575 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
6576 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
6577 LTSP clients.</p>
6578
6579 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
6580 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
6581 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
6582
6583 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
6584 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
6585 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
6586
6587 <blockquote><pre>
6588 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
6589 #
6590 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
6591 #
6592 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
6593 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
6594 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
6595 #
6596 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
6597 # existence of attribute names.
6598 #
6599 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
6600 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
6601 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
6602 #
6603 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
6604 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
6605 #
6606 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
6607 #     SUP top
6608 #     AUXILIARY
6609 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
6610
6611 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
6612 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
6613     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
6614     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
6615         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
6616         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
6617             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
6618             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
6619             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
6620             # bass value on to clients
6621             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
6622         done
6623     done
6624 fi
6625 </pre></blockquote>
6626
6627 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
6628 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
6629 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
6630 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
6631 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
6632
6633 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6634 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
6635
6636 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
6637 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
6638 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
6639 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
6640 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
6641 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
6642
6643       </div>
6644       <div class="tags">
6645
6646
6647         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>.
6648
6649
6650       </div>
6651     </div>
6652     <div class="padding"></div>
6653
6654     <div class="entry">
6655       <div class="title">
6656         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
6657       </div>
6658       <div class="date">
6659          9th July 2010
6660       </div>
6661       <div class="body">
6662         <p>Since
6663 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
6664 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
6665 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
6666 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
6667 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
6668 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
6669 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
6670 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
6671 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
6672 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
6673 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
6674 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
6675 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
6676
6677       </div>
6678       <div class="tags">
6679
6680
6681         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>.
6682
6683
6684       </div>
6685     </div>
6686     <div class="padding"></div>
6687
6688     <div class="entry">
6689       <div class="title">
6690         <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>
6691       </div>
6692       <div class="date">
6693          3rd July 2010
6694       </div>
6695       <div class="body">
6696         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
6697 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
6698 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
6699 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
6700 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
6701 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
6702 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
6703 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
6704
6705 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
6706 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
6707 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
6708 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
6709 publish the difference.</p>
6710
6711 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6712
6713 <blockquote><p>
6714   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6715   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
6716   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
6717   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6718   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
6719   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
6720   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
6721   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
6722 </p></blockquote>
6723
6724 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6725
6726 <blockquote><p>
6727   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
6728   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
6729   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
6730   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
6731   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
6732   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
6733   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6734   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6735   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6736   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
6737   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
6738   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
6739   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
6740   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
6741   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
6742   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
6743   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
6744   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
6745   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
6746   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
6747 </p></blockquote>
6748
6749 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6750
6751 <blockquote><p>
6752   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
6753   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
6754   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6755   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6756   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
6757   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
6758   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
6759   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6760   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6761   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6762   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6763   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
6764   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
6765   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
6766   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
6767   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
6768   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
6769   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
6770   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
6771   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
6772   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
6773 </p></blockquote>
6774
6775 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6776
6777 <blockquote><p>
6778   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
6779   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
6780   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
6781 </p></blockquote>
6782
6783 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
6784 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
6785 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
6786 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
6787 the difference somewhat.
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/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
6803       </div>
6804       <div class="date">
6805         28th June 2010
6806       </div>
6807       <div class="body">
6808         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
6809 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
6810 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
6811 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
6812 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
6813 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
6814 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
6815 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
6816 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
6817 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
6818
6819 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
6820 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
6821 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
6822 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
6823 released.</p>
6824
6825 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
6826 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
6827 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
6828 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
6829
6830 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
6831 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
6832
6833 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
6834 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
6835 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
6836 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
6837 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
6838
6839       </div>
6840       <div class="tags">
6841
6842
6843         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>.
6844
6845
6846       </div>
6847     </div>
6848     <div class="padding"></div>
6849
6850     <div class="entry">
6851       <div class="title">
6852         <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>
6853       </div>
6854       <div class="date">
6855         24th June 2010
6856       </div>
6857       <div class="body">
6858         <p>A while back, I
6859 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
6860 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
6861 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
6862 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
6863
6864 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
6865 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
6866 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
6867 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
6868
6869 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
6870 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
6871 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
6872 Debian Edu.</p>
6873
6874 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
6875 the
6876 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
6877 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
6878 available today from IETF.</p>
6879
6880 <pre>
6881 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
6882 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
6883 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
6884  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
6885         NAME 'dhcpHost'
6886         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
6887 -       SUP top
6888 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
6889         MUST cn
6890         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
6891         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
6892 </pre>
6893
6894 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
6895 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
6896 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
6897
6898 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6899 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
6900
6901       </div>
6902       <div class="tags">
6903
6904
6905         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>.
6906
6907
6908       </div>
6909     </div>
6910     <div class="padding"></div>
6911
6912     <div class="entry">
6913       <div class="title">
6914         <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>
6915       </div>
6916       <div class="date">
6917         16th June 2010
6918       </div>
6919       <div class="body">
6920         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
6921 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
6922 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
6923 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
6924 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
6925 this:
6926
6927 <blockquote><pre>
6928 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
6929 tasksel --new-install
6930 </pre></blockquote>
6931
6932 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
6933 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
6934 any output what so ever.
6935
6936 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
6937 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
6938 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
6939 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
6940 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
6941 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
6942 code like this:
6943
6944 <blockquote><pre>
6945 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
6946 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
6947 $cmd
6948 </pre></blockquote>
6949
6950 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
6951 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
6952 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
6953 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
6954 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
6955 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
6956 installation.</p>
6957
6958 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
6959 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
6960 like this.</p>
6961
6962       </div>
6963       <div class="tags">
6964
6965
6966         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>.
6967
6968
6969       </div>
6970     </div>
6971     <div class="padding"></div>
6972
6973     <div class="entry">
6974       <div class="title">
6975         <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>
6976       </div>
6977       <div class="date">
6978         13th June 2010
6979       </div>
6980       <div class="body">
6981         <p>My
6982 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
6983 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
6984 finally made the upgrade logs available from
6985 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
6986 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
6987 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
6988 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
6989
6990 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
6991 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
6992 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
6993 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
6994 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
6995 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
6996 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
6997 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
6998
6999 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
7000 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
7001 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
7002 too surprising.</p>
7003
7004 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
7005 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
7006 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
7007 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
7008 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
7009 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
7010 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
7011 continue.</p>
7012
7013 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
7014 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
7015   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
7016   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
7017   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
7018   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
7019   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
7020   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7021   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7022   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7023   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7024   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7025   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7026   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7027   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7028   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7029   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7030   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7031   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7032   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7033   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7034   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7035   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7036   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7037   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7038   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7039   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7040   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7041   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
7042   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
7043
7044 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
7045
7046 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
7047   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
7048   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
7049   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
7050   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7051   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
7052   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
7053   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
7054   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
7055   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
7056   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7057   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
7058   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7059   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
7060   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
7061   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
7062   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
7063   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
7064   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
7065   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
7066   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
7067   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
7068   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
7069   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
7070   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
7071   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
7072   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
7073   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
7074   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
7075   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7076   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
7077   zip</p>
7078
7079 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
7080
7081 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
7082   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
7083   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
7084   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
7085   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
7086   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
7087   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7088   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7089   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7090   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7091   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7092   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7093   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7094   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7095   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7096   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7097   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7098   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7099   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7100   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7101   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7102   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7103   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7104   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7105   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7106   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7107   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7108   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
7109
7110 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
7111 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
7112   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7113   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
7114   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
7115   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7116   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
7117   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
7118   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7119   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
7120   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
7121   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
7122   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
7123   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
7124   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
7125   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
7126   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
7127   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7128   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7129   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7130   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
7131   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7132   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
7133   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
7134   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7135   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7136   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
7137   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
7138   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
7139   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
7140   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
7141   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
7142   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
7143   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
7144   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
7145   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7146   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
7147   xulrunner-1.9</p>
7148
7149
7150       </div>
7151       <div class="tags">
7152
7153
7154         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>.
7155
7156
7157       </div>
7158     </div>
7159     <div class="padding"></div>
7160
7161     <div class="entry">
7162       <div class="title">
7163         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
7164       </div>
7165       <div class="date">
7166         11th June 2010
7167       </div>
7168       <div class="body">
7169         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
7170 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
7171 have been discovered and reported in the process
7172 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
7173 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
7174 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
7175 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
7176 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
7177
7178 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
7179 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
7180 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
7181 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
7182 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
7183 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
7184
7185 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
7186 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
7187 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
7188 is created.  The bug report
7189 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
7190 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
7191 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
7192 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
7193 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
7194 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
7195 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
7196 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
7197 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
7198 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
7199 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
7200 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
7201 Debian Squeeze.</p>
7202
7203 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
7204 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
7205 trick:</p>
7206
7207 <blockquote><pre>
7208 #!/bin/sh
7209 set -ex
7210
7211 if [ "$1" ] ; then
7212     desktop=$1
7213 else
7214     desktop=gnome
7215 fi
7216
7217 from=lenny
7218 to=squeeze
7219
7220 exec &lt; /dev/null
7221 unset LANG
7222 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
7223 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
7224 fuser -mv .
7225 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
7226 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
7227 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
7228 #!/bin/sh
7229 exit 101
7230 EOF
7231 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
7232 exit_cleanup() {
7233     umount $tmpdir/proc
7234 }
7235 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
7236 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
7237 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
7238
7239 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
7240
7241 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
7242 # to return the correct answers.
7243 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
7244     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
7245
7246 # Include the desktop and laptop task
7247 for test in desktop laptop ; do
7248     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
7249 #!/bin/sh
7250 exit 2
7251 EOF
7252     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
7253 done
7254
7255 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7256 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
7257 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
7258 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
7259
7260 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
7261 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
7262 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
7263 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
7264 fuser -mv
7265 </pre></blockquote>
7266
7267 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
7268 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
7269 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
7270 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
7271 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
7272 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
7273
7274 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
7275 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
7276 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
7277 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
7278 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
7279 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
7280 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
7281
7282 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
7283 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
7284 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
7285 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
7286 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
7287 packages.</p>
7288
7289       </div>
7290       <div class="tags">
7291
7292
7293         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>.
7294
7295
7296       </div>
7297     </div>
7298     <div class="padding"></div>
7299
7300     <div class="entry">
7301       <div class="title">
7302         <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>
7303       </div>
7304       <div class="date">
7305          6th June 2010
7306       </div>
7307       <div class="body">
7308         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
7309 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
7310 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
7311 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
7312 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
7313 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
7314 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
7315
7316 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
7317 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
7318 COLUMNS):</p>
7319
7320 <blockquote><pre>
7321 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
7322 previous=N
7323 PREVLEVEL=
7324 RUNLEVEL=
7325 runlevel=S
7326 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
7327 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
7328 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
7329 </pre></blockquote>
7330
7331 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
7332 script.</p>
7333
7334 <blockquote><pre>
7335 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
7336 previous=N
7337 PREVLEVEL=N
7338 RUNLEVEL=S
7339 runlevel=S
7340 </pre></blockquote>
7341
7342 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
7343 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
7344 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
7345
7346 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
7347 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
7348 choice.</p>
7349
7350       </div>
7351       <div class="tags">
7352
7353
7354         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>.
7355
7356
7357       </div>
7358     </div>
7359     <div class="padding"></div>
7360
7361     <div class="entry">
7362       <div class="title">
7363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
7364       </div>
7365       <div class="date">
7366          6th June 2010
7367       </div>
7368       <div class="body">
7369         <p>Via the
7370 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
7371 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
7372 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
7373 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
7374 following the standards wars of today.</p>
7375
7376       </div>
7377       <div class="tags">
7378
7379
7380         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>.
7381
7382
7383       </div>
7384     </div>
7385     <div class="padding"></div>
7386
7387     <div class="entry">
7388       <div class="title">
7389         <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>
7390       </div>
7391       <div class="date">
7392          3rd June 2010
7393       </div>
7394       <div class="body">
7395         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
7396 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
7397 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
7398 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
7399 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
7400
7401 <blockquote><pre>
7402 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
7403   vendor                    count
7404   Dell Computer Corporation     1
7405     PowerEdge 1750              1
7406   IBM                           1
7407     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
7408   Intel                         2
7409   [no-dmi-info]                 3
7410 maintainer:~#
7411 </pre></blockquote>
7412
7413 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
7414 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
7415 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
7416 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
7417 option to list the individual machines.</p>
7418
7419 <p>A larger list is
7420 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
7421 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
7422 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
7423 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
7424 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
7425 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
7426 collector.</p>
7427
7428       </div>
7429       <div class="tags">
7430
7431
7432         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>.
7433
7434
7435       </div>
7436     </div>
7437     <div class="padding"></div>
7438
7439     <div class="entry">
7440       <div class="title">
7441         <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>
7442       </div>
7443       <div class="date">
7444          1st June 2010
7445       </div>
7446       <div class="body">
7447         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
7448 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
7449 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
7450 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
7451 wait.</p>
7452
7453 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
7454 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
7455 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
7456 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
7457 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
7458 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
7459
7460 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
7461 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
7462 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
7463 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
7464 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
7465 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
7466 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
7467 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
7468
7469 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
7470
7471       </div>
7472       <div class="tags">
7473
7474
7475         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>.
7476
7477
7478       </div>
7479     </div>
7480     <div class="padding"></div>
7481
7482     <div class="entry">
7483       <div class="title">
7484         <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>
7485       </div>
7486       <div class="date">
7487         27th May 2010
7488       </div>
7489       <div class="body">
7490         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
7491 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
7492 issues are known and should be solved:
7493
7494 <p><ul>
7495
7496 <li>The wicd package seen to
7497 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
7498 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
7499 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
7500 seem to be on the case.</li>
7501
7502 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
7503 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
7504 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
7505 maintainer is on the case.</li>
7506
7507 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
7508 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
7509 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
7510 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
7511 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
7512 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
7513 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
7514 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
7515
7516 </ul></p>
7517
7518 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
7519 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
7520 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
7521 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
7522
7523 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7524 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7525 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7526 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
7527
7528 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
7529
7530       </div>
7531       <div class="tags">
7532
7533
7534         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>.
7535
7536
7537       </div>
7538     </div>
7539     <div class="padding"></div>
7540
7541     <div class="entry">
7542       <div class="title">
7543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
7544       </div>
7545       <div class="date">
7546         22nd May 2010
7547       </div>
7548       <div class="body">
7549         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
7550 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
7551 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
7552 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
7553
7554 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
7555 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
7556 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
7557 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
7558 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
7559 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
7560 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
7561 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
7562 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
7563 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
7564 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
7565 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
7566 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
7567 going to work.</p>
7568
7569 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
7570 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
7571 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
7572 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
7573 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
7574 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
7575 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
7576 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
7577 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
7578 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
7579 Edu.</p>
7580
7581 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
7582 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
7583 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
7584 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
7585 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
7586 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
7587
7588 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
7589 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
7590
7591       </div>
7592       <div class="tags">
7593
7594
7595         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>.
7596
7597
7598       </div>
7599     </div>
7600     <div class="padding"></div>
7601
7602     <div class="entry">
7603       <div class="title">
7604         <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>
7605       </div>
7606       <div class="date">
7607         14th May 2010
7608       </div>
7609       <div class="body">
7610         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
7611 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
7612 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
7613 expected, if I am to believe the
7614 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
7615 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
7616 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
7617 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
7618 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
7619 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
7620 version.</p>
7621
7622 More information about
7623 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
7624 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
7625 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
7626 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
7627
7628 <blockquote><pre>
7629 CONCURRENCY=none
7630 </pre></blockquote>
7631
7632 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7633 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7634 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7635 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
7636
7637       </div>
7638       <div class="tags">
7639
7640
7641         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>.
7642
7643
7644       </div>
7645     </div>
7646     <div class="padding"></div>
7647
7648     <div class="entry">
7649       <div class="title">
7650         <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>
7651       </div>
7652       <div class="date">
7653         14th May 2010
7654       </div>
7655       <div class="body">
7656         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
7657 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
7658 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
7659 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
7660 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
7661 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
7662 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
7663 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
7664
7665 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
7666 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
7667 this on the collector host:</p>
7668
7669 <blockquote><pre>
7670 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
7671 </pre></blockquote>
7672
7673 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
7674 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
7675
7676 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
7677 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
7678 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
7679 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
7680 written yet.</p>
7681
7682       </div>
7683       <div class="tags">
7684
7685
7686         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>.
7687
7688
7689       </div>
7690     </div>
7691     <div class="padding"></div>
7692
7693     <div class="entry">
7694       <div class="title">
7695         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
7696       </div>
7697       <div class="date">
7698         13th May 2010
7699       </div>
7700       <div class="body">
7701         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
7702 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
7703 has been
7704 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
7705
7706 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
7707 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
7708 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
7709 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
7710 based boot system.  Tollef is
7711 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
7712 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
7713 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
7714 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
7715 at the moment do not.</p>
7716
7717 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
7718 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
7719 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
7720 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
7721 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
7722 way forward.</p>
7723
7724 <p>In the mean time, based on the
7725 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
7726 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
7727 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
7728 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
7729 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
7730 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
7731 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
7732 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
7733
7734       </div>
7735       <div class="tags">
7736
7737
7738         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>.
7739
7740
7741       </div>
7742     </div>
7743     <div class="padding"></div>
7744
7745     <div class="entry">
7746       <div class="title">
7747         <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>
7748       </div>
7749       <div class="date">
7750          6th May 2010
7751       </div>
7752       <div class="body">
7753         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
7754 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
7755 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
7756 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
7757 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
7758 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
7759 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
7760
7761 <blockquote><pre>
7762 CONCURRENCY=makefile
7763 </pre></blockquote>
7764
7765 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
7766 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
7767 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
7768 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
7769 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
7770 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
7771 make this happen.</p>
7772
7773 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
7774 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
7775 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
7776 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
7777 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
7778
7779 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
7780 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
7781 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
7782 fix the remaining issues.</p>
7783
7784 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7785 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7786 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7787 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
7788
7789       </div>
7790       <div class="tags">
7791
7792
7793         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>.
7794
7795
7796       </div>
7797     </div>
7798     <div class="padding"></div>
7799
7800     <div class="entry">
7801       <div class="title">
7802         <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>
7803       </div>
7804       <div class="date">
7805         27th July 2009
7806       </div>
7807       <div class="body">
7808         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
7809 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
7810 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
7811 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
7812 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
7813 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
7814 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
7815
7816 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
7817 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
7818 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
7819
7820       </div>
7821       <div class="tags">
7822
7823
7824         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>.
7825
7826
7827       </div>
7828     </div>
7829     <div class="padding"></div>
7830
7831     <div class="entry">
7832       <div class="title">
7833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
7834       </div>
7835       <div class="date">
7836         22nd July 2009
7837       </div>
7838       <div class="body">
7839         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
7840 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
7841 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
7842 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
7843 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
7844 the package up to date.</p>
7845
7846 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
7847 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
7848 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
7849 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
7850 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
7851 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
7852 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
7853 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
7854 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
7855 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
7856 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
7857 working on the future release.</p>
7858
7859 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
7860 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
7861
7862       </div>
7863       <div class="tags">
7864
7865
7866         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>.
7867
7868
7869       </div>
7870     </div>
7871     <div class="padding"></div>
7872
7873     <div class="entry">
7874       <div class="title">
7875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
7876       </div>
7877       <div class="date">
7878         24th June 2009
7879       </div>
7880       <div class="body">
7881         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
7882 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
7883 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
7884 funded
7885 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
7886 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
7887 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
7888 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
7889 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
7890 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
7891
7892 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
7893 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
7894 boot:</p>
7895
7896 <ul>
7897
7898 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
7899
7900 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
7901    clock is in UTC.</li>
7902
7903 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
7904    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
7905    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
7906
7907 </ul>
7908
7909 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
7910 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
7911 Villegas</a>.
7912
7913 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
7914 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
7915 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
7916 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
7917 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
7918 using this.</p>
7919
7920 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
7921 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
7922 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
7923 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
7924 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
7925 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
7926 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
7927
7928       </div>
7929       <div class="tags">
7930
7931
7932         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>.
7933
7934
7935       </div>
7936     </div>
7937     <div class="padding"></div>
7938
7939     <div class="entry">
7940       <div class="title">
7941         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
7942       </div>
7943       <div class="date">
7944         17th May 2009
7945       </div>
7946       <div class="body">
7947         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
7948 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
7949 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
7950 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
7951 dager siden kom
7952 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
7953 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
7954 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
7955 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
7956 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
7957
7958 <blockquote>
7959 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
7960 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
7961 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
7962 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
7963 </blockquote>
7964
7965 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
7966 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
7967 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
7968 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
7969 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
7970
7971 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
7972 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
7973 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
7974
7975       </div>
7976       <div class="tags">
7977
7978
7979         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
7980
7981
7982       </div>
7983     </div>
7984     <div class="padding"></div>
7985
7986     <div class="entry">
7987       <div class="title">
7988         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
7989       </div>
7990       <div class="date">
7991          7th May 2009
7992       </div>
7993       <div class="body">
7994         <p>Kom over
7995 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
7996 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
7997 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
7998 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
7999 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
8000 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
8001 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
8002
8003       </div>
8004       <div class="tags">
8005
8006
8007         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8008
8009
8010       </div>
8011     </div>
8012     <div class="padding"></div>
8013
8014     <div class="entry">
8015       <div class="title">
8016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
8017       </div>
8018       <div class="date">
8019          2nd May 2009
8020       </div>
8021       <div class="body">
8022         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
8023 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
8024 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
8025 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
8026 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
8027 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
8028 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
8029 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
8030 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
8031 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
8032 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
8033 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
8034 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
8035 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
8036 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
8037 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
8038 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
8039 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
8040 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
8041 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
8042
8043 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
8044 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
8045 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
8046 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
8047 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
8048 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
8049 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
8050 betydelige.</p>
8051
8052       </div>
8053       <div class="tags">
8054
8055
8056         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8057
8058
8059       </div>
8060     </div>
8061     <div class="padding"></div>
8062
8063     <div class="entry">
8064       <div class="title">
8065         <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>
8066       </div>
8067       <div class="date">
8068          2nd May 2009
8069       </div>
8070       <div class="body">
8071         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
8072 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
8073 do not yet know them.</p>
8074
8075 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
8076 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
8077 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
8078 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
8079 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
8080 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
8081 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
8082 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
8083 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
8084 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
8085 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
8086
8087 <p>The second one is
8088 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
8089 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
8090 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
8091 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
8092 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
8093 and the company behind it is running
8094 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
8095 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
8096 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
8097 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
8098 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
8099 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
8100 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
8101 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
8102
8103 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
8104 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
8105 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
8106 surrounded by today.</p>
8107
8108       </div>
8109       <div class="tags">
8110
8111
8112         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>.
8113
8114
8115       </div>
8116     </div>
8117     <div class="padding"></div>
8118
8119     <div class="entry">
8120       <div class="title">
8121         <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>
8122       </div>
8123       <div class="date">
8124         28th April 2009
8125       </div>
8126       <div class="body">
8127         <p>Julien Blache
8128 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
8129 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
8130 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
8131 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
8132 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
8133 properties.</p>
8134
8135       </div>
8136       <div class="tags">
8137
8138
8139         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>.
8140
8141
8142       </div>
8143     </div>
8144     <div class="padding"></div>
8145
8146     <div class="entry">
8147       <div class="title">
8148         <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>
8149       </div>
8150       <div class="date">
8151         30th March 2009
8152       </div>
8153       <div class="body">
8154         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
8155 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
8156 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
8157 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
8158 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
8159 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
8160 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
8161 application.</p>
8162
8163 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
8164 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
8165 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
8166 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
8167 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
8168 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
8169 blocked from doing so.</p>
8170
8171 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
8172 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
8173 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
8174 requirements change.</p>
8175
8176 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
8177 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
8178 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
8179
8180       </div>
8181       <div class="tags">
8182
8183
8184         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>.
8185
8186
8187       </div>
8188     </div>
8189     <div class="padding"></div>
8190
8191     <div class="entry">
8192       <div class="title">
8193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
8194       </div>
8195       <div class="date">
8196         29th March 2009
8197       </div>
8198       <div class="body">
8199         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
8200 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
8201 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
8202 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
8203 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
8204 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
8205 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
8206 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
8207 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
8208 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
8209 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
8210 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
8211 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
8212 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
8213 now. :)</p>
8214
8215       </div>
8216       <div class="tags">
8217
8218
8219         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>.
8220
8221
8222       </div>
8223     </div>
8224     <div class="padding"></div>
8225
8226     <div class="entry">
8227       <div class="title">
8228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
8229       </div>
8230       <div class="date">
8231         29th March 2009
8232       </div>
8233       <div class="body">
8234         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
8235 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
8236 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
8237 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
8238 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
8239 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
8240
8241 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
8242 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
8243 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
8244 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
8245 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
8246 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
8247 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
8248 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
8249 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
8250 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
8251 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
8252 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
8253 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
8254
8255 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
8256 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
8257 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
8258 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
8259
8260 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
8261 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
8262
8263 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
8264 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
8265 new IETF work group?</p>
8266
8267       </div>
8268       <div class="tags">
8269
8270
8271         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>.
8272
8273
8274       </div>
8275     </div>
8276     <div class="padding"></div>
8277
8278     <div class="entry">
8279       <div class="title">
8280         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
8281       </div>
8282       <div class="date">
8283         15th February 2009
8284       </div>
8285       <div class="body">
8286         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
8287 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
8288 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
8289 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
8290 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
8291 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
8292 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
8293 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
8294 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
8295 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
8296 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
8297 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
8298
8299       </div>
8300       <div class="tags">
8301
8302
8303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
8304
8305
8306       </div>
8307     </div>
8308     <div class="padding"></div>
8309
8310     <div class="entry">
8311       <div class="title">
8312         <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>
8313       </div>
8314       <div class="date">
8315          7th December 2008
8316       </div>
8317       <div class="body">
8318         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
8319 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
8320 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
8321 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
8322 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
8323 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
8324 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
8325 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
8326
8327 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
8328 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
8329 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
8330 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
8331 of these cards.</p>
8332
8333       </div>
8334       <div class="tags">
8335
8336
8337         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>.
8338
8339
8340       </div>
8341     </div>
8342     <div class="padding"></div>
8343
8344     <div class="entry">
8345       <div class="title">
8346         <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>
8347       </div>
8348       <div class="date">
8349         25th November 2008
8350       </div>
8351       <div class="body">
8352         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
8353 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
8354 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
8355 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
8356 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
8357 notes are available on
8358 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
8359 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
8360 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
8361 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
8362 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
8363 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
8364 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
8365 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
8366 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
8367
8368 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
8369 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
8370
8371       </div>
8372       <div class="tags">
8373
8374
8375         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>.
8376
8377
8378       </div>
8379     </div>
8380     <div class="padding"></div>
8381
8382     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
8383     <div id="sidebar">
8384
8385
8386
8387 <h2>Archive</h2>
8388 <ul>
8389
8390 <li>2014
8391 <ul>
8392
8393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
8394
8395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
8396
8397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
8398
8399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
8400
8401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
8402
8403 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
8404
8405 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
8406
8407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
8408
8409 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (3)</a></li>
8410
8411 </ul></li>
8412
8413 <li>2013
8414 <ul>
8415
8416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
8417
8418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
8419
8420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
8421
8422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
8423
8424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
8425
8426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
8427
8428 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
8429
8430 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
8431
8432 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
8433
8434 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
8435
8436 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
8437
8438 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
8439
8440 </ul></li>
8441
8442 <li>2012
8443 <ul>
8444
8445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
8446
8447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
8448
8449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
8450
8451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
8452
8453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
8454
8455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
8456
8457 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
8458
8459 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
8460
8461 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
8462
8463 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
8464
8465 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
8466
8467 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
8468
8469 </ul></li>
8470
8471 <li>2011
8472 <ul>
8473
8474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
8475
8476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
8477
8478 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
8479
8480 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
8481
8482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
8483
8484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
8485
8486 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
8487
8488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
8489
8490 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
8491
8492 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
8493
8494 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
8495
8496 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
8497
8498 </ul></li>
8499
8500 <li>2010
8501 <ul>
8502
8503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
8504
8505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
8506
8507 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
8508
8509 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
8510
8511 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
8512
8513 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
8514
8515 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
8516
8517 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
8518
8519 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
8520
8521 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
8522
8523 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
8524
8525 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
8526
8527 </ul></li>
8528
8529 <li>2009
8530 <ul>
8531
8532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
8533
8534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
8535
8536 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
8537
8538 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
8539
8540 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
8541
8542 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
8543
8544 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
8545
8546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
8547
8548 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
8549
8550 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
8551
8552 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
8553
8554 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
8555
8556 </ul></li>
8557
8558 <li>2008
8559 <ul>
8560
8561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
8562
8563 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
8564
8565 </ul></li>
8566
8567 </ul>
8568
8569
8570
8571 <h2>Tags</h2>
8572 <ul>
8573
8574  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
8575
8576  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
8577
8578  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
8579
8580  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
8581
8582  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
8583
8584  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
8585
8586  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
8587
8588  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
8589
8590  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (101)</a></li>
8591
8592  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (149)</a></li>
8593
8594  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
8595
8596  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
8597
8598  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (12)</a></li>
8599
8600  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
8601
8602  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (253)</a></li>
8603
8604  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
8605
8606  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
8607
8608  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (13)</a></li>
8609
8610  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (8)</a></li>
8611
8612  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
8613
8614  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (41)</a></li>
8615
8616  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (9)</a></li>
8617
8618  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
8619
8620  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
8621
8622  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
8623
8624  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
8625
8626  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
8627
8628  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (29)</a></li>
8629
8630  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (248)</a></li>
8631
8632  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (162)</a></li>
8633
8634  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (11)</a></li>
8635
8636  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
8637
8638  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (48)</a></li>
8639
8640  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (75)</a></li>
8641
8642  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
8643
8644  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
8645
8646  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
8647
8648  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
8649
8650  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
8651
8652  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
8653
8654  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
8655
8656  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
8657
8658  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
8659
8660  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
8661
8662  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
8663
8664  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (45)</a></li>
8665
8666  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
8667
8668  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
8669
8670  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (26)</a></li>
8671
8672  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
8673
8674  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
8675
8676  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (43)</a></li>
8677
8678  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
8679
8680  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (33)</a></li>
8681
8682 </ul>
8683
8684
8685     </div>
8686     <p style="text-align: right">
8687  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
8688 </p>
8689
8690   </body>
8691 </html>