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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         21st March 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
  32 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
  33 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
  34 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
  35 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
  36 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
  37 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
  38
  39 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
  40 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
  41 tried using
  42 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
  43 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
  44 and program
  45 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
  46 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
  47 <a href"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
  48 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
  49 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
  50 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
  51 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
  52 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
  53 this method.</p> So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
  54 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
  55 problem is
  56 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
  57 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
  58 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
  59 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
  60 DVD structures, as the python library
  61 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
  62 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
  63 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
  64 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
  65 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
  66 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
  67
  68 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
  69 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
  70
  71       </div>
  72       <div class="tags">
  73
  74
  75         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
  76
  77
  78       </div>
  79     </div>
  80     <div class="padding"></div>
  81
  82     <div class="entry">
  83       <div class="title">
  84         <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>
  85       </div>
  86       <div class="date">
  87         14th March 2014
  88       </div>
  89       <div class="body">
  90         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
  91 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
  92 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
  93 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
  94 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
  95 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
  96 release (0.2).</p>
  97
  98 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
  99 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
 100 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
 101 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
 102 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
 103 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
 104 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
 105 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
 106 and build using
 107 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
 108 with a user with sudo access to become root:
 109
 110 <pre>
 111 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
 112   freedom-maker
 113 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
 114   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
 115   u-boot-tools
 116 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
 117 </pre>
 118
 119 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
 120 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
 121 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
 122 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
 123 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
 124 kpartx call.</p>
 125
 126 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
 127 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
 128 the preseed values:</p>
 129
 130 <pre>
 131 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
 132 </pre>
 133
 134 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
 135 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
 136 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
 137 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
 138 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
 139 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
 140
 141 Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
 142 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
 143 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
 144 irc.debian.org)</a> and
 145 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 146 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 147
 148       </div>
 149       <div class="tags">
 150
 151
 152         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>.
 153
 154
 155       </div>
 156     </div>
 157     <div class="padding"></div>
 158
 159     <div class="entry">
 160       <div class="title">
 161         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
 162       </div>
 163       <div class="date">
 164         12th March 2014
 165       </div>
 166       <div class="body">
 167         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
 168 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
 169 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
 170 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
 171 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
 172 document this better when one of the customers of
 173 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
 174 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
 175 get this working are the following:</p>
 176
 177 <p><ol>
 178
 179 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
 180 example host here.</li>
 181
 182 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
 183 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
 184
 185 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
 186 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
 187
 188 </ol></p>
 189
 190 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
 191 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
 192 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
 193 started).</p>
 194
 195 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
 196 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
 197
 198 <p><blockquote><pre>
 199 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
 200 Export list for nas-server:
 201 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
 202 root@tjener:~#
 203 </pre></blockquote></p>
 204
 205 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
 206 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
 207 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
 208 NFS access.</p>
 209
 210 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
 211 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
 212 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
 213
 214 <p><blockquote><pre>
 215 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 216 </pre></blockquote></p>
 217
 218 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
 219 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
 220 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
 221 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
 222
 223 <p><blockquote><pre>
 224 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 225 objectClass: automount
 226 cn: nas-server
 227 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 228
 229 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 230 objectClass: top
 231 objectClass: automountMap
 232 ou: auto.nas-server
 233
 234 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 235 objectClass: automount
 236 cn: /
 237 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
 238 </pre></blockquote></p>
 239
 240 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
 241 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
 242 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
 243
 244 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
 245 the storage server directly by just visiting the
 246 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
 247 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
 248
 249       </div>
 250       <div class="tags">
 251
 252
 253         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
 254
 255
 256       </div>
 257     </div>
 258     <div class="padding"></div>
 259
 260     <div class="entry">
 261       <div class="title">
 262         <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>
 263       </div>
 264       <div class="date">
 265         22nd February 2014
 266       </div>
 267       <div class="body">
 268         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
 269 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
 270 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
 271 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
 272 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
 273 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
 274 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
 275 proper home since then.</p>
 276
 277 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
 278 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
 279 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
 280 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
 281 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
 282
 283 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
 284 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
 285 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
 286 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
 287 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
 288 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
 289 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
 290 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
 291 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
 292
 293       </div>
 294       <div class="tags">
 295
 296
 297         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>.
 298
 299
 300       </div>
 301     </div>
 302     <div class="padding"></div>
 303
 304     <div class="entry">
 305       <div class="title">
 306         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
 307       </div>
 308       <div class="date">
 309          3rd February 2014
 310       </div>
 311       <div class="body">
 312         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
 313 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
 314 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
 315 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
 316 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
 317 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
 318 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
 319 <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>,
 320 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
 321
 322 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
 323 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
 324 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
 325 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
 326 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
 327 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
 328
 329 <p><blockquote><pre>
 330 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
 331 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
 332 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
 333 dhclient /dev/eth0
 334 </pre></blockquote></p>
 335
 336 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
 337 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
 338 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
 339
 340 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
 341 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
 342 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
 343 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
 344 side.</p>
 345
 346 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
 347 stuff:</p>
 348
 349 <p><blockquote><pre>
 350 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 351 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
 352 EOF
 353 apt-get update
 354 apt-get dist-upgrade
 355 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
 356     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
 357 update-alternatives --config runsystem
 358 </pre></blockquote></p>
 359
 360 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
 361 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
 362 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
 363 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
 364 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
 365 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
 366 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
 367 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
 368 ssh instead.
 369
 370 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
 371 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
 372 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
 373 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
 374 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
 375 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
 376
 377 <p><blockquote><pre>
 378 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 379 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
 380 EOF
 381 </pre></blockquote></p>
 382
 383 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
 384 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
 385 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
 386 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
 387
 388 <p><blockquote><pre>
 389 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
 390 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
 391 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
 392 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
 393 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
 394 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
 395 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
 396 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
 397 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
 398 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
 399 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
 400 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
 401 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
 402 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
 403 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
 404 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
 405 #
 406 </pre></blockquote></p>
 407
 408 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
 409 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
 410 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
 411 command line stuff.<p>
 412
 413       </div>
 414       <div class="tags">
 415
 416
 417         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>.
 418
 419
 420       </div>
 421     </div>
 422     <div class="padding"></div>
 423
 424     <div class="entry">
 425       <div class="title">
 426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
 427       </div>
 428       <div class="date">
 429         29th January 2014
 430       </div>
 431       <div class="body">
 432         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
 433 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
 434 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
 435 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
 436 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
 437 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
 438 investigated in
 439 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
 440 from December 2013, in the article
 441 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
 442 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
 443 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
 444 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
 445 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
 446 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
 447 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
 448 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
 449
 450 <p><blockquote>
 451 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
 452 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
 453 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
 454 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
 455 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
 456 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
 457 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
 458 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
 459 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
 460 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
 461 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
 462 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
 463
 464 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
 465 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
 466 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
 467 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
 468 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
 469 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
 470 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
 471 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
 472 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
 473 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
 474 </blockquote><p>
 475
 476 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
 477 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
 478 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
 479 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
 480 summarized like this:</p>
 481
 482 <p><blockquote>
 483 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
 484 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
 485 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
 486 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
 487 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
 488 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
 489 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
 490 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
 491 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
 492 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
 493 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
 494 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
 495 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
 496 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
 497 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
 498 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
 499 </blockquote></p>
 500
 501 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
 502 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
 503 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
 504 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
 505
 506 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 507 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 508 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 509
 510       </div>
 511       <div class="tags">
 512
 513
 514         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 515
 516
 517       </div>
 518     </div>
 519     <div class="padding"></div>
 520
 521     <div class="entry">
 522       <div class="title">
 523         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
 524       </div>
 525       <div class="date">
 526         14th January 2014
 527       </div>
 528       <div class="body">
 529         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
 530 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
 531 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
 532 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
 533 the source.  The company behind it provide
 534 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
 535 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
 536 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
 537 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
 538 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
 539 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
 540 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
 541 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
 542 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
 543 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
 544 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
 545 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
 546 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
 547 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
 548 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
 549 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
 550 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
 551 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
 552 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
 553
 554 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
 555
 556 <ul>
 557
 558   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
 559   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
 560   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
 561
 562 </ul>
 563
 564 <p>You can
 565 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 566 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 567 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 568 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 569 include a test suite check.</p>
 570
 571       </div>
 572       <div class="tags">
 573
 574
 575         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>.
 576
 577
 578       </div>
 579     </div>
 580     <div class="padding"></div>
 581
 582     <div class="entry">
 583       <div class="title">
 584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
 585       </div>
 586       <div class="date">
 587         25th December 2013
 588       </div>
 589       <div class="body">
 590         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 591 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
 592 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
 593 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
 594 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
 595 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
 596 George</a>.</p>
 597
 598 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
 599
 600 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 601
 602 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
 603 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
 604 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
 605 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
 606 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
 607 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
 608
 609 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
 610 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
 611 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
 612 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
 613 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
 614 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
 615 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
 616 to help building another school's informational education concept from
 617 scratch.</p>
 618
 619 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
 620 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
 621 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
 622
 623 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
 624 and cycling.</p>
 625
 626 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 627 project?</strong></p>
 628
 629 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
 630 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
 631 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
 632 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
 633 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
 634 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
 635
 636 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
 637 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
 638 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
 639 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
 640 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
 641 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
 642 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
 643 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
 644 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
 645
 646 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
 647 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
 648 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
 649 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
 650
 651 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 652 Edu?</strong></p>
 653
 654 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
 655 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
 656 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
 657 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
 658 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
 659 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
 660 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
 661 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
 662 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
 663 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
 664 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
 665 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
 666 that it rocks!</p>
 667
 668 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
 669 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
 670 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
 671 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
 672 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
 673 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
 674 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
 675
 676 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 677 Edu?</strong></p>
 678
 679 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
 680 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
 681 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
 682 can list a few points about that:</p>
 683
 684 <ul>
 685
 686  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
 687  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
 688  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
 689
 690 </ul>
 691
 692 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
 693
 694 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 695
 696 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
 697 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
 698 year.</p>
 699
 700 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
 701 run text tools. I use
 702 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
 703 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
 704 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
 705 based full-featured student management software with the two),
 706 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
 707 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
 708 coloured world called the WWW, I use
 709 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
 710 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
 711 e-mail.</p>
 712
 713 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
 714 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
 715 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
 716 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
 717 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
 718 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
 719 Facebook now ;).</p>
 720
 721 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 722 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 723
 724 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
 725 side is what I have experienced.</p>
 726
 727 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
 728 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
 729 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
 730 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
 731 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
 732 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
 733 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
 734 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
 735 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
 736 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
 737 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
 738 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
 739 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
 740 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
 741 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
 742 plain criminal.</p>
 743
 744 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
 745 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
 746 founded an association named
 747 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
 748 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
 749 area of free and open source software, for example the
 750 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
 751 Teckids and are the youth programme of
 752 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
 753 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
 754 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
 755 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
 756 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
 757 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
 758
 759 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
 760 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
 761 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
 762 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
 763 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
 764 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
 765 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
 766 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
 767 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
 768 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
 769 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
 770 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
 771
 772 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
 773 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
 774 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
 775 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
 776
 777 <!--
 778
 779 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
 780
 781 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
 782 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
 783
 784  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
 785    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
 786    of the decision makers above;
 787  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
 788    knowledge about free software
 789
 790 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
 791
 792 -->
 793
 794       </div>
 795       <div class="tags">
 796
 797
 798         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 799
 800
 801       </div>
 802     </div>
 803     <div class="padding"></div>
 804
 805     <div class="entry">
 806       <div class="title">
 807         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
 808       </div>
 809       <div class="date">
 810          6th December 2013
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="body">
 813         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
 814 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 815 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
 816 had a new school administrator show up on
 817 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
 818 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
 819 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
 820 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
 821 Germany a few years ago.</p>
 822
 823 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 824
 825 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
 826 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
 827 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
 828 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
 829
 830 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
 831 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
 832 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
 833 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
 834 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
 835 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
 836 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
 837 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
 838 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
 839
 840 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 841 project?</strong></p>
 842
 843 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
 844 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
 845 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
 846 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
 847
 848 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 849 Edu?</strong></p>
 850
 851 <ul>
 852   <li>Quick installation,</li>
 853   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
 854   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
 855   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
 856     single company,</li>
 857   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
 858     experience and problem solutions.</li>
 859 </ul>
 860
 861 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 862 Edu?</strong></p>
 863
 864 <ul>
 865   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
 866   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
 867   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
 868   working again reliably.
 869
 870   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
 871   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
 872   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
 873   as their base.
 874
 875   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
 876   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
 877   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
 878   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
 879   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
 880   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
 881
 882   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
 883   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
 884   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
 885   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
 886   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
 887   schemes.</li>
 888
 889   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
 890   compared to Debian.</li>
 891
 892 </ul>
 893
 894 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
 895 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
 896 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
 897 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
 898
 899 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 900
 901 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
 902 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
 903 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
 904 programming languages for teaching.</p>
 905
 906 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 907 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 908
 909 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
 910
 911 <ul>
 912
 913   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
 914     teaching and learning.</li>
 915
 916   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
 917     home, and at their working place without running into license or
 918     conversion problems.</li>
 919
 920   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
 921     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
 922     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
 923     science, not products.</li>
 924
 925   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
 926     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
 927
 928 </ul>
 929
 930       </div>
 931       <div class="tags">
 932
 933
 934         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 935
 936
 937       </div>
 938     </div>
 939     <div class="padding"></div>
 940
 941     <div class="entry">
 942       <div class="title">
 943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
 944       </div>
 945       <div class="date">
 946         30th November 2013
 947       </div>
 948       <div class="body">
 949         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
 950 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
 951 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
 952 experiment with interesting network technology, the
 953 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
 954 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
 955 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
 956 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
 957 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
 958 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
 959 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
 960 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
 961 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
 962 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
 963 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
 964 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
 965 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
 966 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
 967 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
 968 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
 969
 970       </div>
 971       <div class="tags">
 972
 973
 974         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 975
 976
 977       </div>
 978     </div>
 979     <div class="padding"></div>
 980
 981     <div class="entry">
 982       <div class="title">
 983         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
 984       </div>
 985       <div class="date">
 986         24th November 2013
 987       </div>
 988       <div class="body">
 989         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
 990 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
 991 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
 992 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
 993 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
 994 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
 995 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
 996 is working on.  I checked the
 997 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
 998 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
 999 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
1000 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
1001 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
1002 These are the release notes:</p>
1003
1004 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
1005
1006 <ul>
1007
1008   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
1009    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
1010    up.</li>
1011
1012   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
1013
1014   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
1015    Matthias Klose.</li>
1016
1017   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
1018    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
1019
1020   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
1021    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
1022    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
1023
1024 </ul>
1025
1026 <p>You can
1027 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1028 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1029 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1030 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1031 include a testsuite check.</p>
1032
1033       </div>
1034       <div class="tags">
1035
1036
1037         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>.
1038
1039
1040       </div>
1041     </div>
1042     <div class="padding"></div>
1043
1044     <div class="entry">
1045       <div class="title">
1046         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
1047       </div>
1048       <div class="date">
1049         21st November 2013
1050       </div>
1051       <div class="body">
1052         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
1053 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
1054 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
1055 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
1056 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
1057 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
1058 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
1059 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
1060 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
1061 TED talk
1062 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
1063 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
1064 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
1065
1066 <blockquote>
1067
1068 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
1069 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
1070 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
1071 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
1072 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
1073 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
1074 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
1075 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
1076 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
1077 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
1078 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
1079
1080 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
1081 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
1082 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
1083
1084 </blockquote>
1085
1086 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
1087 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
1088 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
1089 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
1090 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
1091 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
1092 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
1093 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
1094 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
1095
1096       </div>
1097       <div class="tags">
1098
1099
1100         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1101
1102
1103       </div>
1104     </div>
1105     <div class="padding"></div>
1106
1107     <div class="entry">
1108       <div class="title">
1109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
1110       </div>
1111       <div class="date">
1112         13th November 2013
1113       </div>
1114       <div class="body">
1115         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
1116 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
1117 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
1118 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
1119 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
1120 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
1121 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
1122 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
1123 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
1124 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
1125 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
1126 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1127 right away. :)</p>
1128
1129       </div>
1130       <div class="tags">
1131
1132
1133         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1134
1135
1136       </div>
1137     </div>
1138     <div class="padding"></div>
1139
1140     <div class="entry">
1141       <div class="title">
1142         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
1143       </div>
1144       <div class="date">
1145         10th November 2013
1146       </div>
1147       <div class="body">
1148         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
1149 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
1150 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
1151 MR3040 as a mesh node using
1152 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
1153
1154 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
1155 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
1156 and downloaded
1157 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
1158 recommended firmware image</a>
1159 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
1160 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
1161 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
1162 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
1163 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
1164
1165 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
1166 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
1167 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
1168 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
1169 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
1170 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
1171 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
1172 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
1173 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
1174 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
1175 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
1176 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
1177 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
1178
1179 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
1180 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
1181 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
1182 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
1183 them:</p>
1184
1185 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
1186
1187 <pre>
1188
1189 config interface 'loopback'
1190         option ifname 'lo'
1191         option proto 'static'
1192         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
1193         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
1194
1195 config globals 'globals'
1196         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
1197
1198 config interface 'lan'
1199         option ifname 'eth0'
1200         option type 'bridge'
1201         option proto 'dhcp'
1202         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
1203         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
1204         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
1205         option ip6assign '60'
1206
1207 config interface 'mesh'
1208         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1209         option mtu '1528'
1210         option proto 'batadv'
1211         option mesh 'bat0'
1212 </pre>
1213
1214 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
1215 <pre>
1216
1217 config wifi-device 'radio0'
1218         option type 'mac80211'
1219         option channel '11'
1220         option hwmode '11ng'
1221         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
1222         option htmode 'HT20'
1223         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
1224         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
1225         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
1226         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
1227         option disabled '0'
1228
1229 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
1230         option device 'radio0'
1231         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1232         option network 'mesh'
1233         option encryption 'none'
1234         option mode 'adhoc'
1235         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
1236         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
1237 </pre>
1238 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
1239 <pre>
1240
1241 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
1242         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
1243         option 'aggregated_ogms'
1244         option 'ap_isolation'
1245         option 'bonding'
1246         option 'fragmentation'
1247         option 'gw_bandwidth'
1248         option 'gw_mode'
1249         option 'gw_sel_class'
1250         option 'log_level'
1251         option 'orig_interval'
1252         option 'vis_mode'
1253         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
1254         option 'distributed_arp_table'
1255         option 'network_coding'
1256         option 'hop_penalty'
1257
1258 # yet another batX instance
1259 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
1260 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
1261 </pre>
1262
1263 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
1264 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
1265 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
1266
1267       </div>
1268       <div class="tags">
1269
1270
1271         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1272
1273
1274       </div>
1275     </div>
1276     <div class="padding"></div>
1277
1278     <div class="entry">
1279       <div class="title">
1280         <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>
1281       </div>
1282       <div class="date">
1283          2nd November 2013
1284       </div>
1285       <div class="body">
1286         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
1287 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
1288 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
1289 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
1290 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
1291
1292 <p><pre>
1293 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
1294 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
1295 # Provides:          rsyslog
1296 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
1297 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
1298 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
1299 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
1300 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
1301 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
1302 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
1303 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
1304 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
1305 ### END INIT INFO
1306 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
1307 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
1308 </pre></p>
1309
1310 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
1311 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
1312 info/comments.</p>
1313
1314 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
1315 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
1316
1317 <p><pre>
1318 #!/bin/sh
1319
1320 # Define LSB log_* functions.
1321 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
1322 # and status_of_proc is working.
1323 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
1324
1325 #
1326 # Function that starts the daemon/service
1327
1328 #
1329 do_start()
1330 {
1331         # Return
1332         #   0 if daemon has been started
1333         #   1 if daemon was already running
1334         #   2 if daemon could not be started
1335         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
1336                 || return 1
1337         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
1338                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
1339                 || return 2
1340         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
1341         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
1342         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
1343 }
1344
1345 #
1346 # Function that stops the daemon/service
1347 #
1348 do_stop()
1349 {
1350         # Return
1351         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
1352         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
1353         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
1354         #   other if a failure occurred
1355         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1356         RETVAL="$?"
1357         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
1358         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
1359         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
1360         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
1361         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
1362         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
1363         # sleep for some time.
1364         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
1365         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
1366         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
1367         rm -f $PIDFILE
1368         return "$RETVAL"
1369 }
1370
1371 #
1372 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
1373 #
1374 do_reload() {
1375         #
1376         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
1377         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
1378         # then implement that here.
1379         #
1380         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1381         return 0
1382 }
1383
1384 SCRIPTNAME=$1
1385 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
1386 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
1387 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
1388     script="$1"
1389     shift
1390     . $script
1391 else
1392     exit 0
1393 fi
1394
1395 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
1396 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
1397
1398 # Exit if the package is not installed
1399 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
1400
1401 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
1402 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
1403
1404 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
1405 . /lib/init/vars.sh
1406
1407 case "$1" in
1408   start)
1409         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
1410         do_start
1411         case "$?" in
1412                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1413                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1414         esac
1415         ;;
1416   stop)
1417         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
1418         do_stop
1419         case "$?" in
1420                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1421                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1422         esac
1423         ;;
1424   status)
1425         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
1426         ;;
1427   #reload|force-reload)
1428         #
1429         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
1430         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
1431         #
1432         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
1433         #do_reload
1434         #log_end_msg $?
1435         #;;
1436   restart|force-reload)
1437         #
1438         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
1439         # 'force-reload' alias
1440         #
1441         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
1442         do_stop
1443         case "$?" in
1444           0|1)
1445                 do_start
1446                 case "$?" in
1447                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
1448                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
1449                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
1450                 esac
1451                 ;;
1452           *)
1453                 # Failed to stop
1454                 log_end_msg 1
1455                 ;;
1456         esac
1457         ;;
1458   *)
1459         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
1460         exit 3
1461         ;;
1462 esac
1463
1464 :
1465 </pre></p>
1466
1467 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
1468 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
1469 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
1470 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
1471
1472 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
1473 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
1474 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
1475 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
1476 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
1477
1478       </div>
1479       <div class="tags">
1480
1481
1482         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>.
1483
1484
1485       </div>
1486     </div>
1487     <div class="padding"></div>
1488
1489     <div class="entry">
1490       <div class="title">
1491         <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>
1492       </div>
1493       <div class="date">
1494          1st November 2013
1495       </div>
1496       <div class="body">
1497         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
1498 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
1499 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
1500 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
1501 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
1502 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
1503 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
1504 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
1505 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
1506 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
1507 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
1508 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
1509
1510 <p>The source is now available from
1511 <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>
1512
1513       </div>
1514       <div class="tags">
1515
1516
1517         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1518
1519
1520       </div>
1521     </div>
1522     <div class="padding"></div>
1523
1524     <div class="entry">
1525       <div class="title">
1526         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
1527       </div>
1528       <div class="date">
1529         27th October 2013
1530       </div>
1531       <div class="body">
1532         <p>The
1533 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
1534 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
1535 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
1536 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
1537 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
1538 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
1539 of a plan to simplify the build system for
1540 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
1541 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
1542 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
1543 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
1544 Raspberry Pi.</p>
1545
1546 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
1547 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
1548 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
1549 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
1550 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
1551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
1552 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
1553 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
1554 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
1555 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
1556 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
1557 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
1558 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
1559 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
1560 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
1561 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
1562 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
1563 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
1564 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
1565 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
1566 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
1567 available from
1568 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
1569 upstream project page</a>.</p>
1570
1571 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
1572 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
1573 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
1574 list:</p>
1575
1576 <p><pre>
1577 #!/bin/sh
1578 set -e # Exit on first error
1579 rootdir="$1"
1580 cd "$rootdir"
1581 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
1582 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
1583 EOF
1584 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
1585 # install a kernel somewhere too.
1586 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
1587     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1588 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1589 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
1590 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
1591 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
1592 </pre></p>
1593
1594 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
1595 to build the image:</p>
1596
1597 <pre>
1598 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
1599     --variant minbase \
1600     --arch armel \
1601     --distribution jessie \
1602     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
1603     --image test.img \
1604     --size 600M \
1605     --bootsize 64M \
1606     --boottype vfat \
1607     --log-level debug \
1608     --verbose \
1609     --no-kernel \
1610     --no-extlinux \
1611     --root-password raspberry \
1612     --hostname raspberrypi \
1613     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
1614     --customize `pwd`/customize \
1615     --package netbase \
1616     --package git-core \
1617     --package binutils \
1618     --package ca-certificates \
1619     --package wget \
1620     --package kmod
1621 </pre></p>
1622
1623 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
1624 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
1625 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
1626 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
1627 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
1628 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
1629 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
1630
1631 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
1632 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
1633 build dependency list.</p>
1634
1635 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
1636 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
1637 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
1638 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
1639
1640       </div>
1641       <div class="tags">
1642
1643
1644         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>.
1645
1646
1647       </div>
1648     </div>
1649     <div class="padding"></div>
1650
1651     <div class="entry">
1652       <div class="title">
1653         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
1654       </div>
1655       <div class="date">
1656         21st October 2013
1657       </div>
1658       <div class="body">
1659         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
1660 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
1661 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
1662 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
1663 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
1664 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
1665 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
1666 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
1667
1668 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
1669 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
1670 instead, I started playing with a
1671 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
1672 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
1673 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
1674 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
1675 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
1676 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
1677 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
1678 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
1679 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
1680 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
1681 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
1682 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
1683 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
1684 every client on the local network.</p>
1685
1686 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
1687 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
1688 and a script
1689 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
1690 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
1691 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
1692 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
1693 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
1694 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
1695 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
1696 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
1697 support.</p>
1698
1699 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
1700 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
1701
1702 <p><pre>
1703 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
1704     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
1705 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
1706 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
1707 %
1708 </pre></p>
1709
1710 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
1711 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
1712 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
1713 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
1714 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
1715 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
1716
1717 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
1718 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
1719 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
1720
1721 <p><table>
1722
1723 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
1724 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
1725 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
1726 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
1727 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
1728 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
1729
1730 </table></p>
1731
1732 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
1733 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
1734 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
1735 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
1736 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
1737 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
1738 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
1739
1740       </div>
1741       <div class="tags">
1742
1743
1744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1745
1746
1747       </div>
1748     </div>
1749     <div class="padding"></div>
1750
1751     <div class="entry">
1752       <div class="title">
1753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
1754       </div>
1755       <div class="date">
1756         19th October 2013
1757       </div>
1758       <div class="body">
1759         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
1760 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
1761 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
1762 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
1763 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
1764 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
1765 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
1766 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
1767
1768       </div>
1769       <div class="tags">
1770
1771
1772         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
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/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>
1782       </div>
1783       <div class="date">
1784         15th October 2013
1785       </div>
1786       <div class="body">
1787         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
1788 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
1789 these. :)</p>
1790
1791 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
1792 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
1793 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
1794 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
1795 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
1796 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
1797 hope you will to. :)</p>
1798
1799 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
1800 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
1801 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
1802 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
1803 donated.  Are you next?</p>
1804
1805 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
1806 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
1807 statement under the heading
1808 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
1809 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
1810 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
1811 too.</p>
1812
1813       </div>
1814       <div class="tags">
1815
1816
1817         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>.
1818
1819
1820       </div>
1821     </div>
1822     <div class="padding"></div>
1823
1824     <div class="entry">
1825       <div class="title">
1826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
1827       </div>
1828       <div class="date">
1829         11th October 2013
1830       </div>
1831       <div class="body">
1832         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
1833 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
1834 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
1835 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
1836 successful examples like
1837 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
1838 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
1839 (see
1840 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
1841 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
1842 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
1843 can be seen from their
1844 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
1845 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
1846 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
1847 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
1848 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
1849
1850 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
1851 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
1852 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
1853 my recent involvement in
1854 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
1855 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
1856 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
1857 when possible, given that most communication between people are
1858 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
1859 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
1860 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
1861 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
1862 important over the years.</p>
1863
1864 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
1865 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
1866 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
1867 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
1868 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
1869 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
1870 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
1871 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
1872 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
1873 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
1874 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
1875 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
1876 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
1877 speakers about this talk (from
1878 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
1879
1880 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
1881
1882 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
1883 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
1884 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
1885 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
1886 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
1887 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
1888 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
1889 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
1890 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
1891 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
1892 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
1893 that project (from
1894 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
1895
1896 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
1897
1898 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
1899 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
1900 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
1901 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
1902 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
1903 based community mesh networks.</p>
1904
1905 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
1906 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
1907 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
1908 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
1909 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
1910 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
1911 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
1912 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
1913 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
1914
1915 <p><table>
1916 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
1917 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
1918 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
1919 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
1920 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
1921 </table></p>
1922
1923 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
1924 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
1925 VillageTelco about
1926 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
1927 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
1928 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
1929 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
1930 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
1931 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
1932
1933 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
1934 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
1935 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
1936 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
1937
1938 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
1939 us on IRC, either channel
1940 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
1941 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
1942 irc.freenode.net.</p>
1943
1944 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
1945 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
1946 and Innovation called
1947 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
1948 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
1949 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
1950 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
1951 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
1952 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
1953 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
1954 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
1955
1956 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
1957 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
1958 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
1959 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
1960 mesh system.</p>
1961
1962       </div>
1963       <div class="tags">
1964
1965
1966         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1967
1968
1969       </div>
1970     </div>
1971     <div class="padding"></div>
1972
1973     <div class="entry">
1974       <div class="title">
1975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
1976       </div>
1977       <div class="date">
1978          8th October 2013
1979       </div>
1980       <div class="body">
1981         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
1982 Salvador had published a
1983 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
1984 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
1985 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
1986 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
1987 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
1988 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
1989 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
1990 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
1991 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
1992 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
1993 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
1994 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
1995 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
1996 computers without hard drives by installing one central
1997 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
1998
1999 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
2000
2001 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
2002
2003 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
2004 me know. :)</p>
2005
2006       </div>
2007       <div class="tags">
2008
2009
2010         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2011
2012
2013       </div>
2014     </div>
2015     <div class="padding"></div>
2016
2017     <div class="entry">
2018       <div class="title">
2019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
2020       </div>
2021       <div class="date">
2022         29th September 2013
2023       </div>
2024       <div class="body">
2025         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
2026 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
2027 complete announcement text can be found at
2028 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
2029 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
2030
2031 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
2032 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
2033 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
2034 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
2035
2036       </div>
2037       <div class="tags">
2038
2039
2040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2041
2042
2043       </div>
2044     </div>
2045     <div class="padding"></div>
2046
2047     <div class="entry">
2048       <div class="title">
2049         <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>
2050       </div>
2051       <div class="date">
2052         27th September 2013
2053       </div>
2054       <div class="body">
2055         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
2056 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
2057 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
2058 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
2059
2060 <ul>
2061
2062 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
2063 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
2064
2065 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
2066 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2067
2068 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
2069 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
2070 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
2071 (Youtube)</li>
2072
2073 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
2074 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
2075
2076 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
2077 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2078
2079 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
2080 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
2081 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
2082
2083 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
2084 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
2085 (Youtube)</li>
2086
2087 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
2088 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
2089
2090 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
2091 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
2092
2093 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
2094 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
2095 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
2096
2097 </ul>
2098
2099 <p>A larger list is available from
2100 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
2101 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
2102
2103 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
2104 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
2105 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
2106 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
2107 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
2108 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
2109 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
2110 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
2111 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
2112 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2113 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2114
2115       </div>
2116       <div class="tags">
2117
2118
2119         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>.
2120
2121
2122       </div>
2123     </div>
2124     <div class="padding"></div>
2125
2126     <div class="entry">
2127       <div class="title">
2128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
2129       </div>
2130       <div class="date">
2131         16th September 2013
2132       </div>
2133       <div class="body">
2134         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2135 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
2136
2137 <blockquote>
2138 <p>Hi,</p>
2139
2140 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
2141 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2142 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
2143
2144 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
2145 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
2146 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
2147 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
2148
2149 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
2150 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
2151
2152 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
2153 compared to beta1:</p>
2154
2155 <ul>
2156
2157 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
2158 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
2159 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
2160 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
2161 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
2162 main server.</li>
2163 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
2164 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
2165 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
2166 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
2167 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
2168
2169 </ul>
2170
2171 <p>Where to get it:</p>
2172
2173 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2174
2175 <ul>
2176 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
2177 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
2178 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
2179 </ul>
2180
2181 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
2182
2183 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
2184 <ul>
2185 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
2186 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
2187 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
2188 </ul>
2189
2190 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
2191
2192 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
2193 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
2194 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
2195 as the other isos.</p>
2196
2197 <p>How to report bugs</p>
2198
2199 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
2200 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
2201
2202
2203 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
2204
2205 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
2206 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2207 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2208 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2209 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2210 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2211 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2212 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
2213 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2214 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2215 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2216 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
2217 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2218
2219 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2220 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2221 Squeeze release.</p>
2222
2223 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
2224
2225 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2226 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2227 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2228 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2229 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
2230 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
2231 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
2232 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
2233 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
2234 directory.</p>
2235
2236
2237 <p>cheers,
2238 <br>        Holger</p>
2239 </blockquote>
2240
2241       </div>
2242       <div class="tags">
2243
2244
2245         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2246
2247
2248       </div>
2249     </div>
2250     <div class="padding"></div>
2251
2252     <div class="entry">
2253       <div class="title">
2254         <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>
2255       </div>
2256       <div class="date">
2257         10th September 2013
2258       </div>
2259       <div class="body">
2260         <p>I was introduced to the
2261 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
2262 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2263 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2264 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
2265 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2266 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
2267 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2268 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
2269
2270 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2271 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2272 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
2273 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2274 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
2275
2276 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
2277 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2278 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2279 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2280 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
2281 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
2282 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
2283 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2284 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
2285 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
2286 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2287 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2288 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2289 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2290 missing in Debian).</p>
2291
2292 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2293 scripts
2294 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
2295 and a administrative web interface
2296 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
2297 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2298 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
2299 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2300 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
2301 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2302 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
2303 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2304 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
2305 this is really working yet, see
2306 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
2307 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
2308 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2309 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2310 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2311 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2312 with lots of half baked features.</p>
2313
2314 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2315 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2316 at.</p>
2317
2318 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
2319
2320 <ol>
2321
2322 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
2323 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
2324 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2325 to the Debian installer:<p>
2326 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
2327
2328 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2329 install on.</li>
2330
2331 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2332 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
2333
2334 </ol>
2335
2336 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
2337
2338 <ol>
2339
2340 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
2341 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
2342 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
2343 <pre>
2344 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
2345 </pre></li>
2346 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
2347 <pre>
2348 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2349    apt-key add -
2350 apt-get update
2351 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2352 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2353 </pre></li>
2354 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
2355
2356 </ol>
2357
2358 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2359 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2360 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2361 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
2362 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
2363
2364 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2365 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2366 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2367 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
2368
2369 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2370 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
2371 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
2372 irc.debian.org and the
2373 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
2374 mailing list</a>.</p>
2375
2376 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2377 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
2378 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2379 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
2380 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
2381 default password is 'secret'.</p>
2382
2383       </div>
2384       <div class="tags">
2385
2386
2387         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>.
2388
2389
2390       </div>
2391     </div>
2392     <div class="padding"></div>
2393
2394     <div class="entry">
2395       <div class="title">
2396         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2397       </div>
2398       <div class="date">
2399         22nd August 2013
2400       </div>
2401       <div class="body">
2402         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2403 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
2404 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
2405
2406 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
2407
2408 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2409 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2410
2411 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2412
2413 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2414 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2415 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2416 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2417 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2418 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2419 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2420 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
2421 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2422 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2423 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2424 desktop contains
2425 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2426 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2427 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2428 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2429
2430 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
2431 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
2432 release.</p>
2433
2434 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2435 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2436 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2437 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2438 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
2439 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
2440 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
2441 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
2442 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
2443 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
2444 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
2445
2446 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2447
2448 <ul>
2449
2450 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
2451     work also without a attached tty.</li>
2452 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
2453     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
2454     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
2455     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
2456     required).</li>
2457
2458 </ul>
2459
2460 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2461
2462 <ul>
2463
2464 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
2465 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
2466 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
2467 stick ISO image.</li>
2468 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
2469 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
2470 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
2471     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
2472     cope with this.</li>
2473 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
2474 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
2475     empty password hashes.</li>
2476 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
2477     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
2478     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
2479
2480 </ul>
2481
2482 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2483
2484 <ul>
2485
2486 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2487     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2488 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
2489     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
2490
2491 </ul>
2492
2493 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2494
2495 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2496
2497 <ul>
2498
2499 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
2500
2501 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
2502
2503 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
2504
2505 </ul>
2506
2507 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
2508 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
2509
2510 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2511
2512 <ul>
2513
2514 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
2515 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
2516 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
2517
2518 </ul>
2519
2520 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
2521 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
2522
2523
2524 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2525
2526 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2527
2528       </div>
2529       <div class="tags">
2530
2531
2532         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2533
2534
2535       </div>
2536     </div>
2537     <div class="padding"></div>
2538
2539     <div class="entry">
2540       <div class="title">
2541         <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>
2542       </div>
2543       <div class="date">
2544         18th August 2013
2545       </div>
2546       <div class="body">
2547         <p>Earlier, I reported about
2548 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
2549 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
2550 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
2551 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2552 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2553 currently on the disk.</p>
2554
2555 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2556 <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>
2557 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2558 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2559 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2560 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
2561 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2562 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
2563 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2564 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
2565 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
2566 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2567 the broken disks.</p>
2568
2569       </div>
2570       <div class="tags">
2571
2572
2573         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>.
2574
2575
2576       </div>
2577     </div>
2578     <div class="padding"></div>
2579
2580     <div class="entry">
2581       <div class="title">
2582         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
2583       </div>
2584       <div class="date">
2585          2nd August 2013
2586       </div>
2587       <div class="body">
2588         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
2589 have worked on a Norwegian
2590 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2591 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2592 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
2593 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
2594 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
2595 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
2596 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
2597 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
2598 progress of the translation:</p>
2599
2600 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
2601
2602 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
2603 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
2604 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
2605 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
2606 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
2607 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
2608 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
2609 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
2610 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
2611 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
2612 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
2613
2614 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2615 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2616 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2617 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
2618 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
2619 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
2620 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
2621 project files currently available from
2622 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2623
2624 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2625 the updated
2626 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2627 and
2628 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2629 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2630 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2631 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2632
2633       </div>
2634       <div class="tags">
2635
2636
2637         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2638
2639
2640       </div>
2641     </div>
2642     <div class="padding"></div>
2643
2644     <div class="entry">
2645       <div class="title">
2646         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2647       </div>
2648       <div class="date">
2649         27th July 2013
2650       </div>
2651       <div class="body">
2652         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2653 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2654
2655 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
2656 2013-07-27</strong></p>
2657
2658 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2659 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2660
2661 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2662
2663 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2664 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2665 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2666 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2667 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2668 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2669 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2670 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2671 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2672 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2673 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2674 desktop contains
2675 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2676 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2677 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2678 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2679
2680 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2681 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2682 Squeeze release.</p>
2683
2684 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2685 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2686 release.</p>
2687
2688 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2689
2690 <ul>
2691
2692 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
2693    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
2694 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
2695    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
2696    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
2697    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
2698    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
2699 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
2700 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
2701 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
2702    crash bugs.</li>
2703
2704 </ul>
2705
2706 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2707
2708 <ul>
2709
2710 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
2711    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
2712 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
2713    netinst CD.</li>
2714 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
2715    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
2716 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
2717    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
2718    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
2719 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
2720    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
2721    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
2722 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
2723    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
2724    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
2725 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
2726    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
2727 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
2728
2729 </ul>
2730
2731 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2732
2733 <ul>
2734
2735 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
2736 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2737     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2738 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
2739
2740 </ul>
2741
2742 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2743
2744 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2745
2746 <ul>
2747
2748 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
2749
2750 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
2751
2752 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
2753
2754 </ul>
2755
2756 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
2757 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
2758
2759 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2760
2761 <ul>
2762
2763 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
2764 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
2765 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
2766
2767 </ul>
2768
2769 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
2770 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
2771
2772
2773 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2774
2775 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2776
2777       </div>
2778       <div class="tags">
2779
2780
2781         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2782
2783
2784       </div>
2785     </div>
2786     <div class="padding"></div>
2787
2788     <div class="entry">
2789       <div class="title">
2790         <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>
2791       </div>
2792       <div class="date">
2793         17th July 2013
2794       </div>
2795       <div class="body">
2796         <p>Today I switched to
2797 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
2798 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
2799 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2800 <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
2801 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
2802 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2803 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2804 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2805 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
2806 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2807 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2808 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2809 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2810 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2811 station from now on.</p>
2812
2813 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2814 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2815 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
2816 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2817 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2818 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
2819 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
2820 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
2821 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2822 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2823 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2824 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
2825
2826 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2827 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
2828 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2829 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2830 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
2831 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
2832 parameters are tuned:</p>
2833
2834 <ul>
2835
2836 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2837     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
2838
2839 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2840     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2841     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
2842
2843 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2844     systems.</li>
2845
2846 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
2847     /etc/fstab.</li>
2848
2849 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
2850
2851 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2852     cron.daily).</li>
2853
2854 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2855     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
2856
2857 </ul>
2858
2859 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2860 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2861 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2862 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2863 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2864 from getting the data on the disk (see
2865 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
2866 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2867 right thing to do.</p>
2868
2869 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2870 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2871 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
2872
2873 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
2874 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2875 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2876 instead of during my work.</p>
2877
2878 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2879 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
2880
2881 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
2882 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2883 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
2884
2885 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2886 there.</p>
2887
2888 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
2889 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
2890 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
2891 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
2892 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
2893 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
2894 back.</p>
2895
2896       </div>
2897       <div class="tags">
2898
2899
2900         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>.
2901
2902
2903       </div>
2904     </div>
2905     <div class="padding"></div>
2906
2907     <div class="entry">
2908       <div class="title">
2909         <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>
2910       </div>
2911       <div class="date">
2912         10th July 2013
2913       </div>
2914       <div class="body">
2915         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
2916 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
2917 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
2918 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2919 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
2920 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
2921 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
2922 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
2923
2924 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2925 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
2926 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
2927 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2928 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2929 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
2930 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
2931 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
2932 lock up when I download a new
2933 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
2934 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2935 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
2936
2937 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2938 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
2939 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2940 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
2941 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2942 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2943
2944 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2945 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
2946 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2947 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
2948 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2949 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2950
2951 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
2952 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
2953 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
2954 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
2955 exist).</p>
2956
2957       </div>
2958       <div class="tags">
2959
2960
2961         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>.
2962
2963
2964       </div>
2965     </div>
2966     <div class="padding"></div>
2967
2968     <div class="entry">
2969       <div class="title">
2970         <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>
2971       </div>
2972       <div class="date">
2973          9th July 2013
2974       </div>
2975       <div class="body">
2976         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
2977 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2978 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
2979 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
2980 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2981 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2982 Bitraf</a>.</p>
2983
2984 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
2985 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
2986 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
2987 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2988 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
2989
2990       </div>
2991       <div class="tags">
2992
2993
2994         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>.
2995
2996
2997       </div>
2998     </div>
2999     <div class="padding"></div>
3000
3001     <div class="entry">
3002       <div class="title">
3003         <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>
3004       </div>
3005       <div class="date">
3006          5th July 2013
3007       </div>
3008       <div class="body">
3009         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3010 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3011 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
3012 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3013 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
3014 ended up picking a
3015 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
3016 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3017 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
3018 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
3019 on that below.</p>
3020
3021 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3022 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3023 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3024 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3025 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3026 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3027 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3028 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
3029 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
3030
3031 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3032 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3033 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3034 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
3035 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3036 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3037 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
3038
3039 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
3040 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
3041
3042 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
3043 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3044 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3045 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3046 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3047 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
3048 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3049 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3050 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
3051 kernel developers as
3052 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3053 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3054 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3055 Lenovo forums, both for
3056 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3057 2012-11-10</a> and for
3058 <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
3059 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3060 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3061 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3062 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3063 There is even a
3064 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3065 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3066 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3067
3068 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3069 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3070 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3071 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3072 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3073 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3074 fixed. :)</p>
3075
3076       </div>
3077       <div class="tags">
3078
3079
3080         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>.
3081
3082
3083       </div>
3084     </div>
3085     <div class="padding"></div>
3086
3087     <div class="entry">
3088       <div class="title">
3089         <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>
3090       </div>
3091       <div class="date">
3092          4th July 2013
3093       </div>
3094       <div class="body">
3095         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3096 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3097 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3098 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3099 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3100 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3101 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3102 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3103 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3104
3105 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3106 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3107 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3108 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3109 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3110 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3111 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3112
3113 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3114 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3115 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3116 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3117 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3118 new laptop now. :)</p>
3119
3120 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3121
3122       </div>
3123       <div class="tags">
3124
3125
3126         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>.
3127
3128
3129       </div>
3130     </div>
3131     <div class="padding"></div>
3132
3133     <div class="entry">
3134       <div class="title">
3135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3136       </div>
3137       <div class="date">
3138          3rd July 2013
3139       </div>
3140       <div class="body">
3141         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3142 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3143
3144 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
3145 2013-07-03</strong></p>
3146
3147 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3148 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3149
3150 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3151
3152 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3153 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3154 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3155 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3156 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3157 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3158 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3159 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3160 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3161 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3162 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3163 desktop contains
3164 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3165 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3166 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3167 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3168
3169 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3170 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3171 Squeeze release.</p>
3172
3173 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3174 <ul>
3175   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
3176   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
3177     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
3178     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
3179   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
3180     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
3181     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
3182   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
3183     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
3184     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
3185     too.</li>
3186   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
3187     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
3188 </ul>
3189 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3190 <ul>
3191   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
3192   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
3193   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
3194     up for some language options.</li>
3195   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
3196   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
3197   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
3198     d-i is doing it.</li>
3199   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
3200     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
3201   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
3202     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
3203     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
3204   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
3205     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
3206   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
3207   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
3208     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
3209   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
3210     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
3211 </ul>
3212 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3213 <ul>
3214   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3215     available yet (698840).</li>
3216   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
3217 </ul>
3218 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3219
3220 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3221 <ul>
3222   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
3223   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
3224   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
3225 </ul>
3226
3227 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
3228 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
3229
3230 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3231 <ul>
3232   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
3233   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
3234   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
3235 </ul>
3236
3237 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
3238 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
3239
3240 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3241
3242 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3243
3244       </div>
3245       <div class="tags">
3246
3247
3248         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3249
3250
3251       </div>
3252     </div>
3253     <div class="padding"></div>
3254
3255     <div class="entry">
3256       <div class="title">
3257         <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>
3258       </div>
3259       <div class="date">
3260         25th June 2013
3261       </div>
3262       <div class="body">
3263         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3264 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3265 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3266 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3267 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3268 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3269 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3270 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3271 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3272 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3273 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3274
3275 <p><pre>
3276 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3277 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3278 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3279 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3280 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3281 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3282 firmware-ipw2x00
3283 firmware-ipw2x00
3284 Preconfiguring packages ...
3285 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3286 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3287 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3288 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3289 #
3290 </pre></p>
3291
3292 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3293 printed instead:</p>
3294
3295 <p><pre>
3296 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3297 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3298 #
3299 </pre></p>
3300
3301 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3302 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3303
3304 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3305 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3306 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3307 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3308 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3309 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3310 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3311 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3312 machine.</p>
3313
3314 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3315 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3316 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3317 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3318 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3319 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3320
3321       </div>
3322       <div class="tags">
3323
3324
3325         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>.
3326
3327
3328       </div>
3329     </div>
3330     <div class="padding"></div>
3331
3332     <div class="entry">
3333       <div class="title">
3334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
3335       </div>
3336       <div class="date">
3337         22nd June 2013
3338       </div>
3339       <div class="body">
3340         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3341 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
3342 which check that services are running, working, and return the
3343 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
3344 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
3345 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
3346 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
3347 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
3348 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
3349
3350 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
3351 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
3352 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
3353 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
3354 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
3355 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
3356 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
3357 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
3358 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
3359 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
3360 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
3361 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
3362 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
3363 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
3364
3365 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
3366 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
3367 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
3368 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
3369 the problem.</p>
3370
3371 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
3372 please join us on
3373 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3374 irc.debian.org</a> and the
3375 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
3376 list.</p>
3377
3378       </div>
3379       <div class="tags">
3380
3381
3382         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3383
3384
3385       </div>
3386     </div>
3387     <div class="padding"></div>
3388
3389     <div class="entry">
3390       <div class="title">
3391         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
3392       </div>
3393       <div class="date">
3394         17th June 2013
3395       </div>
3396       <div class="body">
3397         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
3398 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
3399 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
3400 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
3401 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
3402 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
3403 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
3404 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
3405
3406 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3407
3408 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
3409 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
3410 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
3411 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
3412 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
3413 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
3414 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
3415 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
3416 field.</p>
3417
3418 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
3419 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
3420 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
3421 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
3422 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
3423 the only one we have in our country.</p>
3424
3425 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3426 project?</strong></p>
3427
3428 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
3429 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
3430 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
3431 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
3432 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
3433 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
3434 ways to contribute.</p>
3435
3436 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
3437 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
3438 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
3439 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
3440 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
3441 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
3442 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
3443 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
3444 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
3445 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
3446
3447 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3448 Edu?</strong></p>
3449
3450 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
3451 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
3452 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
3453 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
3454 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
3455 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
3456 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
3457 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
3458
3459 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
3460 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
3461 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
3462 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
3463 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
3464 project.</p>
3465
3466 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3467 Edu?</strong></p>
3468
3469 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
3470 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
3471 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
3472 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
3473 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
3474 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
3475 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
3476 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
3477 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
3478
3479 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
3480 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
3481 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
3482 on.</p>
3483
3484 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3485
3486 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
3487 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
3488 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
3489 Enlightenment project a lot!),
3490 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
3491 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
3492 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
3493 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
3494 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
3495
3496 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3497 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3498
3499 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
3500 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
3501 that:</p>
3502
3503 <ul>
3504
3505 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
3506
3507 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
3508     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
3509     of teenagers more?</li>
3510
3511 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
3512     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
3513     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
3514     them!)</li>
3515
3516 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
3517     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
3518     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
3519
3520 </ul>
3521
3522 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
3523 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
3524 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
3525 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
3526 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
3527
3528       </div>
3529       <div class="tags">
3530
3531
3532         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3533
3534
3535       </div>
3536     </div>
3537     <div class="padding"></div>
3538
3539     <div class="entry">
3540       <div class="title">
3541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
3542       </div>
3543       <div class="date">
3544         12th June 2013
3545       </div>
3546       <div class="body">
3547         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
3548 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3549 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
3550 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
3551 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
3552 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
3553
3554 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3555
3556 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
3557 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
3558 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
3559
3560 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
3561 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
3562 each other.</p>
3563
3564 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3565 project?</strong></p>
3566
3567 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
3568 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
3569 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
3570 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
3571 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
3572 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
3573 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
3574 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
3575 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
3576 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
3577 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
3578 we'll get there one day.</p>
3579
3580 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3581 Edu?</strong></p>
3582
3583 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
3584 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
3585 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
3586 very high quality work.</p>
3587
3588 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
3589 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
3590 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
3591 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
3592 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
3593
3594 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3595 Edu?</strong></p>
3596
3597 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
3598 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
3599 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
3600
3601 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
3602 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
3603 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
3604 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
3605 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
3606 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
3607 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
3608 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
3609 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
3610 currently.</p>
3611
3612 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
3613 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
3614 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
3615 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
3616 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
3617 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
3618 autonomous.</p>
3619
3620 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3621
3622 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
3623 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
3624 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
3625 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
3626 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
3627
3628 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
3629 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
3630 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
3631 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
3632 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
3633 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
3634 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
3635 X.</p>
3636
3637 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
3638 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
3639 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
3640 it :p)
3641
3642 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3643 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3644
3645 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
3646 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
3647 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
3648 that.</p>
3649
3650 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
3651 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
3652 advantage of that.</p>
3653
3654 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
3655 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
3656 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
3657 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
3658 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
3659 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
3660 best solution for them.</p>
3661
3662 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
3663 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
3664 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
3665
3666       </div>
3667       <div class="tags">
3668
3669
3670         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3671
3672
3673       </div>
3674     </div>
3675     <div class="padding"></div>
3676
3677     <div class="entry">
3678       <div class="title">
3679         <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>
3680       </div>
3681       <div class="date">
3682         11th June 2013
3683       </div>
3684       <div class="body">
3685         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3686 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3687 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
3688 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
3689 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3690 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
3691 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3692 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
3693 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3694 i915 driver used by the
3695 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3696 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
3697
3698 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
3699 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3700 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3701 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3702 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
3703
3704 <pre>
3705 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3706 update-initramfs -u -k all
3707 </pre>
3708
3709 <p>Since March 2012 there is
3710 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
3711 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
3712 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3713 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
3714 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
3715 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
3716 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
3717 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
3718 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3719 number.</p>
3720
3721 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
3722 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
3723
3724 <p><pre>
3725 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
3726     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
3727     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
3728  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
3729  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
3730     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
3731  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
3732     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
3733  Latency: 0
3734  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
3735  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
3736  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
3737  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
3738  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
3739  Capabilities: <access denied>
3740  Kernel driver in use: i915
3741 </pre></p>
3742
3743 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
3744
3745 <p><pre>
3746 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
3747        ...
3748         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
3749         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
3750        ...
3751 }
3752 </pre></p>
3753
3754 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
3755 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
3756 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
3757 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
3758 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
3759 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
3760 yet shown up in
3761 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
3762 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
3763 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
3764 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
3765 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
3766 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
3767
3768 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
3769 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
3770 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
3771 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
3772 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
3773 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
3774 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
3775 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
3776 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
3777 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
3778 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
3779 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
3780
3781 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
3782 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
3783 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
3784 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
3785 backlight.</p>
3786
3787       </div>
3788       <div class="tags">
3789
3790
3791         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>.
3792
3793
3794       </div>
3795     </div>
3796     <div class="padding"></div>
3797
3798     <div class="entry">
3799       <div class="title">
3800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3801       </div>
3802       <div class="date">
3803         10th June 2013
3804       </div>
3805       <div class="body">
3806         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3807 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3808
3809 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
3810 2013-06-10</strong></p>
3811
3812 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
3813 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3814
3815 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3816
3817 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3818 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3819 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3820 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3821 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3822 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3823 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3824 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3825 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3826 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3827 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3828 desktop contains
3829 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3830 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3831 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3832 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3833
3834 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3835 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3836 Squeeze release.</p>
3837
3838 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3839
3840 <ul>
3841
3842 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
3843 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
3844 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
3845 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
3846 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
3847
3848 </ul>
3849
3850 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3851
3852 <ul>
3853
3854 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
3855 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
3856 <li>New Romanian translation.
3857 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
3858 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
3859 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
3860 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
3861 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
3862 <li>More testsuite tests.
3863 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
3864 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
3865
3866 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
3867 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
3868
3869 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
3870 them up with GOsa².</li>
3871
3872 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
3873
3874 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
3875 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
3876 entered password). </li>
3877
3878 </ul>
3879
3880 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3881
3882 <ul>
3883
3884 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
3885
3886 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3887 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
3888 missing import feature).</li>
3889
3890 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
3891
3892 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
3893 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
3894 unfixed.</li>
3895
3896 </ul>
3897
3898 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3899
3900 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3901
3902 <ul>
3903
3904 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
3905
3906 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
3907
3908 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
3909
3910 </ul>
3911
3912 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
3913 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
3914
3915 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3916
3917 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3918
3919       </div>
3920       <div class="tags">
3921
3922
3923         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3924
3925
3926       </div>
3927     </div>
3928     <div class="padding"></div>
3929
3930     <div class="entry">
3931       <div class="title">
3932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
3933       </div>
3934       <div class="date">
3935          5th June 2013
3936       </div>
3937       <div class="body">
3938         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
3939 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
3940 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
3941 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
3942 the project:
3943
3944 <ol>
3945
3946 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
3947   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
3948   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
3949   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
3950   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
3951
3952 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
3953   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
3954   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
3955   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
3956   #698840</a>.</li>
3957
3958 </ol>
3959
3960 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
3961 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3962 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
3963
3964       </div>
3965       <div class="tags">
3966
3967
3968         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3969
3970
3971       </div>
3972     </div>
3973     <div class="padding"></div>
3974
3975     <div class="entry">
3976       <div class="title">
3977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
3978       </div>
3979       <div class="date">
3980          4th June 2013
3981       </div>
3982       <div class="body">
3983         <p>It has been a while since my last English
3984 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3985 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
3986 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
3987 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
3988 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
3989
3990 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3991
3992 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
3993 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
3994 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
3995 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
3996
3997 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
3998 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
3999 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
4000
4001 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4002 project?</strong></p>
4003
4004 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
4005 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
4006 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
4007 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
4008 manual.
4009
4010 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
4011 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
4012 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
4013 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
4014
4015 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
4016 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
4017 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
4018 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
4019 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
4020 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
4021 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
4022 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
4023 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
4024 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
4025
4026 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
4027 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
4028 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
4029 beautiful project.</p>
4030
4031 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4032 Edu?</strong></p>
4033
4034 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
4035 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
4036 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
4037
4038 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
4039 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
4040 of educational free software.</p>
4041
4042 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4043 Edu?</strong></p>
4044
4045 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
4046 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
4047 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
4048 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
4049 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
4050
4051 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
4052 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
4053 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
4054 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
4055 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
4056 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
4057 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
4058 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
4059
4060 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4061
4062 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
4063 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
4064 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
4065 also using the mathematical software
4066 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
4067 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
4068 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
4069
4070 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
4071 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
4072 statistics?</strong></p>
4073
4074 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
4075 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
4076 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
4077 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
4078
4079 <ul>
4080
4081 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
4082 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
4083 constructions in planar geometry
4084
4085 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
4086 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
4087 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
4088
4089 </ul>
4090
4091 <p>I like also
4092 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
4093 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
4094 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
4095
4096 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4097 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4098
4099 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
4100
4101 <ul>
4102
4103 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
4104
4105 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
4106     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
4107     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
4108
4109 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
4110
4111 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
4112     system.</li>
4113
4114 </ul>
4115
4116       </div>
4117       <div class="tags">
4118
4119
4120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4121
4122
4123       </div>
4124     </div>
4125     <div class="padding"></div>
4126
4127     <div class="entry">
4128       <div class="title">
4129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
4130       </div>
4131       <div class="date">
4132          1st June 2013
4133       </div>
4134       <div class="body">
4135         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4136 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
4137 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
4138 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
4139 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
4140 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
4141 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
4142 program.</p>
4143
4144 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
4145
4146 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
4147 <p>
4148 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
4149 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
4150 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
4151 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
4152 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4153 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
4154 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
4155 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
4156 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
4157 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
4158 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
4159 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
4160 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
4161 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
4162 </p>
4163
4164 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
4165 <p>
4166 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
4167 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
4168 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
4169 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
4170 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
4171 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
4172 </p>
4173
4174 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
4175 <p>
4176 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
4177 </p>
4178
4179 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
4180 <p>
4181 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
4182 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
4183 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
4184 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
4185 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
4186 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
4187 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
4188 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
4189 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
4190 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
4191 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
4192 </p>
4193
4194 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
4195 <p>
4196 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4197 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
4198 </p>
4199
4200 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
4201 <p>
4202 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
4203 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
4204 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
4205 </p>
4206
4207 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
4208 <p>
4209 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4210 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
4211 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
4212 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
4213 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
4214 </p>
4215
4216 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
4217 <p>
4218 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
4219 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
4220 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4221 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
4222 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
4223 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
4224 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
4225 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
4226 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
4227 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
4228 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
4229 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
4230 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
4231 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
4232 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
4233 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
4234 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
4235 </p>
4236
4237 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
4238 <p>
4239 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4240 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
4241 </p>
4242
4243 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
4244 <p>
4245 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
4246 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
4247 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
4248 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4249 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
4250 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
4251 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
4252 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
4253 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
4254 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
4255 </p>
4256
4257 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
4258 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
4259 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
4260 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
4261 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
4262 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
4263 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
4264
4265       </div>
4266       <div class="tags">
4267
4268
4269         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4270
4271
4272       </div>
4273     </div>
4274     <div class="padding"></div>
4275
4276     <div class="entry">
4277       <div class="title">
4278         <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>
4279       </div>
4280       <div class="date">
4281         27th May 2013
4282       </div>
4283       <div class="body">
4284         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4285 <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
4286 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4287 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4288 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4289 and Windows 8.</p>
4290
4291 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4292 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4293 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4294 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4295 enough to tell.</p>
4296
4297 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4298 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4299 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4300 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4301 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4302 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4303 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4304 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4305 to follow.</p>
4306
4307 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4308 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4309 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4310 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4311 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4312 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4313 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4314 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4315
4316 <p>I've updated the
4317 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4318 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4319 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4320 machine.</p>
4321
4322 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4323 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4324
4325       </div>
4326       <div class="tags">
4327
4328
4329         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>.
4330
4331
4332       </div>
4333     </div>
4334     <div class="padding"></div>
4335
4336     <div class="entry">
4337       <div class="title">
4338         <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>
4339       </div>
4340       <div class="date">
4341         25th May 2013
4342       </div>
4343       <div class="body">
4344         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4345 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4346 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4347 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4348 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4349 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4350
4351 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4352 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4353 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4354 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4355 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4356 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4357 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4358 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4359 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4360 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4361
4362 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4363 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4364 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4365 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4366 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4367 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4368
4369 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4370 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4371 on new Laptops?</p>
4372
4373       </div>
4374       <div class="tags">
4375
4376
4377         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>.
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/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>
4387       </div>
4388       <div class="date">
4389         17th May 2013
4390       </div>
4391       <div class="body">
4392         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4393 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4394 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4395 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4396 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4397 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4398 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4399 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4400 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4401 donate some money</a>.
4402
4403 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4404 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4405 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4406 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4407 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4408
4409 <p>The script,
4410 <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/>
4411 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4412 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4413 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4414
4415 <ol>
4416
4417 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4418 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4419 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4420     our configuration.</li>
4421 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4422     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4423     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4424     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4425 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4426     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4427 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4428
4429 </ol>
4430
4431 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4432 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4433 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4434 the needed packages.</p>
4435
4436 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4437 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4438 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4439 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4440 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4441 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4442
4443 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4444 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4445 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4446
4447 <p><pre>
4448 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4449 DESKTOP="lxde"
4450 </pre></p>
4451
4452 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4453 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4454 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4455 boot.</p>
4456
4457       </div>
4458       <div class="tags">
4459
4460
4461         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>.
4462
4463
4464       </div>
4465     </div>
4466     <div class="padding"></div>
4467
4468     <div class="entry">
4469       <div class="title">
4470         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4471       </div>
4472       <div class="date">
4473         14th May 2013
4474       </div>
4475       <div class="body">
4476         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4477 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
4478 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4479
4480 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
4481 2013-05-14</strong></p>
4482
4483 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
4484 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
4485 codename "Wheezy".</p>
4486
4487 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4488
4489 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
4490 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
4491 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
4492 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
4493 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
4494 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
4495 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
4496 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
4497
4498 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4499 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4500 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4501
4502 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4503 <ul>
4504   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
4505     default.</li>
4506   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
4507   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
4508   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
4509     ibus-anthy.</li>
4510 </ul>
4511
4512 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4513 <ul>
4514
4515   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
4516     reliability improvements.</li>
4517   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
4518     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
4519   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
4520     problems.</li>
4521   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
4522     direct:// URL.</li>
4523   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
4524   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
4525   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
4526   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
4527     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
4528   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
4529     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
4530 </ul>
4531
4532 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4533 <ul>
4534
4535   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
4536     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
4537     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
4538   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
4539   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4540     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
4541   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
4542   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
4543   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
4544     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
4545   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
4546     password submission problem
4547     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
4548
4549 </ul>
4550
4551 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4552
4553 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4554 <ul>
4555
4556   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
4557   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
4558   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
4559
4560 </ul>
4561
4562 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
4563
4564 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
4565
4566 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4567
4568 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4569
4570       </div>
4571       <div class="tags">
4572
4573
4574         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4575
4576
4577       </div>
4578     </div>
4579     <div class="padding"></div>
4580
4581     <div class="entry">
4582       <div class="title">
4583         <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>
4584       </div>
4585       <div class="date">
4586         11th May 2013
4587       </div>
4588       <div class="body">
4589         <P>In January,
4590 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4591 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4592 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4593 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4594 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4595 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4596 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4597 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4598 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4599 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4600 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4601 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4602
4603 <p><table>
4604 <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>
4605 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4606 <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>
4607 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4608 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4609 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4610 <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>
4611 <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>
4612 <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>
4613 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4614 </table></p>
4615
4616 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4617 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4618 available in experimental.</p>
4619
4620 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4621 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4622 for LEGO designers.</p>
4623
4624       </div>
4625       <div class="tags">
4626
4627
4628         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>.
4629
4630
4631       </div>
4632     </div>
4633     <div class="padding"></div>
4634
4635     <div class="entry">
4636       <div class="title">
4637         <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>
4638       </div>
4639       <div class="date">
4640          5th May 2013
4641       </div>
4642       <div class="body">
4643         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4644 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4645 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4646 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4647 soon.</p>
4648
4649 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4650 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4651 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4652 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4653 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4654 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4655 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4656 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4657 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4658 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4659 Edu.</a>
4660
4661 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4662 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4663 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4664 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4665 follow.<p>
4666
4667       </div>
4668       <div class="tags">
4669
4670
4671         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>.
4672
4673
4674       </div>
4675     </div>
4676     <div class="padding"></div>
4677
4678     <div class="entry">
4679       <div class="title">
4680         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4681       </div>
4682       <div class="date">
4683         26th April 2013
4684       </div>
4685       <div class="body">
4686         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
4687 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
4688 announcement:</p>
4689
4690 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
4691 2013-04-26</strong></p>
4692
4693 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
4694 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4695
4696 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4697
4698 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4699 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4700 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4701 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
4702 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4703 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4704 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4705 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4706 installed via the network.</p>
4707
4708 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4709 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4710 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4711
4712 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4713
4714 <ul>
4715 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
4716   <ul>
4717      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
4718      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
4719          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
4720          manual.)</li>
4721      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
4722      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
4723      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
4724      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
4725      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
4726      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
4727      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
4728      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
4729      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
4730      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
4731      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
4732      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
4733          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
4734          manual</a> for more details.</li>
4735      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
4736          installation.</li>
4737      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
4738          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
4739   </ul></li>
4740 </ul>
4741
4742 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
4743 <ul>
4744 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
4745     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
4746     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
4747 </ul>
4748
4749 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
4750 <ul>
4751 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
4752     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
4753     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
4754 </ul>
4755
4756 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4757 <ul>
4758 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
4759     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
4760     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
4761 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
4762     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
4763     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
4764 </ul>
4765
4766 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
4767 <ul>
4768 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
4769     yet.</li>
4770 </ul>
4771
4772 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
4773
4774 <ul>
4775 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
4776     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
4777     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
4778 </ul>
4779
4780 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4781
4782 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
4783 <ul>
4784 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
4785 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
4786 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
4787 </ul>
4788
4789 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
4790
4791 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
4792
4793 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4794
4795 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4796
4797       </div>
4798       <div class="tags">
4799
4800
4801         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4802
4803
4804       </div>
4805     </div>
4806     <div class="padding"></div>
4807
4808     <div class="entry">
4809       <div class="title">
4810         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
4811       </div>
4812       <div class="date">
4813         16th April 2013
4814       </div>
4815       <div class="body">
4816         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
4817 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
4818 Details about the gathering can be found
4819 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
4820 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
4821 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
4822 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
4823 weekend.</p>
4824
4825 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
4826 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
4827 Edu release.</p>
4828
4829 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
4830
4831       </div>
4832       <div class="tags">
4833
4834
4835         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4836
4837
4838       </div>
4839     </div>
4840     <div class="padding"></div>
4841
4842     <div class="entry">
4843       <div class="title">
4844         <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>
4845       </div>
4846       <div class="date">
4847          3rd April 2013
4848       </div>
4849       <div class="body">
4850         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4851 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4852 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4853 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4854
4855 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4856 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4857 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4858 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4859 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4860 BTS. :)</p>
4861
4862       </div>
4863       <div class="tags">
4864
4865
4866         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>.
4867
4868
4869       </div>
4870     </div>
4871     <div class="padding"></div>
4872
4873     <div class="entry">
4874       <div class="title">
4875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
4876       </div>
4877       <div class="date">
4878         26th March 2013
4879       </div>
4880       <div class="body">
4881         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
4882 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
4883 font you use when printing.</p>
4884
4885 <p>Three years ago,
4886 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
4887 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
4888 changed their default front from
4889 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
4890 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
4891 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
4892 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
4893 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
4894 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
4895 prints.</p>
4896
4897 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
4898 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
4899 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
4900 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
4901 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
4902 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
4903 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
4904 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
4905 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
4906 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
4907 depend on the documents printed.</p>
4908
4909 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
4910 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
4911 and save some money in the process.</p>
4912
4913 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
4914 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
4915 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
4916 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
4917 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
4918 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
4919 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
4920 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
4921 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
4922
4923       </div>
4924       <div class="tags">
4925
4926
4927         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4928
4929
4930       </div>
4931     </div>
4932     <div class="padding"></div>
4933
4934     <div class="entry">
4935       <div class="title">
4936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
4937       </div>
4938       <div class="date">
4939         24th March 2013
4940       </div>
4941       <div class="body">
4942         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
4943 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
4944 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
4945 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
4946 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
4947 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
4948 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
4949 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
4950 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
4951 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
4952 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
4953 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
4954
4955 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
4956 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
4957 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
4958 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
4959 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
4960 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
4961 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
4962 all I had to do was to use the
4963 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
4964 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
4965 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
4966 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
4967 xsltproc/fop (aka
4968 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
4969 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
4970 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
4971 technical detail.</p>
4972
4973 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
4974 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
4975 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
4976 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
4977 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
4978 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
4979
4980 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
4981 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
4982 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
4983 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
4984 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
4985 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
4986 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
4987 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
4988 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
4989
4990 <p><blockquote><pre>
4991 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4992 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4993   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
4994     &lt;hr/&gt;
4995   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4996 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4997 </pre></blockquote></p>
4998
4999 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
5000
5001 <p><blockquote><pre>
5002 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5003 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
5004   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
5005     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
5006       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
5007     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
5008   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5009 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5010 </pre></blockquote></p>
5011
5012 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
5013 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
5014 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
5015 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
5016 enough.</p>
5017
5018 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
5019 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
5020 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
5021 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
5022 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
5023 look like this:</p>
5024
5025 <p><blockquote><pre>
5026 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5027 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
5028   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
5029     &lt;br/&gt;
5030   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5031 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5032 </pre></blockquote></p>
5033
5034 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
5035
5036 <p><blockquote><pre>
5037 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5038 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
5039   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
5040   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
5041     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
5042   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5043 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5044 </pre></blockquote></p>
5045
5046 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
5047 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
5048 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
5049 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
5050 page.</p>
5051
5052 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
5053 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
5054 github</a>
5055 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
5056 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
5057 days.</p>
5058
5059       </div>
5060       <div class="tags">
5061
5062
5063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5064
5065
5066       </div>
5067     </div>
5068     <div class="padding"></div>
5069
5070     <div class="entry">
5071       <div class="title">
5072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
5073       </div>
5074       <div class="date">
5075         17th March 2013
5076       </div>
5077       <div class="body">
5078         <p>Via
5079 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
5080 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
5081 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
5082 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
5083 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
5084 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
5085 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
5086
5087 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
5088 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
5089
5090 <blockquote>
5091 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
5092 </blockquote>
5093
5094 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
5095
5096 <blockquote>
5097 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
5098 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
5099 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
5100 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
5101 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
5102 </blockquote>
5103
5104 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
5105 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
5106 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
5107 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
5108
5109 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
5110 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
5111
5112 <blockquote>
5113 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
5114 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
5115 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
5116 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
5117 </blockquote>
5118
5119 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
5120 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
5121 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
5122 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
5123 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
5124
5125 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
5126 embedding:</p>
5127
5128 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
5129
5130       </div>
5131       <div class="tags">
5132
5133
5134         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5135
5136
5137       </div>
5138     </div>
5139     <div class="padding"></div>
5140
5141     <div class="entry">
5142       <div class="title">
5143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
5144       </div>
5145       <div class="date">
5146          8th March 2013
5147       </div>
5148       <div class="body">
5149         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
5150 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5151 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
5152 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
5153 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
5154 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
5155 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
5156
5157 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
5158
5159 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
5160 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
5161
5162 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
5163 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
5164 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
5165 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
5166 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
5167 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
5168
5169 <p>Images are available for download at
5170 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
5171
5172 <p>md5sums:
5173 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5174 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5175 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5176
5177 <p>sha1sums:
5178 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5179 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5180 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5181
5182 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
5183
5184 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
5185 2013-03-03:</p>
5186
5187 <ul>
5188   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
5189   <ul>
5190         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
5191         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
5192   </ul></li>
5193   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
5194   <ul>
5195         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
5196         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
5197   </ul></li>
5198   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
5199      <ul>
5200         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
5201         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
5202         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
5203                 Closes: #664596</li>
5204         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
5205                 Closes: #664976</li>
5206         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
5207            <ul>
5208                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
5209                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
5210            </ul></li>
5211         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
5212            <ul>
5213                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
5214                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
5215                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
5216                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
5217                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
5218            </ul></li>
5219         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
5220     </ul>
5221   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
5222     <ul>
5223         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
5224     </ul></li>
5225 </ul>
5226
5227 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
5228 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
5229 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
5230 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
5231
5232 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
5233 mailinglist
5234 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
5235 </p></blockquote>
5236
5237 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
5238
5239       </div>
5240       <div class="tags">
5241
5242
5243         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5244
5245
5246       </div>
5247     </div>
5248     <div class="padding"></div>
5249
5250     <div class="entry">
5251       <div class="title">
5252         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
5253       </div>
5254       <div class="date">
5255          3rd March 2013
5256       </div>
5257       <div class="body">
5258         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
5259 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
5260 support using
5261 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
5262 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
5263 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
5264 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
5265 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
5266 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
5267 using the GNU LGPL, and
5268 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
5269
5270 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
5271 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
5272 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
5273 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
5274 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
5275 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
5276
5277 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
5278 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
5279 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
5280 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
5281 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
5282 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
5283 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
5284 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
5285 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
5286 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
5287 signal distribution is handled using
5288 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
5289 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
5290 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
5291 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
5292 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
5293 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
5294 them up a bit more first.</p>
5295
5296 <p>The development is coordinated on the
5297 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
5298 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
5299 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
5300 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
5301 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
5302 development.</p>
5303
5304       </div>
5305       <div class="tags">
5306
5307
5308         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5309
5310
5311       </div>
5312     </div>
5313     <div class="padding"></div>
5314
5315     <div class="entry">
5316       <div class="title">
5317         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
5318       </div>
5319       <div class="date">
5320         27th February 2013
5321       </div>
5322       <div class="body">
5323         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
5324 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
5325 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
5326 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
5327 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
5328 (where I am the chair of the board) and
5329 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
5330 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
5331 GNU», with this description:
5332
5333 <p><blockquote>
5334 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
5335 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
5336 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
5337 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
5338 </blockquote></p>
5339
5340 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
5341 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
5342 am really curious how many will show up.  See
5343 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
5344 page</a> for the location details.</p>
5345
5346       </div>
5347       <div class="tags">
5348
5349
5350         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5351
5352
5353       </div>
5354     </div>
5355     <div class="padding"></div>
5356
5357     <div class="entry">
5358       <div class="title">
5359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
5360       </div>
5361       <div class="date">
5362         15th February 2013
5363       </div>
5364       <div class="body">
5365         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
5366 now a great source of free maps available from
5367 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
5368 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
5369 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
5370 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
5371 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
5372 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
5373 page for descriptions).</p>
5374
5375 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
5376 map you can just edit the
5377 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
5378 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
5379
5380       </div>
5381       <div class="tags">
5382
5383
5384         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
5385
5386
5387       </div>
5388     </div>
5389     <div class="padding"></div>
5390
5391     <div class="entry">
5392       <div class="title">
5393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
5394       </div>
5395       <div class="date">
5396         12th February 2013
5397       </div>
5398       <div class="body">
5399         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
5400 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
5401 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
5402 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
5403 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
5404 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
5405 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
5406 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
5407 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
5408 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
5409 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
5410 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
5411 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
5412 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
5413 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
5414 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
5415
5416 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
5417 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
5418 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
5419 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
5420 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
5421 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
5422 fields:</p>
5423
5424 <p><pre>
5425 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
5426 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
5427 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
5428 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
5429 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
5430 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
5431 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
5432 </pre></p>
5433
5434 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
5435 answer regarding
5436 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
5437 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
5438 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
5439 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
5440
5441 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
5442
5443 <p><pre>
5444 BEGIN:VCARD
5445 VERSION:2.1
5446 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
5447 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
5448 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
5449 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
5450 REV:20130212T095000Z
5451 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
5452 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
5453 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
5454 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
5455 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
5456 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
5457 END:VCARD
5458 </pre></p>
5459
5460 <p>The resulting QR code created using
5461 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
5462 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
5463 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
5464 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
5465 system.</p>
5466
5467 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
5468
5469 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
5470 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
5471 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
5472 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
5473
5474 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
5475 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
5476
5477       </div>
5478       <div class="tags">
5479
5480
5481         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5482
5483
5484       </div>
5485     </div>
5486     <div class="padding"></div>
5487
5488     <div class="entry">
5489       <div class="title">
5490         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
5491       </div>
5492       <div class="date">
5493         10th February 2013
5494       </div>
5495       <div class="body">
5496         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
5497
5498 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
5499 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
5500 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
5501 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
5502 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
5503 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
5504 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
5505 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
5506 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
5507 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
5508 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
5509
5510 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
5511 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
5512 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
5513 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
5514 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
5515 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
5516 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
5517 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
5518 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
5519 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
5520 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
5521 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
5522 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
5523 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
5524 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
5525 ones own
5526 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
5527 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
5528 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
5529 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
5530 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
5531 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
5532 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
5533 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
5534 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
5535 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
5536 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
5537
5538 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
5539 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
5540 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
5541 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
5542 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
5543 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
5544
5545 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
5546 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
5547 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
5548
5549       </div>
5550       <div class="tags">
5551
5552
5553         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5554
5555
5556       </div>
5557     </div>
5558     <div class="padding"></div>
5559
5560     <div class="entry">
5561       <div class="title">
5562         <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>
5563       </div>
5564       <div class="date">
5565          2nd February 2013
5566       </div>
5567       <div class="body">
5568         <p>My
5569 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
5570 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
5571 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
5572 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
5573 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
5574 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
5575 version too.</p>
5576
5577 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
5578 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
5579 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
5580 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
5581 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
5582 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
5583 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
5584 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
5585
5586 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
5587 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
5588 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
5589 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
5590 it. :)</p>
5591
5592 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5593 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5594 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5595
5596       </div>
5597       <div class="tags">
5598
5599
5600         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>.
5601
5602
5603       </div>
5604     </div>
5605     <div class="padding"></div>
5606
5607     <div class="entry">
5608       <div class="title">
5609         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
5610       </div>
5611       <div class="date">
5612         22nd January 2013
5613       </div>
5614       <div class="body">
5615         <p>Yesterday, I
5616 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
5617 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
5618 pluggable hardware devices, which I
5619 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
5620 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
5621 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
5622 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
5623 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
5624 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
5625 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
5626 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
5627 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
5628 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
5629
5630 <pre>
5631 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
5632 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
5633 </pre>
5634
5635 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
5636 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
5637 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
5638 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
5639
5640 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
5641 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
5642 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
5643 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
5644 word.</p>
5645
5646 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
5647 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
5648 process.</p>
5649
5650 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
5651 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
5652
5653       </div>
5654       <div class="tags">
5655
5656
5657         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>.
5658
5659
5660       </div>
5661     </div>
5662     <div class="padding"></div>
5663
5664     <div class="entry">
5665       <div class="title">
5666         <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>
5667       </div>
5668       <div class="date">
5669         21st January 2013
5670       </div>
5671       <div class="body">
5672         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
5673 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
5674 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
5675 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
5676 it, fetch the
5677 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
5678 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
5679 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
5680 autostart script.</p>
5681
5682 <p>The design is simple:</p>
5683
5684 <ul>
5685
5686 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
5687 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
5688
5689 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
5690 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
5691 initially did.</li>
5692
5693 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
5694 the APT database, a database
5695 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
5696 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
5697
5698 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
5699 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
5700 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
5701 package or packages.</li>
5702
5703 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
5704 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
5705
5706 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
5707 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
5708
5709 </ul>
5710
5711 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
5712 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
5713 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
5714 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
5715
5716 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
5717 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
5718 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
5719 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
5720 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
5721
5722 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
5723 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
5724 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
5725 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
5726 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
5727 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
5728 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
5729 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
5730
5731 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
5732 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
5733 '<tt>svn checkout
5734 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
5735 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
5736 devscripts package.</p>
5737
5738 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
5739 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
5740 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
5741 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
5742 instructions</a> for details.</p>
5743
5744       </div>
5745       <div class="tags">
5746
5747
5748         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>.
5749
5750
5751       </div>
5752     </div>
5753     <div class="padding"></div>
5754
5755     <div class="entry">
5756       <div class="title">
5757         <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>
5758       </div>
5759       <div class="date">
5760         19th January 2013
5761       </div>
5762       <div class="body">
5763         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
5764 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
5765 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
5766 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
5767 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
5768 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
5769 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
5770 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
5771 not a durable solution.
5772
5773 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
5774 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
5775
5776 <ul>
5777
5778 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
5779   than A4).</li>
5780 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
5781 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
5782 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
5783 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
5784 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
5785 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
5786 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
5787 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
5788 size).</li>
5789 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
5790   X.org packages.</li>
5791 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
5792   the time).
5793
5794 </ul>
5795
5796 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
5797 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
5798 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
5799 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
5800 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
5801 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
5802 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
5803 still be useful.</p>
5804
5805 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
5806 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
5807 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
5808 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
5809 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
5810 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
5811
5812       </div>
5813       <div class="tags">
5814
5815
5816         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>.
5817
5818
5819       </div>
5820     </div>
5821     <div class="padding"></div>
5822
5823     <div class="entry">
5824       <div class="title">
5825         <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>
5826       </div>
5827       <div class="date">
5828         18th January 2013
5829       </div>
5830       <div class="body">
5831         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
5832 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
5833 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
5834 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
5835 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
5836 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
5837 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
5838
5839 <pre>
5840 #!/usr/bin/python
5841 import sys
5842 import apt
5843 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5844     cache = apt.Cache()
5845     cache.open(None)
5846     thepkgs = []
5847     for pkg in cache:
5848         version = pkg.candidate
5849         if version is None:
5850             version = pkg.installed
5851         if version is None:
5852             continue
5853         record = version.record
5854         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
5855             continue
5856         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
5857         for t in mime_types:
5858             t = t.rstrip().strip()
5859             if t == mimetype:
5860                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
5861     return thepkgs
5862 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
5863 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
5864     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
5865 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
5866 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5867     print "  %s" %pkg
5868 </pre>
5869
5870 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
5871
5872 <pre>
5873 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
5874 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
5875   gecko-mediaplayer
5876 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
5877 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
5878   browser-plugin-gnash
5879 %
5880 </pre>
5881
5882 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
5883 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
5884 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
5885 anyone working on adding it?</p>
5886
5887 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
5888 request for icweasel support for this feature is
5889 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
5890 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
5891 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
5892 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
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/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/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
5908       </div>
5909       <div class="date">
5910         16th January 2013
5911       </div>
5912       <div class="body">
5913         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
5914 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
5915 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
5916 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
5917 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
5918 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
5919 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
5920 downloaded by the browser.</p>
5921
5922 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
5923 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
5924 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
5925 can be found on the
5926 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
5927 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
5928 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
5929 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
5930 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
5931
5932 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
5933
5934 <pre>
5935   count MIME type
5936   ----- -----------------------
5937      32 text/plain
5938      30 audio/mpeg
5939      29 image/png
5940      28 image/jpeg
5941      27 application/ogg
5942      26 audio/x-mp3
5943      25 image/tiff
5944      25 image/gif
5945      22 image/bmp
5946      22 audio/x-wav
5947      20 audio/x-flac
5948      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5949      18 video/x-ms-asf
5950      18 audio/x-musepack
5951      18 audio/x-mpeg
5952      18 application/x-ogg
5953      17 video/mpeg
5954      17 audio/x-scpls
5955      17 audio/ogg
5956      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5957 </pre>
5958
5959 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
5960
5961 <pre>
5962   count MIME type
5963   ----- -----------------------
5964      33 text/plain
5965      32 image/png
5966      32 image/jpeg
5967      29 audio/mpeg
5968      27 image/gif
5969      26 image/tiff
5970      26 application/ogg
5971      25 audio/x-mp3
5972      22 image/bmp
5973      21 audio/x-wav
5974      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5975      19 audio/x-mpeg
5976      18 video/mpeg
5977      18 audio/x-scpls
5978      18 audio/x-flac
5979      18 application/x-ogg
5980      17 video/x-ms-asf
5981      17 text/html
5982      17 audio/x-musepack
5983      16 image/x-xbitmap
5984 </pre>
5985
5986 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
5987
5988 <pre>
5989   count MIME type
5990   ----- -----------------------
5991      31 text/plain
5992      31 image/png
5993      31 image/jpeg
5994      29 audio/mpeg
5995      28 application/ogg
5996      27 image/gif
5997      26 image/tiff
5998      26 audio/x-mp3
5999      23 audio/x-wav
6000      22 image/bmp
6001      21 audio/x-flac
6002      20 audio/x-mpegurl
6003      19 audio/x-mpeg
6004      18 video/x-ms-asf
6005      18 video/mpeg
6006      18 audio/x-scpls
6007      18 application/x-ogg
6008      17 audio/x-musepack
6009      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6010      16 video/x-msvideo
6011 </pre>
6012
6013 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
6014 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
6015 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
6016 issues.</p>
6017
6018 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
6019 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
6020
6021       </div>
6022       <div class="tags">
6023
6024
6025         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>.
6026
6027
6028       </div>
6029     </div>
6030     <div class="padding"></div>
6031
6032     <div class="entry">
6033       <div class="title">
6034         <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>
6035       </div>
6036       <div class="date">
6037         15th January 2013
6038       </div>
6039       <div class="body">
6040         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
6041 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
6042 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
6043 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
6044 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
6045 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
6046 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
6047 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
6048 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
6049 packages.</p>
6050
6051 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
6052 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
6053 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
6054 modalias.</p>
6055
6056 <p><blockquote>
6057 Package: package-name
6058 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
6059 </blockquote></p>
6060
6061 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
6062 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
6063
6064 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
6065 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
6066
6067 <p><blockquote>
6068 Package: cheese
6069 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
6070 </blockquote></p>
6071
6072 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
6073 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
6074
6075 <p><blockquote>
6076 Package: pcmciautils
6077 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
6078 </blockquote></p>
6079
6080 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
6081 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
6082
6083 <p><blockquote>
6084 Package: colorhug-client
6085 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
6086 </blockquote></p>
6087
6088 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
6089 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
6090 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
6091
6092 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
6093 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
6094 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
6095 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
6096 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
6097 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
6098 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
6099 Raring.</p>
6100
6101 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
6102 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
6103 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
6104 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
6105 try the
6106 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
6107 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
6108 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
6109 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
6110
6111 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
6112 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
6113
6114 <p><blockquote>
6115 % ./hw-support-lookup
6116 <br>yubikey-personalization
6117 <br>%
6118 </blockquote></p>
6119
6120 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
6121 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
6122
6123 <p><blockquote>
6124 % ./hw-support-lookup
6125 <br>pcmciautils
6126 <br>%
6127 </blockquote></p>
6128
6129 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
6130 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
6131 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
6132
6133 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
6134 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
6135 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
6136 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
6137 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
6138 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
6139 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
6140 see if it work.</p>
6141
6142 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6143 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6144 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6145 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6146
6147       </div>
6148       <div class="tags">
6149
6150
6151         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>.
6152
6153
6154       </div>
6155     </div>
6156     <div class="padding"></div>
6157
6158     <div class="entry">
6159       <div class="title">
6160         <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>
6161       </div>
6162       <div class="date">
6163         14th January 2013
6164       </div>
6165       <div class="body">
6166         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
6167 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
6168 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
6169 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
6170 in
6171 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6172 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
6173
6174 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
6175
6176 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
6177 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
6178 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
6179 &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;,
6180 &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
6181 &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;.
6182
6183 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
6184 this shell script:</p>
6185
6186 <pre>
6187 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
6188 </pre>
6189
6190 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
6191 using modinfo:</p>
6192
6193 <pre>
6194 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
6195 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
6196 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
6197 %
6198 </pre>
6199
6200 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
6201
6202 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
6203 Bridge memory controller:</p>
6204
6205 <p><blockquote>
6206 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
6207 </blockquote></p>
6208
6209 <p>This represent these values:</p>
6210
6211 <pre>
6212  v   00008086  (vendor)
6213  d   00002770  (device)
6214  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
6215  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
6216  bc  06        (bus class)
6217  sc  00        (bus subclass)
6218  i   00        (interface)
6219 </pre>
6220
6221 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
6222 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
6223 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
6224 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
6225
6226 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
6227 means.</p>
6228
6229 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
6230
6231 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
6232 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
6233
6234 <p><blockquote>
6235 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
6236 </blockquote></p>
6237
6238 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
6239
6240 <pre>
6241  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
6242  p    0001  (device product)
6243  d    0206  (bcddevice)
6244  dc     09  (device class)
6245  dsc    00  (device subclass)
6246  dp     00  (device protocol)
6247  ic     09  (interface class)
6248  isc    00  (interface subclass)
6249  ip     00  (interface protocol)
6250 </pre>
6251
6252 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
6253 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
6254 these alias entries show up:</p>
6255
6256 <p><blockquote>
6257 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
6258 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
6259 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
6260 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
6261 </blockquote></p>
6262
6263 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
6264 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
6265 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
6266
6267 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
6268
6269 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
6270 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
6271
6272 <p><blockquote>
6273 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6274 </blockquote></p>
6275
6276 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
6277
6278 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
6279
6280 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
6281 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
6282 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
6283
6284 <p><blockquote>
6285 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
6286 </blockquote></p>
6287
6288 <p>The values present are</p>
6289
6290 <pre>
6291  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
6292  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
6293  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
6294  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
6295  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
6296  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
6297  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
6298  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
6299  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
6300  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
6301  ct   10             (chassis type)
6302  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
6303 </pre>
6304
6305 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
6306 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
6307
6308 <pre>
6309   3 Desktop
6310   4 Low Profile Desktop
6311   5 Pizza Box
6312   6 Mini Tower
6313   7 Tower
6314   8 Portable
6315   9 Laptop
6316  10 Notebook
6317  11 Hand Held
6318  12 Docking Station
6319  13 All In One
6320  14 Sub Notebook
6321  15 Space-saving
6322  16 Lunch Box
6323  17 Main Server Chassis
6324  18 Expansion Chassis
6325  19 Sub Chassis
6326  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
6327  21 Peripheral Chassis
6328  22 RAID Chassis
6329  23 Rack Mount Chassis
6330  24 Sealed-case PC
6331  25 Multi-system
6332  26 CompactPCI
6333  27 AdvancedTCA
6334  28 Blade
6335  29 Blade Enclosing
6336 </pre>
6337
6338 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
6339 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
6340 claim it is a desktop.</p>
6341
6342 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
6343
6344 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
6345 test machine:</p>
6346
6347 <p><blockquote>
6348 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
6349 </blockquote></p>
6350
6351 <p>The values present are</p>
6352
6353 <pre>
6354   ty  01  (type)
6355   pr  00  (prototype)
6356   id  00  (id)
6357   ex  00  (extra)
6358 </pre>
6359
6360 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
6361 the valid values are.</p>
6362
6363 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
6364
6365 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
6366 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
6367 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
6368 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
6369 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
6370 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
6371 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
6372
6373 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
6374
6375 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
6376 one can use the following shell script:</p>
6377
6378 <pre>
6379   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
6380     echo "$id" ; \
6381     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
6382   done
6383 </pre>
6384
6385 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
6386 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
6387
6388 <pre>
6389   acpi:ACPI0003:
6390     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
6391   acpi:device:
6392   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
6393   acpi:IBM0068:
6394     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
6395     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
6396     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
6397     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
6398   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6399     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
6400     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
6401     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
6402   [...]
6403 </pre>
6404
6405 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6406 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6407 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6408 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6409
6410 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
6411 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
6412 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
6413
6414       </div>
6415       <div class="tags">
6416
6417
6418         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>.
6419
6420
6421       </div>
6422     </div>
6423     <div class="padding"></div>
6424
6425     <div class="entry">
6426       <div class="title">
6427         <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>
6428       </div>
6429       <div class="date">
6430         10th January 2013
6431       </div>
6432       <div class="body">
6433         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
6434 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
6435 Launcher and updated the Debian package
6436 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
6437 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
6438 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
6439 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
6440 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
6441 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
6442 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
6443 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
6444 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
6445 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
6446 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
6447 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
6448 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
6449 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
6450 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
6451
6452       </div>
6453       <div class="tags">
6454
6455
6456         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>.
6457
6458
6459       </div>
6460     </div>
6461     <div class="padding"></div>
6462
6463     <div class="entry">
6464       <div class="title">
6465         <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>
6466       </div>
6467       <div class="date">
6468          9th January 2013
6469       </div>
6470       <div class="body">
6471         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
6472 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
6473 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
6474 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
6475 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
6476 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
6477 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
6478 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
6479 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
6480 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
6481 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
6482
6483 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
6484 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
6485 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
6486 simple:
6487
6488 <ul>
6489
6490 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
6491   starting when a user log in.</li>
6492
6493 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
6494   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
6495
6496 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
6497   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
6498   packages.</li>
6499
6500 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
6501   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
6502
6503 </ul>
6504
6505 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
6506 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
6507 discover database to find packages and
6508 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
6509 packages.</p>
6510
6511 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
6512 draft package is now checked into
6513 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6514 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
6515 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
6516 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
6517 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
6518 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
6519 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
6520 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
6521 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
6522 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
6523 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
6524 because of the freeze).</p>
6525
6526 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
6527 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
6528 inserted):</p>
6529
6530 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
6531
6532 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
6533 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
6534 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
6535
6536 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
6537 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
6538 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
6539 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
6540 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
6541 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
6542 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
6543
6544 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
6545 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
6546 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
6547 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
6548 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
6549 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
6550 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
6551 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
6552 not be installed?</p>
6553
6554 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
6555 please send me an email. :)</p>
6556
6557       </div>
6558       <div class="tags">
6559
6560
6561         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>.
6562
6563
6564       </div>
6565     </div>
6566     <div class="padding"></div>
6567
6568     <div class="entry">
6569       <div class="title">
6570         <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>
6571       </div>
6572       <div class="date">
6573          2nd January 2013
6574       </div>
6575       <div class="body">
6576         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
6577 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
6578 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
6579 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
6580 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
6581 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
6582 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
6583 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
6584 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
6585 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
6586
6587 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
6588 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
6589 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
6590
6591       </div>
6592       <div class="tags">
6593
6594
6595         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>.
6596
6597
6598       </div>
6599     </div>
6600     <div class="padding"></div>
6601
6602     <div class="entry">
6603       <div class="title">
6604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6605       </div>
6606       <div class="date">
6607         28th December 2012
6608       </div>
6609       <div class="body">
6610         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
6611 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6612 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
6613 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
6614 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
6615 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
6616 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
6617 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
6618 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
6619 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
6620 followed by many others. :)</p>
6621
6622 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
6623 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
6624 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
6625 you want to donate to the project.</p>
6626
6627       </div>
6628       <div class="tags">
6629
6630
6631         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6632
6633
6634       </div>
6635     </div>
6636     <div class="padding"></div>
6637
6638     <div class="entry">
6639       <div class="title">
6640         <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>
6641       </div>
6642       <div class="date">
6643         25th December 2012
6644       </div>
6645       <div class="body">
6646         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
6647 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
6648
6649 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
6650 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
6651 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
6652 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
6653 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
6654 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
6655 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
6656 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
6657 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
6658 name.</p>
6659
6660 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
6661 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
6662 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
6663
6664 <blockquote><pre>
6665 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
6666 cd bitcoin
6667 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
6668 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
6669 </pre></blockquote>
6670
6671 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
6672 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
6673 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
6674 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
6675 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
6676 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
6677 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
6678 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
6679 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
6680
6681 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6682 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6683 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6684
6685       </div>
6686       <div class="tags">
6687
6688
6689         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>.
6690
6691
6692       </div>
6693     </div>
6694     <div class="padding"></div>
6695
6696     <div class="entry">
6697       <div class="title">
6698         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
6699       </div>
6700       <div class="date">
6701         21st December 2012
6702       </div>
6703       <div class="body">
6704         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
6705 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
6706 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
6707 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
6708 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
6709 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
6710 is now maintained by a
6711 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
6712 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
6713 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
6714 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
6715 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
6716 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
6717 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
6718 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
6719 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
6720 Corallo in a
6721 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
6722 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
6723 Debian package.</p>
6724
6725 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
6726 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
6727 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
6728 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
6729 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
6730 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
6731 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
6732 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
6733 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
6734 new version to unstable.
6735
6736 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
6737 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
6738 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
6739 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
6740 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
6741 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
6742 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
6743 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
6744 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
6745 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
6746 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
6747 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
6748 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
6749 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
6750 have not tested them.</p>
6751
6752 <p>My
6753 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
6754 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
6755 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
6756 years ago, as can be
6757 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
6758 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
6759 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
6760 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
6761 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
6762 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
6763 the same address as last time,
6764 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6765
6766       </div>
6767       <div class="tags">
6768
6769
6770         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>.
6771
6772
6773       </div>
6774     </div>
6775     <div class="padding"></div>
6776
6777     <div class="entry">
6778       <div class="title">
6779         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
6780       </div>
6781       <div class="date">
6782         18th December 2012
6783       </div>
6784       <div class="body">
6785         <p>A few days ago I came across
6786 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
6787 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
6788 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
6789 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
6790 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
6791 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
6792 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
6793 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
6794 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
6795
6796 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
6797 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
6798 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
6799 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
6800
6801 <blockquote><pre>
6802 2004-05-27 Book Store
6803       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
6804       Liabilities:Visa
6805 </pre></blockquote>
6806
6807 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
6808 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
6809 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
6810 Spang</a>,
6811 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
6812 Keen</a>,
6813 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
6814 Cantino</a> and
6815 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
6816 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
6817 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
6818 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
6819 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
6820
6821 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
6822 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
6823 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
6824 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
6825 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
6826
6827 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
6828 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
6829 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
6830 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
6831 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
6832 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
6833 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
6834 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
6835 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
6836
6837       </div>
6838       <div class="tags">
6839
6840
6841         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6842
6843
6844       </div>
6845     </div>
6846     <div class="padding"></div>
6847
6848     <div class="entry">
6849       <div class="title">
6850         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
6851       </div>
6852       <div class="date">
6853          6th December 2012
6854       </div>
6855       <div class="body">
6856         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
6857 Oslo</a>, we use the
6858 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
6859 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
6860 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
6861 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
6862 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
6863 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
6864 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
6865 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
6866 Python.</p>
6867
6868 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
6869 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
6870 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
6871 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
6872 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
6873 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
6874
6875 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
6876 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
6877 user currently logged in:</p>
6878
6879 <blockquote><pre>
6880 #!/usr/bin/env python
6881 import getpass
6882 import xmlrpclib
6883 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
6884 username = getpass.getuser()
6885 password = getpass.getpass()
6886 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
6887 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
6888 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
6889 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
6890 result = server.logout(sessionid)
6891 print result
6892 </pre></blockquote>
6893
6894 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
6895 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
6896
6897       </div>
6898       <div class="tags">
6899
6900
6901         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
6902
6903
6904       </div>
6905     </div>
6906     <div class="padding"></div>
6907
6908     <div class="entry">
6909       <div class="title">
6910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
6911       </div>
6912       <div class="date">
6913         17th November 2012
6914       </div>
6915       <div class="body">
6916         <p>While working on a
6917 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
6918 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
6919 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
6920 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
6921 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
6922 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
6923
6924 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
6925 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
6926 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
6927 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
6928 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
6929 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
6930 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
6931 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
6932 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
6933 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
6934 arguments.</p>
6935
6936 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
6937 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
6938 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
6939 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
6940 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
6941 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
6942 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
6943 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
6944
6945 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
6946 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
6947 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
6948 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
6949 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
6950 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
6951 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
6952 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
6953 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
6954 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
6955 correct right holder.</p>
6956
6957 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
6958 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
6959 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
6960 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
6961 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
6962 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
6963 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
6964 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
6965 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
6966 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
6967 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
6968 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
6969 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
6970 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
6971
6972 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
6973 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
6974 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
6975
6976 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
6977 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
6978
6979       </div>
6980       <div class="tags">
6981
6982
6983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6984
6985
6986       </div>
6987     </div>
6988     <div class="padding"></div>
6989
6990     <div class="entry">
6991       <div class="title">
6992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
6993       </div>
6994       <div class="date">
6995         14th November 2012
6996       </div>
6997       <div class="body">
6998         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
6999 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7000 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
7001 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
7002 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
7003 the people behind the German
7004 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
7005 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
7006 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
7007
7008 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7009
7010 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
7011 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
7012 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
7013
7014 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
7015 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
7016 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
7017 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
7018 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
7019 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
7020
7021 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
7022 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
7023 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
7024 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
7025 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
7026 relationship management and the communication processes in the
7027 project.</p>
7028
7029 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
7030 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
7031 and a yoga teacher.</p>
7032
7033 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7034 project?</strong></p>
7035
7036 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
7037
7038 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
7039 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
7040 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
7041 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
7042 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
7043 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
7044 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
7045 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
7046 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
7047 parents.</p>
7048
7049 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
7050 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
7051 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
7052 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
7053 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
7054 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
7055 Germany.</p>
7056
7057 <p>For information about our school project you can read
7058 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
7059 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
7060
7061 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7062 Edu?</strong></p>
7063
7064 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
7065 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
7066
7067 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
7068 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
7069 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
7070 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
7071 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
7072 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
7073 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
7074 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
7075 teachers, parents...</p>
7076
7077 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7078 Edu?</strong></p>
7079
7080 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
7081 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7082
7083 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
7084 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
7085 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
7086 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
7087 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7088
7089 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
7090 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
7091 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
7092 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
7093 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
7094 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
7095 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7096
7097 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7098
7099 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
7100 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
7101 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
7102 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
7103
7104 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7105 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7106
7107 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
7108 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
7109 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
7110 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
7111 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
7112
7113 <ul>
7114
7115 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
7116 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
7117 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
7118
7119 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
7120 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
7121 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
7122 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
7123 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
7124 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
7125 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
7126
7127 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
7128 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
7129 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
7130 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
7131
7132 </ul>
7133
7134       </div>
7135       <div class="tags">
7136
7137
7138         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7139
7140
7141       </div>
7142     </div>
7143     <div class="padding"></div>
7144
7145     <div class="entry">
7146       <div class="title">
7147         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
7148       </div>
7149       <div class="date">
7150          4th November 2012
7151       </div>
7152       <div class="body">
7153         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
7154 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
7155 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
7156 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
7157 see how a member of the bitcoin community
7158 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
7159 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
7160 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
7161 competition.  My thoughts go to the
7162 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
7163 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
7164 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
7165 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
7166 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
7167
7168 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
7169 that the community already seem to have
7170 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
7171 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
7172 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
7173 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
7174 wealth is available.</p>
7175
7176       </div>
7177       <div class="tags">
7178
7179
7180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7181
7182
7183       </div>
7184     </div>
7185     <div class="padding"></div>
7186
7187     <div class="entry">
7188       <div class="title">
7189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
7190       </div>
7191       <div class="date">
7192         26th October 2012
7193       </div>
7194       <div class="body">
7195         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
7196 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
7197 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
7198 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
7199 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
7200 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
7201 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
7202 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
7203 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
7204 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
7205 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
7206 it every time.</p>
7207
7208 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
7209 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
7210 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
7211 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
7212 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
7213 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
7214 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
7215 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
7216 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
7217 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
7218 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
7219 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
7220
7221 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
7222 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
7223 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
7224 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
7225 article: First the unplanned outage:
7226
7227 <blockquote><pre>
7228 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
7229 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
7230 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
7231 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
7232 Duration:    40 minutes
7233 Scope:       Exchange 2003
7234 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
7235              a cluster failover.
7236
7237 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
7238              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
7239 Technician:  [xxx]
7240 </pre></blockquote>
7241
7242 Next the planned outage:
7243
7244 <blockquote><pre>
7245 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
7246 Severity:    Major (Planned)
7247 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
7248 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
7249 Duration:    10 hours
7250 Scope:       H2 Transport
7251 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
7252              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
7253              4510s.
7254 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
7255              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
7256              connectivity.
7257 Technician:  [xxx]
7258 </pre></blockquote>
7259
7260 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
7261 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
7262 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
7263 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
7264 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
7265 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
7266 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
7267
7268 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
7269 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
7270 university too.  We do register
7271 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
7272 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
7273 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
7274 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
7275 for other sites to consider too?</p>
7276
7277       </div>
7278       <div class="tags">
7279
7280
7281         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7282
7283
7284       </div>
7285     </div>
7286     <div class="padding"></div>
7287
7288     <div class="entry">
7289       <div class="title">
7290         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
7291       </div>
7292       <div class="date">
7293         22nd October 2012
7294       </div>
7295       <div class="body">
7296         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
7297 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
7298 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
7299 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
7300 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
7301 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
7302 background information is available in Norwegian from
7303 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
7304 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
7305 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
7306 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
7307 willing to
7308 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
7309 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
7310 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
7311 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
7312 sounded like
7313 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
7314 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
7315 later.</p>
7316
7317 <p>And thought this action is
7318 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
7319 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
7320 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
7321 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
7322 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
7323 rights.</p>
7324
7325 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
7326 unacceptable terms.  For example
7327 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
7328 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
7329 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
7330 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
7331 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
7332
7333 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
7334 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
7335 restored the account of the user, as reported by
7336 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
7337 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
7338 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
7339 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
7340 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
7341 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
7342 reading two opinions from
7343 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
7344 Phipps</a> and
7345 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
7346 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
7347 details about the original story.</p>
7348
7349       </div>
7350       <div class="tags">
7351
7352
7353         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
7354
7355
7356       </div>
7357     </div>
7358     <div class="padding"></div>
7359
7360     <div class="entry">
7361       <div class="title">
7362         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
7363       </div>
7364       <div class="date">
7365         18th October 2012
7366       </div>
7367       <div class="body">
7368         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
7369 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
7370 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
7371 across a marvellous drawing by
7372 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
7373 visualising some of what is going on.
7374
7375 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
7376 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
7377
7378 <blockquote>
7379 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
7380 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
7381 </blockquote>
7382
7383 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
7384 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
7385 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
7386 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
7387 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
7388 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
7389
7390       </div>
7391       <div class="tags">
7392
7393
7394         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7395
7396
7397       </div>
7398     </div>
7399     <div class="padding"></div>
7400
7401     <div class="entry">
7402       <div class="title">
7403         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
7404       </div>
7405       <div class="date">
7406         12th October 2012
7407       </div>
7408       <div class="body">
7409         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
7410 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
7411 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
7412 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
7413 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
7414 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
7415 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
7416 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
7417 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
7418 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
7419 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
7420 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
7421 matter".</p>
7422
7423 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
7424 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
7425 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
7426 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
7427 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
7428 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
7429 to argue its side.</p>
7430
7431 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
7432 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
7433 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
7434 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
7435
7436 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
7437 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
7438 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
7439
7440       </div>
7441       <div class="tags">
7442
7443
7444         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
7445
7446
7447       </div>
7448     </div>
7449     <div class="padding"></div>
7450
7451     <div class="entry">
7452       <div class="title">
7453         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
7454       </div>
7455       <div class="date">
7456          3rd October 2012
7457       </div>
7458       <div class="body">
7459         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
7460 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
7461 the computer science book collection available in his local
7462 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
7463 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
7464 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
7465 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
7466 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
7467 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
7468 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
7469 recently published books.</p>
7470
7471 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
7472 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
7473 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
7474 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
7475 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
7476 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
7477 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
7478 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
7479 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
7480 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
7481 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
7482 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
7483 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
7484 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
7485 for the library that evening.</p>
7486
7487 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
7488 going to know that for example
7489 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
7490 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
7491 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
7492 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
7493 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
7494 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
7495 book right away.</p>
7496
7497       </div>
7498       <div class="tags">
7499
7500
7501         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7502
7503
7504       </div>
7505     </div>
7506     <div class="padding"></div>
7507
7508     <div class="entry">
7509       <div class="title">
7510         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
7511       </div>
7512       <div class="date">
7513         23rd September 2012
7514       </div>
7515       <div class="body">
7516         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
7517 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
7518 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7519 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
7520 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
7521 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
7522
7523 When I started, I
7524 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
7525 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
7526 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
7527 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
7528 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
7529 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
7530 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
7531
7532 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
7533
7534 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
7535 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
7536 the project files currently available from
7537 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7538
7539 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7540 the updated
7541 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7542 and
7543 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7544 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7545 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7546 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7547
7548       </div>
7549       <div class="tags">
7550
7551
7552         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7553
7554
7555       </div>
7556     </div>
7557     <div class="padding"></div>
7558
7559     <div class="entry">
7560       <div class="title">
7561         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
7562       </div>
7563       <div class="date">
7564         17th September 2012
7565       </div>
7566       <div class="body">
7567         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
7568 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7569 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
7570 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
7571 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
7572 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
7573 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
7574
7575 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7576
7577 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
7578 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
7579 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
7580 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
7581 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
7582 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
7583 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
7584 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
7585 training is anyway very important</p>
7586
7587 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
7588 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
7589 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
7590 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
7591 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
7592
7593 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7594 project?</strong></p>
7595
7596 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
7597 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
7598 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
7599 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
7600 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
7601 hole.</p>
7602
7603 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7604 Edu?</strong></p>
7605
7606 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
7607 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
7608 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
7609 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
7610 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
7611 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
7612 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
7613 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
7614 hassle.</p>
7615
7616 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7617 Edu?</strong></p>
7618
7619 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
7620 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
7621 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
7622 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
7623 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
7624 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
7625 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
7626 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
7627
7628 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7629
7630 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
7631 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
7632 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
7633 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
7634 has the same...</p>
7635
7636 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
7637 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
7638 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
7639 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
7640
7641 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7642 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7643
7644 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
7645 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
7646 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
7647
7648 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
7649 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
7650 don't.</p>
7651
7652 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
7653 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
7654 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
7655 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
7656 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
7657 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
7658 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
7659
7660       </div>
7661       <div class="tags">
7662
7663
7664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7665
7666
7667       </div>
7668     </div>
7669     <div class="padding"></div>
7670
7671     <div class="entry">
7672       <div class="title">
7673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
7674       </div>
7675       <div class="date">
7676         15th September 2012
7677       </div>
7678       <div class="body">
7679         <p>After the
7680 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
7681 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
7682 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
7683 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
7684 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
7685 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
7686 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
7687 was
7688 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
7689 formal working group should be formed.</p>
7690
7691 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
7692 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
7693 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
7694 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
7695 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
7696 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
7697 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
7698 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
7699
7700 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
7701 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
7702 IETF.</p>
7703
7704       </div>
7705       <div class="tags">
7706
7707
7708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7709
7710
7711       </div>
7712     </div>
7713     <div class="padding"></div>
7714
7715     <div class="entry">
7716       <div class="title">
7717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
7718       </div>
7719       <div class="date">
7720         12th September 2012
7721       </div>
7722       <div class="body">
7723         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
7724 publication of of
7725 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
7726 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
7727 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
7728 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
7729 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
7730 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
7731 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
7732 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
7733 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
7734 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
7735
7736 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
7737 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
7738 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
7739 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
7740
7741 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
7742 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
7743
7744       </div>
7745       <div class="tags">
7746
7747
7748         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7749
7750
7751       </div>
7752     </div>
7753     <div class="padding"></div>
7754
7755     <div class="entry">
7756       <div class="title">
7757         <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>
7758       </div>
7759       <div class="date">
7760          7th September 2012
7761       </div>
7762       <div class="body">
7763         <p>As I
7764 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
7765 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
7766 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
7767 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
7768 repository for the project</a>.</p>
7769
7770 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
7771 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
7772 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
7773 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
7774
7775 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
7776 PostScript formats at
7777 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
7778 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
7779
7780       </div>
7781       <div class="tags">
7782
7783
7784         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>.
7785
7786
7787       </div>
7788     </div>
7789     <div class="padding"></div>
7790
7791     <div class="entry">
7792       <div class="title">
7793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
7794       </div>
7795       <div class="date">
7796         23rd August 2012
7797       </div>
7798       <div class="body">
7799         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
7800 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
7801 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
7802 revisit the great site
7803 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
7804 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
7805 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
7806
7807       </div>
7808       <div class="tags">
7809
7810
7811         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7812
7813
7814       </div>
7815     </div>
7816     <div class="padding"></div>
7817
7818     <div class="entry">
7819       <div class="title">
7820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
7821       </div>
7822       <div class="date">
7823         17th August 2012
7824       </div>
7825       <div class="body">
7826         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
7827 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7828 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7829 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
7830 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
7831 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
7832 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
7833 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
7834 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
7835 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
7836 summer I
7837 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
7838 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
7839 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
7840
7841 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
7842 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
7843 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
7844 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
7845 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
7846 progress:</p>
7847
7848 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
7849
7850 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
7851 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
7852 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
7853 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
7854 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
7855 english version of the docbook source.</p>
7856
7857 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7858 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7859 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7860 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7861 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7862 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
7863 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
7864 project files currently available from <a
7865 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7866
7867 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7868 the updated
7869 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7870 and
7871 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7872 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7873 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7874 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7875
7876       </div>
7877       <div class="tags">
7878
7879
7880         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7881
7882
7883       </div>
7884     </div>
7885     <div class="padding"></div>
7886
7887     <div class="entry">
7888       <div class="title">
7889         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
7890       </div>
7891       <div class="date">
7892         10th August 2012
7893       </div>
7894       <div class="body">
7895         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
7896 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
7897 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
7898 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
7899 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
7900 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
7901 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
7902 case for the language
7903 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
7904 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
7905
7906 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
7907 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
7908 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
7909 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
7910 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
7911
7912 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
7913 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
7914 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
7915 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
7916 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
7917 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
7918 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
7919 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
7920 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
7921 alias for 'nb'.</p>
7922
7923 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
7924 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
7925 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
7926 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
7927 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
7928 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
7929 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
7930 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
7931 at the same time. :(</p>
7932
7933 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
7934 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
7935 processors. :(</p>
7936
7937 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
7938
7939       </div>
7940       <div class="tags">
7941
7942
7943         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7944
7945
7946       </div>
7947     </div>
7948     <div class="padding"></div>
7949
7950     <div class="entry">
7951       <div class="title">
7952         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
7953       </div>
7954       <div class="date">
7955         31st July 2012
7956       </div>
7957       <div class="body">
7958         <p>I tried to send this text to the
7959 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
7960 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
7961 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
7962 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
7963 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
7964 out.</p>
7965
7966 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
7967 learning curve at the moment.</p>
7968
7969 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
7970 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
7971 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
7972 available from
7973 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
7974 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
7975 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
7976 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
7977 Squeeze.</p>
7978
7979 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
7980 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
7981 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
7982 problems.</p>
7983
7984 <ul>
7985
7986 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
7987    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
7988    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
7989    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
7990    index references spanning several pages (See
7991    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
7992    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
7993    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
7994
7995 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
7996    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
7997    #683163</a>).</li>
7998
7999 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
8000    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
8001    footnote and text body, see
8002    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
8003    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
8004    refs listed are not right).</li>
8005
8006 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
8007
8008 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
8009    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
8010
8011 </ul>
8012
8013 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
8014 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
8015 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
8016
8017 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
8018
8019       </div>
8020       <div class="tags">
8021
8022
8023         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
8024
8025
8026       </div>
8027     </div>
8028     <div class="padding"></div>
8029
8030     <div class="entry">
8031       <div class="title">
8032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
8033       </div>
8034       <div class="date">
8035         21st July 2012
8036       </div>
8037       <div class="body">
8038         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
8039 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
8040 norwegian version</a> of the book
8041 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
8042 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
8043 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
8044 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
8045 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8046
8047 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
8048 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
8049 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
8050 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
8051 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
8052 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
8053 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
8054 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
8055 print. :)</p>
8056
8057 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
8058 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
8059 language.</p>
8060
8061       </div>
8062       <div class="tags">
8063
8064
8065         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8066
8067
8068       </div>
8069     </div>
8070     <div class="padding"></div>
8071
8072     <div class="entry">
8073       <div class="title">
8074         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
8075       </div>
8076       <div class="date">
8077         16th July 2012
8078       </div>
8079       <div class="body">
8080         <p>I am currently working on a
8081 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
8082 to translate</a> the book
8083 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
8084 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
8085 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
8086 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
8087 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
8088 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
8089 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8090
8091 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
8092 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
8093 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
8094 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
8095 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
8096 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
8097 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
8098 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
8099 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
8100
8101       </div>
8102       <div class="tags">
8103
8104
8105         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8106
8107
8108       </div>
8109     </div>
8110     <div class="padding"></div>
8111
8112     <div class="entry">
8113       <div class="title">
8114         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
8115       </div>
8116       <div class="date">
8117          9th July 2012
8118       </div>
8119       <div class="body">
8120         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8121 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
8122 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
8123 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
8124 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
8125 to adjust and scale the just released
8126 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8127 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
8128 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
8129
8130 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8131
8132 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
8133 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
8134 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
8135 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
8136 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
8137 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
8138 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
8139 perspective when working with IT.</p>
8140
8141 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8142 project?</strong></p>
8143
8144 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
8145 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
8146 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
8147 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
8148 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
8149 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
8150
8151 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8152 Edu?</strong></p>
8153
8154 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
8155 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
8156 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
8157 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
8158 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
8159 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
8160 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
8161 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
8162 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
8163 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
8164 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
8165 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
8166 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
8167 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
8168 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
8169 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
8170 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
8171 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
8172 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
8173 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
8174 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
8175 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
8176 quicker to update.
8177
8178 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8179 Edu?</strong></p>
8180
8181 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
8182 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
8183 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
8184 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
8185 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
8186 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
8187
8188 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
8189 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
8190 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
8191 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
8192 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
8193 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
8194 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
8195 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
8196 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
8197 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
8198 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
8199 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
8200 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
8201 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
8202 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
8203
8204 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
8205 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
8206 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
8207 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
8208 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
8209 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
8210 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
8211 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
8212
8213 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
8214 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
8215 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
8216 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
8217 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
8218 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
8219 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
8220 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
8221 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
8222 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
8223 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
8224 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
8225 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
8226 sound file.</p>
8227
8228 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
8229 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
8230 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
8231 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
8232 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
8233 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
8234 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
8235 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
8236 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
8237
8238 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8239
8240 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
8241 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
8242 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
8243 )</p>
8244
8245 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8246 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8247
8248 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
8249 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
8250 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
8251 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
8252 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
8253 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
8254 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
8255 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
8256 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
8257 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
8258 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
8259 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
8260 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
8261 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
8262 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
8263
8264 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
8265 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
8266 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
8267 management with Airtime</a>,
8268 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
8269 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
8270 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
8271 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
8272 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
8273
8274       </div>
8275       <div class="tags">
8276
8277
8278         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8279
8280
8281       </div>
8282     </div>
8283     <div class="padding"></div>
8284
8285     <div class="entry">
8286       <div class="title">
8287         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
8288       </div>
8289       <div class="date">
8290          8th July 2012
8291       </div>
8292       <div class="body">
8293         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
8294 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
8295 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
8296 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
8297 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
8298 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
8299 Steinberg in his blog post
8300 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
8301 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
8302 spending of your tax money.</p>
8303
8304 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
8305 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
8306 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
8307 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
8308 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
8309 purchases.</p>
8310
8311       </div>
8312       <div class="tags">
8313
8314
8315         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8316
8317
8318       </div>
8319     </div>
8320     <div class="padding"></div>
8321
8322     <div class="entry">
8323       <div class="title">
8324         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
8325       </div>
8326       <div class="date">
8327          7th July 2012
8328       </div>
8329       <div class="body">
8330         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8331 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
8332 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
8333 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
8334 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
8335 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
8336 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
8337 receive.  The software is
8338
8339 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
8340 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
8341 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
8342 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
8343 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
8344 Windows</a>.</p>
8345
8346 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
8347 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
8348
8349 <p><ul>
8350
8351   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
8352     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
8353
8354   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
8355     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
8356     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
8357     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
8358     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
8359     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
8360     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
8361     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
8362     </li>
8363
8364   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
8365     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
8366
8367   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
8368     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
8369
8370   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
8371     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
8372
8373   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
8374
8375   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
8376     formats </li>
8377
8378   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
8379     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
8380     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
8381     (as separate sets)</li>
8382
8383   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
8384     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
8385     percentage)</li>
8386
8387   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
8388     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
8389     memory):
8390     <ul>
8391       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
8392       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
8393       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
8394       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
8395       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
8396       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
8397       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
8398       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
8399       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
8400       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
8401           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
8402           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
8403           activity)</li>
8404       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
8405       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
8406     </ul></li>
8407
8408   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
8409     <ul>
8410       <li>Break periods</li>
8411       <li>For teacher(s):
8412         <ul>
8413           <li>Not available periods</li>
8414           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
8415           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
8416           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
8417           <li>Min hours daily</li>
8418           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
8419
8420           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
8421             days per week</li>
8422         </ul></li>
8423       <li>For students (sets):
8424         <ul>
8425           <li>Not available periods</li>
8426           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
8427           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
8428           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
8429           <li>Min hours daily</li>
8430           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
8431
8432           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
8433             days per week</li>
8434         </ul></li>
8435       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
8436         <ul>
8437           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
8438           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
8439           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
8440           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
8441           <li>End(s) students day</li>
8442           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
8443           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
8444             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
8445           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
8446           <li>Not overlapping</li>
8447           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
8448           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
8449         </ul></li>
8450     </ul></li>
8451
8452   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
8453     <ul>
8454       <li>Room not available periods</li>
8455       <li>For teacher(s):
8456         <ul>
8457           <li>Home room(s)</li>
8458           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
8459           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
8460         </ul>
8461       </li>
8462
8463       <li>For students (sets):
8464         <ul>
8465           <li>Home room(s)</li>
8466           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
8467           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
8468         </ul>
8469       </li>
8470       <li>Preferred room(s):
8471         <ul>
8472           <li>For a subject</li>
8473           <li>For an activity tag</li>
8474           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
8475           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
8476         </ul>
8477       </li>
8478
8479       <li>For a set of activities:
8480         <ul>
8481           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
8482         </ul>
8483       </li>
8484     </ul>
8485   </li>
8486 </ul></p>
8487
8488 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
8489 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
8490 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
8491 manually, check it out.
8492
8493 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
8494 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
8495 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
8496 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
8497 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
8498 section</a>.</p>
8499
8500       </div>
8501       <div class="tags">
8502
8503
8504         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8505
8506
8507       </div>
8508     </div>
8509     <div class="padding"></div>
8510
8511     <div class="entry">
8512       <div class="title">
8513         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
8514       </div>
8515       <div class="date">
8516          3rd July 2012
8517       </div>
8518       <div class="body">
8519         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
8520 project (Norwegian version of
8521 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
8522 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
8523 a problem with the municipalities using
8524 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
8525 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
8526 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
8527 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
8528 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
8529 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
8530 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
8531 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
8532 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
8533 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
8534 the From: header.</p>
8535
8536 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
8537 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
8538 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
8539 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
8540 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
8541 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
8542 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
8543 behaviour.</p>
8544
8545 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
8546 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
8547 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
8548 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
8549 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
8550 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
8551 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
8552
8553       </div>
8554       <div class="tags">
8555
8556
8557         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8558
8559
8560       </div>
8561     </div>
8562     <div class="padding"></div>
8563
8564     <div class="entry">
8565       <div class="title">
8566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
8567       </div>
8568       <div class="date">
8569         26th June 2012
8570       </div>
8571       <div class="body">
8572         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
8573 another interview with the people behind
8574 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
8575 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
8576 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
8577 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
8578 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
8579 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8580 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8581
8582 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8583
8584 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
8585 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
8586 ICT in schools</p>
8587
8588 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8589 project?</strong></p>
8590
8591 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
8592 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
8593 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
8594 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
8595
8596 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8597 Edu?</strong></p>
8598
8599 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
8600 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
8601 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
8602 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
8603
8604 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8605 Edu?</strong></p>
8606
8607 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
8608 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
8609 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
8610 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
8611 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
8612 technologies in school.</p>
8613
8614 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8615
8616 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
8617 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
8618 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
8619
8620 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8621 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8622
8623 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
8624 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
8625 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
8626 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
8627
8628 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
8629 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
8630 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
8631
8632 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
8633 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
8634 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
8635 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
8636 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
8637 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
8638 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
8639 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
8640 working there.</p>
8641
8642       </div>
8643       <div class="tags">
8644
8645
8646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8647
8648
8649       </div>
8650     </div>
8651     <div class="padding"></div>
8652
8653     <div class="entry">
8654       <div class="title">
8655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
8656       </div>
8657       <div class="date">
8658         24th June 2012
8659       </div>
8660       <div class="body">
8661         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
8662 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
8663 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
8664 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
8665 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
8666 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
8667 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
8668 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
8669 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
8670 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
8671 missing in my book.</p>
8672
8673 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
8674 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
8675 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
8676 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
8677 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
8678 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
8679 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
8680
8681       </div>
8682       <div class="tags">
8683
8684
8685         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>.
8686
8687
8688       </div>
8689     </div>
8690     <div class="padding"></div>
8691
8692     <div class="entry">
8693       <div class="title">
8694         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
8695       </div>
8696       <div class="date">
8697         11th June 2012
8698       </div>
8699       <div class="body">
8700         <p>During my work on
8701 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
8702 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
8703 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
8704 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
8705 explanation.</p>
8706
8707 <p><ul>
8708
8709 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
8710 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
8711 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
8712 system depend on tasksel tasks in
8713 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
8714 installation.</li>
8715
8716 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
8717 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
8718 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
8719 at least try to enable it for these services:
8720 <ul>
8721
8722   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
8723     quotas.</li>
8724   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
8725   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
8726   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
8727   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
8728   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
8729
8730 </ul></li>
8731
8732 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
8733 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
8734 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
8735 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
8736
8737 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
8738 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
8739 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
8740
8741 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
8742 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
8743 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
8744 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
8745 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
8746 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
8747
8748 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
8749 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
8750 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
8751 in Wheezy.
8752
8753 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
8754 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
8755 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
8756
8757 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
8758 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
8759 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
8760 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
8761
8762 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
8763 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
8764 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
8765 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
8766
8767 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
8768 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
8769 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
8770
8771 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
8772 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
8773 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
8774
8775 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
8776 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
8777 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
8778 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
8779 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
8780
8781 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
8782 <ul>
8783
8784 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
8785 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
8786 <li>and probably more?</li>
8787 </ul></li>
8788
8789 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
8790 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
8791 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
8792 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
8793 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
8794 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
8795 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
8796 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
8797
8798
8799 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
8800 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
8801 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
8802 use.</li>
8803
8804 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
8805 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
8806 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
8807 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
8808 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
8809
8810 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
8811 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
8812 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
8813 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
8814 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
8815 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
8816
8817 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
8818 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
8819 There are at least three implementations,
8820 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
8821 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
8822 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
8823 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
8824 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
8825 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
8826 given room.</li>
8827
8828 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
8829 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
8830 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
8831 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
8832 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
8833 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
8834 investigated.</li>
8835
8836 </ul></p>
8837
8838 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
8839 version.</p>
8840
8841       </div>
8842       <div class="tags">
8843
8844
8845         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8846
8847
8848       </div>
8849     </div>
8850     <div class="padding"></div>
8851
8852     <div class="entry">
8853       <div class="title">
8854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
8855       </div>
8856       <div class="date">
8857          9th June 2012
8858       </div>
8859       <div class="body">
8860         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
8861 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
8862 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
8863 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
8864 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
8865 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
8866 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
8867 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
8868 be willing to pay for.</p>
8869
8870 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
8871 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
8872 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
8873 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
8874 Orwell</a>.</p>
8875
8876       </div>
8877       <div class="tags">
8878
8879
8880         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
8881
8882
8883       </div>
8884     </div>
8885     <div class="padding"></div>
8886
8887     <div class="entry">
8888       <div class="title">
8889         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
8890       </div>
8891       <div class="date">
8892          6th June 2012
8893       </div>
8894       <div class="body">
8895         <p>A few days ago
8896 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
8897 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
8898 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
8899 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
8900 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
8901 code for HP, Dell and IBM
8902 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
8903 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
8904 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
8905 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
8906 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
8907
8908 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
8909 output:
8910
8911 <blockquote><pre>
8912 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
8913 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
8914 %
8915 </pre></blockquote>
8916
8917 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
8918 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
8919 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
8920
8921       </div>
8922       <div class="tags">
8923
8924
8925         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8926
8927
8928       </div>
8929     </div>
8930     <div class="padding"></div>
8931
8932     <div class="entry">
8933       <div class="title">
8934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
8935       </div>
8936       <div class="date">
8937          2nd June 2012
8938       </div>
8939       <div class="body">
8940         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
8941 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8942 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
8943 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
8944 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8945 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8946
8947 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8948
8949 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
8950 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
8951 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
8952 by Angela).</p>
8953
8954 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
8955 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
8956 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
8957 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
8958 becoming an osteopath.</p>
8959
8960 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
8961 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
8962 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
8963 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
8964 skills with communication skills.</p>
8965
8966 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8967 project?</strong></p>
8968
8969 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
8970 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
8971 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
8972 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
8973 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
8974
8975 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
8976 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
8977 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
8978 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
8979 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
8980 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
8981 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
8982 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
8983 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
8984
8985 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
8986 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
8987 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
8988
8989 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
8990
8991 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
8992 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
8993 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
8994 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
8995 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
8996 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
8997 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
8998 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
8999 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
9000 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
9001 point.</p>
9002
9003 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
9004 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
9005 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
9006 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
9007 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
9008 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
9009
9010 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
9011 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
9012 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
9013 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
9014 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
9015 spare time.</p>
9016
9017 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
9018 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
9019 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
9020 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
9021 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
9022
9023 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
9024 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
9025 avoidance do exist.</p>
9026
9027 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
9028 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
9029 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
9030 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
9031 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
9032 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
9033 and probably a gain for all.</p>
9034
9035 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9036 Edu?</strong></p>
9037
9038 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
9039 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
9040 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
9041 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
9042 project communication, honest communication within the group of
9043 developers, etc.</p>
9044
9045 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9046 Edu?</strong></p>
9047
9048 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
9049
9050 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
9051 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
9052 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
9053 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
9054 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
9055 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
9056 contribute).</p>
9057
9058 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
9059 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
9060 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
9061 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
9062 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
9063 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
9064 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
9065 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
9066 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
9067 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
9068
9069 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9070
9071 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
9072
9073 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
9074 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
9075 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
9076
9077 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
9078 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
9079 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
9080 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
9081
9082 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
9083 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
9084 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
9085 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
9086 whiteboard.</p>
9087
9088 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
9089
9090 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9091 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9092
9093 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
9094 enrol people.</p>
9095
9096       </div>
9097       <div class="tags">
9098
9099
9100         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9101
9102
9103       </div>
9104     </div>
9105     <div class="padding"></div>
9106
9107     <div class="entry">
9108       <div class="title">
9109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
9110       </div>
9111       <div class="date">
9112          1st June 2012
9113       </div>
9114       <div class="body">
9115         <p>A few years ago I wrote
9116 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
9117 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
9118 I have learned from colleges here at the
9119 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
9120 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
9121 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
9122 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
9123 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
9124
9125 <p><pre>
9126 use strict;
9127 use warnings;
9128 use SOAP::Lite;
9129 use Data::Dumper;
9130 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
9131 my $App = 'test';
9132 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
9133 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
9134 my $s = SOAP::Lite
9135     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
9136     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
9137     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
9138     ;
9139 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
9140     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
9141     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
9142     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
9143 );
9144 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
9145 </pre></p>
9146
9147 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
9148
9149 <p><pre>
9150 $VAR1 = {
9151           'Asset' => {
9152                      'Entitlements' => {
9153                                        'EntitlementData' => [
9154                                                             {
9155                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9156                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9157                                                               'Provider' => '',
9158                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9159                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9160                                                             },
9161                                                             {
9162                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9163                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9164                                                               'Provider' => '',
9165                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9166                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9167                                                             },
9168                                                             {
9169                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9170                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
9171                                                               'Provider' => '',
9172                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9173                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9174                                                             }
9175                                                           ]
9176                                      },
9177                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
9178                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
9179                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
9180                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
9181                                           'Buid' => '2323',
9182                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
9183                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
9184                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
9185                                         }
9186                    }
9187         };
9188 </pre></p>
9189
9190 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
9191 service outside the
9192 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
9193 documentation</a>, and according to
9194 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
9195 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
9196 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
9197
9198 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
9199 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
9200
9201       </div>
9202       <div class="tags">
9203
9204
9205         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9206
9207
9208       </div>
9209     </div>
9210     <div class="padding"></div>
9211
9212     <div class="entry">
9213       <div class="title">
9214         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
9215       </div>
9216       <div class="date">
9217         31st May 2012
9218       </div>
9219       <div class="body">
9220         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
9221 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
9222 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
9223 running Debian Squeeze, where
9224 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
9225 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
9226 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
9227 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
9228 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
9229 another day.</p>
9230
9231 <p>After calibration, I get a
9232 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
9233 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
9234 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
9235 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
9236 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
9237 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
9238 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
9239 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
9240 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
9241 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
9242 and a simple</p>
9243
9244 <p><pre>
9245 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
9246 </pre></p>
9247
9248 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
9249 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
9250 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
9251 enough for now.</p>
9252
9253       </div>
9254       <div class="tags">
9255
9256
9257         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9258
9259
9260       </div>
9261     </div>
9262     <div class="padding"></div>
9263
9264     <div class="entry">
9265       <div class="title">
9266         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
9267       </div>
9268       <div class="date">
9269         27th May 2012
9270       </div>
9271       <div class="body">
9272         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
9273 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9274 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
9275 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
9276 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
9277 since then, helping to make sure the
9278 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9279 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
9280
9281 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9282
9283 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
9284 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
9285 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
9286 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
9287 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
9288 our computer network.</p>
9289
9290 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
9291 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
9292 (4 months).</p>
9293
9294 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9295 project?</strong></p>
9296
9297 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
9298 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
9299 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
9300 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
9301 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
9302 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
9303 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
9304 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
9305 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
9306 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
9307 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
9308 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
9309 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
9310 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
9311
9312 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9313 Edu?</strong></p>
9314
9315 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
9316 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
9317 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
9318 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
9319 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
9320 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
9321 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
9322 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
9323
9324 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9325 Edu?</strong></p>
9326
9327 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
9328 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
9329 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
9330 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
9331 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
9332 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
9333 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
9334 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
9335 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
9336 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
9337 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
9338 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
9339
9340 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9341
9342 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
9343 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
9344 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
9345
9346 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9347 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9348
9349 <p><ol>
9350
9351 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
9352 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
9353 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
9354 developing.</li>
9355
9356 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
9357 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
9358 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
9359 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
9360 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
9361
9362 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
9363 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
9364 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
9365
9366 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
9367 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
9368 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
9369 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
9370
9371 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
9372 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
9373 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
9374
9375 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
9376
9377 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
9378 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
9379 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
9380 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
9381
9382 </ol></p>
9383
9384       </div>
9385       <div class="tags">
9386
9387
9388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9389
9390
9391       </div>
9392     </div>
9393     <div class="padding"></div>
9394
9395     <div class="entry">
9396       <div class="title">
9397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
9398       </div>
9399       <div class="date">
9400         26th May 2012
9401       </div>
9402       <div class="body">
9403         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
9404 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
9405 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
9406 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
9407 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
9408
9409 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
9410 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
9411 comment:</p>
9412
9413 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
9414 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
9415 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
9416 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
9417 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
9418 </blockquote></p>
9419
9420 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
9421 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
9422 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
9423 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
9424 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
9425 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
9426 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
9427 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
9428 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
9429 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
9430 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
9431 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
9432 of wasted effort.</p>
9433
9434 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
9435 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
9436 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
9437
9438 <p>See
9439 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
9440 and
9441 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
9442 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
9443 </blockquote></p>
9444
9445       </div>
9446       <div class="tags">
9447
9448
9449         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9450
9451
9452       </div>
9453     </div>
9454     <div class="padding"></div>
9455
9456     <div class="entry">
9457       <div class="title">
9458         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
9459       </div>
9460       <div class="date">
9461         18th May 2012
9462       </div>
9463       <div class="body">
9464         <p>In january, I
9465 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
9466 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
9467 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
9468 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
9469 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
9470 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
9471 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
9472 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
9473 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
9474 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
9475
9476 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
9477 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
9478 drivers. :)</p>
9479
9480       </div>
9481       <div class="tags">
9482
9483
9484         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9485
9486
9487       </div>
9488     </div>
9489     <div class="padding"></div>
9490
9491     <div class="entry">
9492       <div class="title">
9493         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
9494       </div>
9495       <div class="date">
9496         13th May 2012
9497       </div>
9498       <div class="body">
9499         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
9500 publish another interview with the people behind
9501 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
9502 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
9503 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
9504 details get right before release.
9505
9506 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9507
9508 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
9509 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
9510 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
9511 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
9512 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
9513 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
9514 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
9515 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
9516
9517 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
9518 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
9519 home since 2006.</p>
9520
9521 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9522 project?</strong></p>
9523
9524 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
9525 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
9526 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
9527 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
9528 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
9529 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
9530
9531 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
9532 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
9533 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
9534 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
9535 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
9536 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
9537 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
9538 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
9539 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
9540 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
9541 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
9542 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
9543 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
9544 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
9545 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
9546 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
9547
9548 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9549 Edu?</strong></p>
9550
9551 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
9552 for me as today.</p>
9553
9554 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
9555
9556 <p><ul>
9557
9558 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
9559 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
9560
9561 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
9562 cost.</li>
9563
9564 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
9565 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
9566 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
9567 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
9568 server</li>
9569
9570 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
9571 school.</li>
9572
9573 </ul></p>
9574
9575 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
9576 came up in this way:</p>
9577
9578 <p><ul>
9579
9580 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
9581 now.</li>
9582
9583 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
9584 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
9585 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
9586
9587 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
9588 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
9589 interfaces used in the past.</li>
9590
9591 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
9592 different needs.</li>
9593
9594 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
9595
9596 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
9597 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
9598 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
9599
9600 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
9601 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
9602
9603 </ul></p>
9604
9605 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9606 Edu?</strong></p>
9607
9608 <p><ul>
9609
9610 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
9611 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
9612 whole municipality areas.</li>
9613
9614 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
9615 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
9616 politicians.</li>
9617
9618 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
9619
9620 </ul></p>
9621
9622 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9623
9624 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
9625 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
9626 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
9627 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
9628 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
9629 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
9630
9631 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
9632 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
9633 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
9634 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
9635 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
9636
9637 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9638 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9639
9640 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
9641 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
9642 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
9643
9644       </div>
9645       <div class="tags">
9646
9647
9648         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9649
9650
9651       </div>
9652     </div>
9653     <div class="padding"></div>
9654
9655     <div class="entry">
9656       <div class="title">
9657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
9658       </div>
9659       <div class="date">
9660         30th April 2012
9661       </div>
9662       <div class="body">
9663         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
9664 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
9665
9666 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
9667 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
9668 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
9669 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
9670 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
9671 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
9672 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
9673 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
9674 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
9675 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
9676 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
9677 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
9678 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
9679 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
9680 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
9681 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
9682
9683 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
9684 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
9685 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
9686 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
9687 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
9688 finally found a Danish supplier
9689 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
9690 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
9691 days ago.</p>
9692
9693 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
9694 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
9695 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
9696 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
9697 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
9698 toys.</p>
9699
9700       </div>
9701       <div class="tags">
9702
9703
9704         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9705
9706
9707       </div>
9708     </div>
9709     <div class="padding"></div>
9710
9711     <div class="entry">
9712       <div class="title">
9713         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
9714       </div>
9715       <div class="date">
9716         26th April 2012
9717       </div>
9718       <div class="body">
9719         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
9720 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
9721 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
9722 that the video editor application included with
9723 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
9724 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
9725 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
9726
9727 <p><blockquote>
9728 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
9729 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
9730 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
9731 </blockquote></p>
9732
9733 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
9734
9735 <p><blockquote>
9736 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
9737 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
9738 </blockquote></p>
9739
9740 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
9741 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
9742 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
9743 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
9744 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
9745 video.  AMR is
9746 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
9747 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
9748 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
9749 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
9750 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
9751 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
9752 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
9753
9754 <p>I know why I prefer
9755 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
9756 standards</a> also for video.</p>
9757
9758       </div>
9759       <div class="tags">
9760
9761
9762         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9763
9764
9765       </div>
9766     </div>
9767     <div class="padding"></div>
9768
9769     <div class="entry">
9770       <div class="title">
9771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
9772       </div>
9773       <div class="date">
9774         19th April 2012
9775       </div>
9776       <div class="body">
9777         <p>Here in Norway, the
9778 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
9779 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
9780 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
9781 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
9782 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
9783 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
9784 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
9785 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
9786 on the same level.</p>
9787
9788 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
9789 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
9790 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
9791 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
9792 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
9793 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
9794 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
9795 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
9796 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
9797 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
9798 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
9799 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
9800 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
9801 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
9802 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
9803 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
9804 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
9805 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
9806
9807 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
9808 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
9809 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
9810 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
9811 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
9812 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
9813 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
9814 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
9815
9816 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
9817 from Simon Phipps
9818 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
9819 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
9820
9821 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
9822 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
9823 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
9824 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
9825 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
9826 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
9827 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
9828 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
9829 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
9830
9831       </div>
9832       <div class="tags">
9833
9834
9835         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9836
9837
9838       </div>
9839     </div>
9840     <div class="padding"></div>
9841
9842     <div class="entry">
9843       <div class="title">
9844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
9845       </div>
9846       <div class="date">
9847         15th April 2012
9848       </div>
9849       <div class="body">
9850         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
9851 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
9852 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
9853 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
9854 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
9855 up in the recently released
9856 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
9857 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
9858
9859 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9860
9861 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
9862 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
9863 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
9864 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
9865 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
9866 information technology and science/technology.</p>
9867
9868 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9869 project?</strong></p>
9870
9871 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
9872 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
9873 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
9874 contributing.</p>
9875
9876 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9877 Edu?</strong></p>
9878
9879 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
9880 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
9881 Debian Project!</p>
9882
9883 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9884 Edu?</strong></p>
9885
9886 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
9887 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
9888 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
9889 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
9890 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
9891 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
9892 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
9893
9894 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
9895 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
9896
9897 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9898
9899 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
9900 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
9901 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
9902 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
9903
9904 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9905 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9906
9907 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
9908 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
9909 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
9910 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
9911 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
9912 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
9913 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
9914
9915 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
9916 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
9917 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
9918 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
9919 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
9920 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
9921 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
9922 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
9923
9924       </div>
9925       <div class="tags">
9926
9927
9928         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9929
9930
9931       </div>
9932     </div>
9933     <div class="padding"></div>
9934
9935     <div class="entry">
9936       <div class="title">
9937         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
9938       </div>
9939       <div class="date">
9940          8th April 2012
9941       </div>
9942       <div class="body">
9943         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
9944 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
9945 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
9946 contributor to the
9947 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
9948 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
9949
9950 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9951
9952 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
9953 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
9954
9955 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9956 project?</strong></p>
9957
9958 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
9959 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
9960 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
9961 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
9962 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
9963 "localisation".</p>
9964
9965 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9966 Edu?</strong></p>
9967
9968 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9969 Edu?</strong></p>
9970
9971 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
9972 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
9973 education system.</p>
9974
9975 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
9976 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
9977 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
9978 money on the latest hardware.</p>
9979
9980 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9981
9982 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
9983 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
9984 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
9985
9986 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9987 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9988
9989 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
9990 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
9991 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
9992
9993       </div>
9994       <div class="tags">
9995
9996
9997         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9998
9999
10000       </div>
10001     </div>
10002     <div class="padding"></div>
10003
10004     <div class="entry">
10005       <div class="title">
10006         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
10007       </div>
10008       <div class="date">
10009          6th April 2012
10010       </div>
10011       <div class="body">
10012         <p>Recently I have spent time with
10013 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
10014 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10015 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
10016 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
10017 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
10018 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
10019 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
10020 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
10021
10022 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
10023 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
10024 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
10025 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
10026 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
10027 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
10028 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
10029 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
10030
10031 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
10032 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
10033 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
10034 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
10035 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
10036 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
10037 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
10038 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
10039
10040 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
10041 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
10042 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
10043 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
10044 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
10045 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
10046 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
10047 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
10048 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
10049 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
10050
10051 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
10052 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
10053 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
10054 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
10055
10056 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
10057 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
10058
10059       </div>
10060       <div class="tags">
10061
10062
10063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10064
10065
10066       </div>
10067     </div>
10068     <div class="padding"></div>
10069
10070     <div class="entry">
10071       <div class="title">
10072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
10073       </div>
10074       <div class="date">
10075          5th April 2012
10076       </div>
10077       <div class="body">
10078         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
10079 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
10080 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
10081 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
10082 for schools.  Check out his article
10083 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
10084 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
10085
10086       </div>
10087       <div class="tags">
10088
10089
10090         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10091
10092
10093       </div>
10094     </div>
10095     <div class="padding"></div>
10096
10097     <div class="entry">
10098       <div class="title">
10099         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
10100       </div>
10101       <div class="date">
10102          1st April 2012
10103       </div>
10104       <div class="body">
10105         <p>Germany is a core area for the
10106 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10107 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
10108 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
10109
10110 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10111
10112 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
10113 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
10114 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
10115 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
10116 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
10117 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
10118 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
10119 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
10120
10121 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
10122 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
10123 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
10124 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
10125 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
10126 the end of April this year.</p>
10127
10128 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10129 project?</strong></p>
10130
10131 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
10132 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
10133 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
10134 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
10135 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
10136 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
10137 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
10138 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
10139 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
10140 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
10141 Skolelinux.</p>
10142
10143 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
10144 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
10145 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
10146 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
10147 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
10148 the admin teachers.</p>
10149
10150 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10151 Edu?</strong></p>
10152
10153 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
10154 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
10155 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
10156
10157 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
10158 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
10159 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
10160 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
10161 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
10162
10163 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10164 Edu?</strong></p>
10165
10166 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
10167
10168 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10169
10170 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
10171 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
10172 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
10173 LibreOffice.</p>
10174
10175 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10176 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10177
10178 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
10179 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
10180 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
10181
10182       </div>
10183       <div class="tags">
10184
10185
10186         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10187
10188
10189       </div>
10190     </div>
10191     <div class="padding"></div>
10192
10193     <div class="entry">
10194       <div class="title">
10195         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
10196       </div>
10197       <div class="date">
10198         25th March 2012
10199       </div>
10200       <div class="body">
10201         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10202
10203 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
10204 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
10205 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
10206 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
10207 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
10208 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
10209 and download as a
10210 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
10211 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10212
10213 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10214   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
10215     <p>Download video as
10216       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10217 </video></p>
10218
10219       </div>
10220       <div class="tags">
10221
10222
10223         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10224
10225
10226       </div>
10227     </div>
10228     <div class="padding"></div>
10229
10230     <div class="entry">
10231       <div class="title">
10232         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
10233       </div>
10234       <div class="date">
10235         19th March 2012
10236       </div>
10237       <div class="body">
10238         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10239 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
10240 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
10241 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
10242 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
10243
10244 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10245
10246 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
10247 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
10248 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
10249 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
10250 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
10251 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
10252 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
10253 installations.</p>
10254
10255 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10256 project?</strong></p>
10257
10258 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
10259 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
10260 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
10261 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
10262 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
10263 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
10264 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
10265 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
10266 these things we decided to try it.</p>
10267
10268 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10269 Edu?</strong></p>
10270
10271 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
10272 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
10273 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
10274 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
10275 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
10276 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
10277 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
10278 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
10279
10280 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10281 Edu?</strong></p>
10282
10283 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
10284 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
10285 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
10286 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
10287 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
10288
10289 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10290
10291 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
10292 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
10293 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
10294 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
10295 that counts...)</p>
10296
10297 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10298 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10299
10300 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
10301 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
10302 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
10303 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
10304 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
10305 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
10306 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
10307 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
10308 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
10309 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
10310 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
10311
10312 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
10313 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
10314 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
10315
10316       </div>
10317       <div class="tags">
10318
10319
10320         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10321
10322
10323       </div>
10324     </div>
10325     <div class="padding"></div>
10326
10327     <div class="entry">
10328       <div class="title">
10329         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
10330       </div>
10331       <div class="date">
10332         16th March 2012
10333       </div>
10334       <div class="body">
10335         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
10336 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
10337 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
10338 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
10339
10340 <ol>
10341
10342 <li>The documentation is written in a
10343 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
10344 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
10345 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
10346 docbook XML.</li>
10347
10348 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
10349 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
10350 with the translated text.</li>
10351
10352 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
10353 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
10354 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
10355 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
10356 images.</li>
10357
10358 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
10359 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
10360
10361 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
10362 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
10363
10364 </ol>
10365
10366 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
10367 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
10368 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
10369 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
10370 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
10371
10372 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
10373 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
10374 package</a>.</p>
10375
10376       </div>
10377       <div class="tags">
10378
10379
10380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10381
10382
10383       </div>
10384     </div>
10385     <div class="padding"></div>
10386
10387     <div class="entry">
10388       <div class="title">
10389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
10390       </div>
10391       <div class="date">
10392         11th March 2012
10393       </div>
10394       <div class="body">
10395         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
10396 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
10397 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10398 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
10399 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
10400 you have not done so already.</p>
10401
10402 <p>I plan to present the new version at
10403 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
10404 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
10405 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
10406
10407       </div>
10408       <div class="tags">
10409
10410
10411         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10412
10413
10414       </div>
10415     </div>
10416     <div class="padding"></div>
10417
10418     <div class="entry">
10419       <div class="title">
10420         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
10421       </div>
10422       <div class="date">
10423          9th March 2012
10424       </div>
10425       <div class="body">
10426         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
10427 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
10428 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10429 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
10430 more international audience.</p>
10431
10432 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
10433 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
10434 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
10435 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
10436 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
10437 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
10438 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
10439
10440
10441 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10442
10443 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
10444 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
10445 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
10446 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
10447 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
10448 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
10449 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
10450 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
10451 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
10452 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
10453 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
10454
10455 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10456 project?</strong></p>
10457
10458 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
10459 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
10460 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
10461 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
10462 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
10463 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
10464 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
10465 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
10466 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
10467 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
10468 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
10469 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
10470 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
10471
10472 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10473 Edu?</strong></p>
10474
10475 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
10476 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
10477 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
10478 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
10479 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
10480 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
10481 Japan.</p>
10482
10483 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10484 Edu?</strong></p>
10485
10486 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
10487 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
10488 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
10489 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
10490 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
10491 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
10492 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
10493 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
10494 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
10495 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
10496 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
10497 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
10498 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
10499 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
10500 help.</p>
10501
10502 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10503
10504 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
10505 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
10506 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
10507 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
10508 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
10509 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
10510 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
10511 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
10512 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
10513 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
10514 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
10515
10516 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10517 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10518
10519 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
10520 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
10521 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
10522 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
10523 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
10524 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
10525 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
10526 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
10527 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
10528 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
10529 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
10530 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
10531
10532       </div>
10533       <div class="tags">
10534
10535
10536         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10537
10538
10539       </div>
10540     </div>
10541     <div class="padding"></div>
10542
10543     <div class="entry">
10544       <div class="title">
10545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
10546       </div>
10547       <div class="date">
10548          7th March 2012
10549       </div>
10550       <div class="body">
10551         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10552
10553 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
10554 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
10555 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
10556 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
10557 download as a
10558 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
10559 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10560
10561 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10562   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
10563     <p>Download video as
10564       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10565 </video></p>
10566
10567       </div>
10568       <div class="tags">
10569
10570
10571         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10572
10573
10574       </div>
10575     </div>
10576     <div class="padding"></div>
10577
10578     <div class="entry">
10579       <div class="title">
10580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10581       </div>
10582       <div class="date">
10583          4th March 2012
10584       </div>
10585       <div class="body">
10586         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
10587 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10588 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10589 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
10590 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
10591 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10592
10593       </div>
10594       <div class="tags">
10595
10596
10597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10598
10599
10600       </div>
10601     </div>
10602     <div class="padding"></div>
10603
10604     <div class="entry">
10605       <div class="title">
10606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
10607       </div>
10608       <div class="date">
10609          3rd March 2012
10610       </div>
10611       <div class="body">
10612         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
10613 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
10614 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
10615 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
10616 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
10617 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
10618 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
10619 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
10620 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
10621 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
10622 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
10623 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
10624 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
10625 year...</p>
10626
10627 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
10628 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
10629 name,
10630 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
10631 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
10632 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
10633 mean). I've been following
10634 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
10635 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
10636 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
10637 Check it out. :)</p>
10638
10639       </div>
10640       <div class="tags">
10641
10642
10643         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10644
10645
10646       </div>
10647     </div>
10648     <div class="padding"></div>
10649
10650     <div class="entry">
10651       <div class="title">
10652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10653       </div>
10654       <div class="date">
10655         27th February 2012
10656       </div>
10657       <div class="body">
10658         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
10659 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10660 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
10661 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
10662 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
10663 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
10664 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10665
10666       </div>
10667       <div class="tags">
10668
10669
10670         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10671
10672
10673       </div>
10674     </div>
10675     <div class="padding"></div>
10676
10677     <div class="entry">
10678       <div class="title">
10679         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10680       </div>
10681       <div class="date">
10682         19th February 2012
10683       </div>
10684       <div class="body">
10685         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
10686 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
10687 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10688 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10689 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
10690 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
10691 solution for your school.</p>
10692
10693       </div>
10694       <div class="tags">
10695
10696
10697         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10698
10699
10700       </div>
10701     </div>
10702     <div class="padding"></div>
10703
10704     <div class="entry">
10705       <div class="title">
10706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
10707       </div>
10708       <div class="date">
10709         14th February 2012
10710       </div>
10711       <div class="body">
10712         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
10713 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
10714 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
10715 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
10716 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
10717 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
10718 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
10719 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
10720 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
10721
10722 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
10723 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
10724 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
10725 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
10726 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
10727
10728 <blockquote><pre>
10729 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
10730 do
10731     printf "Failed disk $d: "
10732     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
10733 done
10734 </blockquote></pre>
10735
10736 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
10737 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
10738
10739 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
10740
10741 <blockquote><pre>
10742 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
10743 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
10744 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
10745 </blockquote></pre>
10746
10747 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
10748 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
10749 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
10750 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
10751 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
10752 mounted inside my box.</p>
10753
10754 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
10755 Software RAID in the
10756 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
10757 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
10758 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
10759 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
10760 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
10761 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
10762
10763       </div>
10764       <div class="tags">
10765
10766
10767         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
10768
10769
10770       </div>
10771     </div>
10772     <div class="padding"></div>
10773
10774     <div class="entry">
10775       <div class="title">
10776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10777       </div>
10778       <div class="date">
10779         13th February 2012
10780       </div>
10781       <div class="body">
10782         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
10783 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
10784 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
10785 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
10786 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
10787 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
10788 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
10789 change the global proxy setting by editing
10790 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
10791 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
10792
10793 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
10794 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
10795 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
10796
10797 <blockquote><pre>
10798 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
10799 {
10800    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
10801        isPlainHostName(host) ||
10802        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
10803       return "DIRECT";
10804    else
10805       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
10806 }
10807 </pre></blockquote>
10808
10809 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
10810
10811 <blockquote><pre>
10812 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
10813 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
10814 </pre></blockquote>
10815
10816 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
10817 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
10818 would be used for
10819 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
10820 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
10821 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
10822 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
10823 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
10824 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
10825 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
10826 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
10827 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
10828 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
10829
10830 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
10831 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
10832 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
10833 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
10834 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
10835 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
10836
10837 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
10838 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
10839 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
10840 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
10841 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
10842 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
10843 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
10844 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
10845 the network setup changes.</p>
10846
10847 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
10848 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
10849 draft</a> and a
10850 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
10851 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
10852
10853       </div>
10854       <div class="tags">
10855
10856
10857         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10858
10859
10860       </div>
10861     </div>
10862     <div class="padding"></div>
10863
10864     <div class="entry">
10865       <div class="title">
10866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
10867       </div>
10868       <div class="date">
10869          5th February 2012
10870       </div>
10871       <div class="body">
10872         <p>Since the Lenny version of
10873 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
10874 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
10875 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
10876 in the morning.  This is done using the
10877 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
10878
10879 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
10880 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
10881 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
10882 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
10883 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
10884 the
10885 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
10886 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
10887 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
10888 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
10889 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
10890
10891 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
10892 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
10893 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
10894 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
10895 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
10896 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
10897 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
10898
10899 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
10900 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
10901 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
10902 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
10903 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
10904
10905       </div>
10906       <div class="tags">
10907
10908
10909         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10910
10911
10912       </div>
10913     </div>
10914     <div class="padding"></div>
10915
10916     <div class="entry">
10917       <div class="title">
10918         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10919       </div>
10920       <div class="date">
10921          4th February 2012
10922       </div>
10923       <div class="body">
10924         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
10925 publish the third beta version of
10926 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10927 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
10928 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
10929 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
10930 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
10931 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
10932 on the project announcement list.</p>
10933
10934 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
10935 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
10936
10937 <ul>
10938
10939 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
10940   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
10941   the installation.</li>
10942
10943 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
10944   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
10945
10946 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
10947   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
10948   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
10949
10950 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
10951   for the local system administrator is created during installation
10952   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
10953   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
10954   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
10955   up to date on the system.</li>
10956
10957 </ul>
10958
10959 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
10960 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
10961 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
10962 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
10963
10964 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
10965 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
10966 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
10967 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
10968 will see you there?</p>
10969
10970       </div>
10971       <div class="tags">
10972
10973
10974         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10975
10976
10977       </div>
10978     </div>
10979     <div class="padding"></div>
10980
10981     <div class="entry">
10982       <div class="title">
10983         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
10984       </div>
10985       <div class="date">
10986         27th January 2012
10987       </div>
10988       <div class="body">
10989         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
10990 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
10991 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10992 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
10993 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
10994 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
10995 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
10996
10997 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
10998 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
10999 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
11000 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
11001 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
11002 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
11003 not taken care of by this.</p>
11004
11005 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
11006 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
11007 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
11008 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
11009 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
11010 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
11011 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
11012 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
11013 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
11014 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
11015 firmware packages.</p>
11016
11017 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
11018 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
11019 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
11020 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
11021 initrd with extra firmware, the
11022 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
11023 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
11024 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
11025
11026 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
11027 network cards working.  For this,
11028 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
11029 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
11030 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
11031
11032 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
11033 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
11034 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
11035
11036 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
11037 try.</p>
11038
11039       </div>
11040       <div class="tags">
11041
11042
11043         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11044
11045
11046       </div>
11047     </div>
11048     <div class="padding"></div>
11049
11050     <div class="entry">
11051       <div class="title">
11052         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
11053       </div>
11054       <div class="date">
11055         25th January 2012
11056       </div>
11057       <div class="body">
11058         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
11059 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
11060 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
11061 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
11062 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
11063
11064 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
11065 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
11066 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
11067 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
11068 this is done, log on to the central server and run
11069 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
11070 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
11071 will look similar to this:</p>
11072
11073 <p><blockquote><pre>
11074 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
11075 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
11076 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
11077
11078 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
11079
11080 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11081 enter password: *******
11082 %
11083 </pre></blockquote></p>
11084
11085 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
11086 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
11087 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
11088 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
11089 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
11090 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
11091 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
11092 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
11093 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
11094 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
11095 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
11096 automatically.</p>
11097
11098 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
11099 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
11100
11101 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
11102 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
11103 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
11104
11105       </div>
11106       <div class="tags">
11107
11108
11109         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
11110
11111
11112       </div>
11113     </div>
11114     <div class="padding"></div>
11115
11116     <div class="entry">
11117       <div class="title">
11118         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
11119       </div>
11120       <div class="date">
11121         10th January 2012
11122       </div>
11123       <div class="body">
11124         <p>In the Squeeze version of
11125 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
11126 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
11127 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
11128 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
11129 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
11130 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
11131 first time.</p>
11132
11133 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
11134 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
11135 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
11136 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
11137
11138 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
11139 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
11140 new setting.</p>
11141
11142 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
11143 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
11144 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
11145
11146       </div>
11147       <div class="tags">
11148
11149
11150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11151
11152
11153       </div>
11154     </div>
11155     <div class="padding"></div>
11156
11157     <div class="entry">
11158       <div class="title">
11159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
11160       </div>
11161       <div class="date">
11162          7th January 2012
11163       </div>
11164       <div class="body">
11165         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
11166 the second beta version of
11167 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
11168 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
11169 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
11170 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
11171 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11172 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
11173 on the project announcement list.</p>
11174
11175       </div>
11176       <div class="tags">
11177
11178
11179         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11180
11181
11182       </div>
11183     </div>
11184     <div class="padding"></div>
11185
11186     <div class="entry">
11187       <div class="title">
11188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
11189       </div>
11190       <div class="date">
11191          3rd January 2012
11192       </div>
11193       <div class="body">
11194         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
11195 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
11196 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
11197 interesting.</p>
11198
11199 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
11200 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
11201 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
11202 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
11203 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
11204 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
11205 wrap up its tasks.</p>
11206
11207 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
11208 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
11209 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
11210 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
11211 because I was typing.</P>
11212
11213 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
11214 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
11215 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
11216 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
11217 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
11218 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
11219 generate entropy.</p>
11220
11221 <p>The fix is in
11222 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
11223 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
11224 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
11225 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
11226
11227       </div>
11228       <div class="tags">
11229
11230
11231         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11232
11233
11234       </div>
11235     </div>
11236     <div class="padding"></div>
11237
11238     <div class="entry">
11239       <div class="title">
11240         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
11241       </div>
11242       <div class="date">
11243         21st November 2011
11244       </div>
11245       <div class="body">
11246         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
11247 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
11248 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
11249 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
11250 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
11251 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
11252 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
11253 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
11254 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
11255 the tools to do so.</p>
11256
11257 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
11258 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
11259 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
11260 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
11261
11262 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
11263 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
11264 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
11265 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
11266 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
11267 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
11268 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
11269 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
11270
11271 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
11272 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
11273 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
11274
11275 <p><pre>
11276 #!/usr/bin/perl
11277 use strict;
11278 use warnings;
11279 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
11280 BEGIN {
11281     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
11282     my %rhelmodules = (
11283         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
11284         );
11285     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
11286         eval "use $module;";
11287         if ($@) {
11288             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
11289             system("yum install -y $pkg");
11290             eval "use $module;";
11291         }
11292     }
11293 }
11294 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
11295
11296 upgrade_dell();
11297
11298 exit 0;
11299
11300 sub run_firmware_script {
11301     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
11302     unless ($script) {
11303         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
11304         exit 1
11305     }
11306     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
11307
11308     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
11309         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
11310     } else {
11311         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
11312     }
11313 }
11314
11315 sub run_firmware_scripts {
11316     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
11317     # Run firmware packages
11318     for my $dir (@dirs) {
11319         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
11320         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
11321         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
11322             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
11323             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
11324         }
11325         closedir $dh;
11326     }
11327 }
11328
11329 sub download {
11330     my $url = shift;
11331     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
11332     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
11333 }
11334
11335 sub upgrade_dell {
11336     my @dirs;
11337     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11338     chomp $product;
11339
11340     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
11341
11342         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
11343         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
11344
11345         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
11346             CLEANUP => 1
11347             );
11348         chdir($tmpdir);
11349         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
11350         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
11351         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
11352         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
11353         my $fwopts = "-q";
11354         if (@paths) {
11355             for my $url (@paths) {
11356                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
11357             }
11358             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
11359         } else {
11360             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
11361             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
11362         }
11363         chdir('/');
11364     } else {
11365         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
11366         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
11367     }
11368 }
11369
11370 sub fetch_dell_fw {
11371     my $path = shift;
11372     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
11373     download($url);
11374 }
11375
11376 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
11377 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
11378 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
11379 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
11380     my $filename = shift;
11381
11382     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11383     chomp $product;
11384     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
11385
11386     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
11387
11388     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
11389     my @paths;
11390     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
11391         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
11392         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
11393         my $oscode;
11394         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
11395             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
11396         } else {
11397             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
11398         }
11399         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
11400         {
11401             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
11402         }
11403     }
11404     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
11405         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
11406
11407         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
11408         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
11409
11410         my $cpath = $component->{path};
11411         for my $path (@paths) {
11412             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
11413                 push(@paths, $cpath);
11414             }
11415         }
11416     }
11417     return @paths;
11418 }
11419 </pre>
11420
11421 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
11422 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
11423 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
11424 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
11425 outdated.</p>
11426
11427       </div>
11428       <div class="tags">
11429
11430
11431         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>.
11432
11433
11434       </div>
11435     </div>
11436     <div class="padding"></div>
11437
11438     <div class="entry">
11439       <div class="title">
11440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
11441       </div>
11442       <div class="date">
11443          7th October 2011
11444       </div>
11445       <div class="body">
11446         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
11447 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
11448 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
11449 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
11450 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
11451 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
11452 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
11453 models.</p>
11454
11455 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
11456 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
11457 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
11458 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
11459
11460 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
11461 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
11462 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
11463 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
11464 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
11465 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
11466 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
11467 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
11468 distributed.</p>
11469
11470 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
11471
11472 <ul>
11473
11474 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
11475   other relevant equipment.</li>
11476
11477 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
11478
11479 </ul>
11480
11481 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
11482 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
11483 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
11484 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
11485 books available.</p>
11486
11487 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
11488 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
11489 libraries. :)</p>
11490
11491       </div>
11492       <div class="tags">
11493
11494
11495         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
11496
11497
11498       </div>
11499     </div>
11500     <div class="padding"></div>
11501
11502     <div class="entry">
11503       <div class="title">
11504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
11505       </div>
11506       <div class="date">
11507         17th September 2011
11508       </div>
11509       <div class="body">
11510         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
11511 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
11512 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
11513 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
11514 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
11515 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
11516 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
11517 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
11518
11519 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
11520
11521 <blockquote><pre>
11522 #!/bin/sh
11523 # apt-get install lsdvd
11524 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11525 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
11526 </pre></blockquote>
11527
11528 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
11529 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
11530 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
11531 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
11532
11533 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
11534 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
11535 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
11536 back as an ISO.
11537
11538 <blockquote><pre>
11539 #!/bin/sh
11540 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
11541 set -e
11542 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
11543 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11544 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
11545 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
11546 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
11547 </pre></blockquote>
11548
11549 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
11550
11551 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
11552 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
11553 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
11554 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
11555 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
11556
11557 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
11558 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
11559 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
11560 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
11561 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
11562 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
11563
11564       </div>
11565       <div class="tags">
11566
11567
11568         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11569
11570
11571       </div>
11572     </div>
11573     <div class="padding"></div>
11574
11575     <div class="entry">
11576       <div class="title">
11577         <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>
11578       </div>
11579       <div class="date">
11580          4th August 2011
11581       </div>
11582       <div class="body">
11583         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
11584 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
11585 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
11586 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
11587 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
11588 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
11589 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
11590 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
11591 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
11592
11593 <p><blockquote>
11594 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
11595 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
11596 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
11597 </blockquote></p>
11598
11599 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
11600 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
11601 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
11602 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
11603 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
11604 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
11605 hard to explain.</p>
11606
11607 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
11608 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
11609 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
11610 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
11611 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
11612 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
11613 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
11614 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
11615 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
11616 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
11617 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
11618 mode).</p>
11619
11620 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
11621 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
11622 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
11623 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
11624 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
11625 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
11626 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
11627 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
11628 after visiting single user mode.</p>
11629
11630 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
11631 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
11632 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
11633 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
11634 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
11635 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
11636 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
11637 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
11638
11639 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
11640 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
11641 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
11642
11643       </div>
11644       <div class="tags">
11645
11646
11647         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>.
11648
11649
11650       </div>
11651     </div>
11652     <div class="padding"></div>
11653
11654     <div class="entry">
11655       <div class="title">
11656         <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>
11657       </div>
11658       <div class="date">
11659         30th July 2011
11660       </div>
11661       <div class="body">
11662         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
11663 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
11664 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
11665 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
11666 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
11667 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
11668 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
11669 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
11670 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
11671 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
11672 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
11673 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
11674 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
11675
11676 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
11677 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
11678 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
11679 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
11680 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
11681 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
11682 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
11683 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
11684 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
11685
11686 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
11687 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
11688 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
11689 is presented.</p>
11690
11691 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
11692 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
11693 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
11694 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
11695 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
11696 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
11697 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
11698 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
11699 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
11700 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
11701 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
11702 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
11703 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
11704 find time to push this forward.</p>
11705
11706       </div>
11707       <div class="tags">
11708
11709
11710         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>.
11711
11712
11713       </div>
11714     </div>
11715     <div class="padding"></div>
11716
11717     <div class="entry">
11718       <div class="title">
11719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
11720       </div>
11721       <div class="date">
11722         29th July 2011
11723       </div>
11724       <div class="body">
11725         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
11726 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
11727 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
11728 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
11729 issues.</p>
11730
11731 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
11732 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
11733 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
11734
11735 <ol>
11736
11737 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
11738 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
11739 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
11740 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
11741 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
11742 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
11743 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
11744 Debian.</li>
11745
11746 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
11747 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
11748 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
11749 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
11750 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
11751 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
11752 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
11753 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
11754 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
11755 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
11756 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
11757 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
11758 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
11759
11760 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
11761 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
11762 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
11763 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
11764 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
11765 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
11766 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
11767 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
11768 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
11769 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
11770
11771 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
11772 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
11773 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
11774 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
11775 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
11776 latter behaviour.</li>
11777
11778 </ol>
11779
11780 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
11781 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
11782 it do not matter much.</p>
11783
11784 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
11785 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
11786 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
11787
11788       </div>
11789       <div class="tags">
11790
11791
11792         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>.
11793
11794
11795       </div>
11796     </div>
11797     <div class="padding"></div>
11798
11799     <div class="entry">
11800       <div class="title">
11801         <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>
11802       </div>
11803       <div class="date">
11804         26th July 2011
11805       </div>
11806       <div class="body">
11807         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
11808 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
11809 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
11810 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
11811 security support for a few years.</p>
11812
11813 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
11814 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
11815 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
11816 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
11817 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
11818 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
11819 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
11820 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
11821 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
11822 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
11823 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
11824 easier in the future.</p>
11825
11826 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
11827 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
11828 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
11829 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
11830 do not have time for.</p>
11831
11832       </div>
11833       <div class="tags">
11834
11835
11836         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>.
11837
11838
11839       </div>
11840     </div>
11841     <div class="padding"></div>
11842
11843     <div class="entry">
11844       <div class="title">
11845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
11846       </div>
11847       <div class="date">
11848         20th June 2011
11849       </div>
11850       <div class="body">
11851         <p>Reading
11852 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
11853 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
11854 parts of the
11855 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
11856 and
11857 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
11858 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
11859 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
11860 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
11861
11862       </div>
11863       <div class="tags">
11864
11865
11866         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
11867
11868
11869       </div>
11870     </div>
11871     <div class="padding"></div>
11872
11873     <div class="entry">
11874       <div class="title">
11875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
11876       </div>
11877       <div class="date">
11878         30th April 2011
11879       </div>
11880       <div class="body">
11881         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
11882 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
11883 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
11884 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
11885 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
11886 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
11887 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
11888 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
11889 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
11890 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
11891
11892 <p>Where is it?  Visit
11893 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
11894 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
11895 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
11896 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
11897
11898       </div>
11899       <div class="tags">
11900
11901
11902         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
11903
11904
11905       </div>
11906     </div>
11907     <div class="padding"></div>
11908
11909     <div class="entry">
11910       <div class="title">
11911         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
11912       </div>
11913       <div class="date">
11914         29th April 2011
11915       </div>
11916       <div class="body">
11917         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
11918 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
11919 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
11920 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
11921 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
11922 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
11923 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
11924 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
11925 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
11926 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
11927 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
11928 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
11929 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
11930
11931 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
11932 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
11933 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
11934 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
11935 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
11936 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
11937 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
11938 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
11939 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
11940 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
11941 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
11942 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
11943 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
11944
11945 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
11946 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
11947 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
11948 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
11949 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
11950 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
11951 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
11952 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
11953 it.</p>
11954
11955 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
11956 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
11957 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
11958 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
11959 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
11960 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
11961 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
11962
11963 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
11964 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
11965 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
11966 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
11967 and range= options.</p>
11968
11969 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
11970 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
11971 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
11972 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
11973 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
11974 to best handle this.  I've noticed
11975 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
11976 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
11977 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
11978 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
11979
11980 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
11981 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
11982 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
11983 discussions instead of only
11984 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
11985 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
11986 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
11987 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
11988 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
11989 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
11990
11991       </div>
11992       <div class="tags">
11993
11994
11995         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
11996
11997
11998       </div>
11999     </div>
12000     <div class="padding"></div>
12001
12002     <div class="entry">
12003       <div class="title">
12004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
12005       </div>
12006       <div class="date">
12007          6th April 2011
12008       </div>
12009       <div class="body">
12010         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
12011 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
12012 A few days ago the project
12013 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
12014 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
12015 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
12016 into Gnash.</p>
12017
12018       </div>
12019       <div class="tags">
12020
12021
12022         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12023
12024
12025       </div>
12026     </div>
12027     <div class="padding"></div>
12028
12029     <div class="entry">
12030       <div class="title">
12031         <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>
12032       </div>
12033       <div class="date">
12034          3rd April 2011
12035       </div>
12036       <div class="body">
12037         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
12038 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
12039 update in English.</p>
12040
12041 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
12042 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
12043 of the British service
12044 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
12045 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
12046 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
12047 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
12048 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
12049 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
12050 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
12051 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
12052 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
12053 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
12054 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
12055 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
12056 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
12057
12058 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
12059 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
12060 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
12061 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
12062 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
12063 public infrastructure.</p>
12064
12065 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
12066 such service?</p>
12067
12068       </div>
12069       <div class="tags">
12070
12071
12072         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>.
12073
12074
12075       </div>
12076     </div>
12077     <div class="padding"></div>
12078
12079     <div class="entry">
12080       <div class="title">
12081         <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>
12082       </div>
12083       <div class="date">
12084         28th January 2011
12085       </div>
12086       <div class="body">
12087         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
12088 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
12089 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
12090 available on the Internet, and check our locally
12091 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
12092 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
12093 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
12094 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
12095 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
12096 out which security holes were present in our free software
12097 collection.</p>
12098
12099 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
12100 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
12101 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
12102 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
12103 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
12104 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
12105 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
12106 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
12107 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
12108 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
12109 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
12110 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
12111 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
12112 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
12113 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
12114 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
12115
12116 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
12117 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
12118 check out, one could look up
12119 <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
12120 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
12121 The most recent one is
12122 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
12123 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
12124 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
12125
12126 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
12127 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
12128 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
12129 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
12130 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
12131 security issues out.</p>
12132
12133 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
12134 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
12135 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
12136 RHEL is providing
12137 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
12138 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
12139 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
12140
12141 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
12142 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
12143 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
12144 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
12145 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
12146 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
12147 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
12148 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
12149 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
12150 established soon.</p>
12151
12152 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
12153 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
12154 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
12155 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
12156 for their packages.</p>
12157
12158       </div>
12159       <div class="tags">
12160
12161
12162         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>.
12163
12164
12165       </div>
12166     </div>
12167     <div class="padding"></div>
12168
12169     <div class="entry">
12170       <div class="title">
12171         <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>
12172       </div>
12173       <div class="date">
12174         23rd January 2011
12175       </div>
12176       <div class="body">
12177         <p>In the
12178 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
12179 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
12180 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
12181 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
12182 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
12183 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
12184 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
12185 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
12186 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
12187 one of my machines like this:</p>
12188
12189 <pre>
12190 loaded modules:
12191 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
12192 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
12193 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
12194 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
12195 10de:03ec pata_amd
12196 10de:03f6 sata_nv
12197 1022:1103 k8temp
12198 109e:036e bttv
12199 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
12200 11ab:4364 sky2
12201 </pre>
12202
12203 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
12204 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
12205
12206 <pre>
12207 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
12208     echo loaded pci modules:
12209     (
12210         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
12211         for address in * ; do
12212             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12213                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12214                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12215                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12216                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
12217                     echo "$id $module"
12218                 fi
12219             fi
12220         done
12221     )
12222     echo
12223 fi
12224 </pre>
12225
12226 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
12227 mappings:</p>
12228
12229 <pre>
12230 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
12231     echo loaded usb modules:
12232     (
12233         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
12234         for address in * ; do
12235             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12236                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12237                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12238                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12239                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
12240                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
12241                         echo "$id $module"
12242                     fi
12243                 fi
12244             fi
12245         done
12246     )
12247     echo
12248 fi
12249 </pre>
12250
12251 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
12252 well.</p>
12253
12254       </div>
12255       <div class="tags">
12256
12257
12258         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>.
12259
12260
12261       </div>
12262     </div>
12263     <div class="padding"></div>
12264
12265     <div class="entry">
12266       <div class="title">
12267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
12268       </div>
12269       <div class="date">
12270         16th January 2011
12271       </div>
12272       <div class="body">
12273         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
12274 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
12275 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
12276 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
12277 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
12278 the Wikipedia article on
12279 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
12280 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
12281 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
12282 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
12283 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
12284 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
12285 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
12286 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
12287 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
12288 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
12289 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
12290 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
12291
12292 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
12293 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
12294 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
12295 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
12296 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
12297 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
12298 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
12299 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
12300 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
12301 from last week</a>.</p>
12302
12303 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
12304 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
12305 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
12306 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
12307 was without royalties and license terms, check out
12308 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12309 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
12310
12311 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
12312 available from
12313 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
12314 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
12315 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
12316
12317 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
12318 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
12319 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
12320 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
12321
12322       </div>
12323       <div class="tags">
12324
12325
12326         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12327
12328
12329       </div>
12330     </div>
12331     <div class="padding"></div>
12332
12333     <div class="entry">
12334       <div class="title">
12335         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
12336       </div>
12337       <div class="date">
12338         12th January 2011
12339       </div>
12340       <div class="body">
12341         <p>Today I discovered
12342 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
12343 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
12344 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
12345 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
12346 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
12347 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
12348 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
12349 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12350 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
12351 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
12352 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
12353 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
12354 on the Google announcement is available from
12355 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
12356 A good read. :)</p>
12357
12358 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
12359 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
12360 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
12361 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
12362 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
12363 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
12364 browsers support H.264, and others support
12365 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
12366 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
12367 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
12368 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
12369 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
12370 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
12371 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
12372 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
12373
12374 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
12375 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
12376 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
12377 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
12378 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
12379 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
12380 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
12381
12382 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
12383 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
12384 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
12385 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
12386 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
12387 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
12388 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
12389
12390 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
12391 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
12392 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
12393 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
12394 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
12395 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
12396 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
12397
12398 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
12399 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
12400 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
12401 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
12402 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
12403 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
12404 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
12405 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
12406 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
12407 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
12408 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
12409 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
12410 I guess time will tell.</p>
12411
12412 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
12413 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
12414 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
12415
12416       </div>
12417       <div class="tags">
12418
12419
12420         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12421
12422
12423       </div>
12424     </div>
12425     <div class="padding"></div>
12426
12427     <div class="entry">
12428       <div class="title">
12429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
12430       </div>
12431       <div class="date">
12432         30th December 2010
12433       </div>
12434       <div class="body">
12435         <p>After trying to
12436 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
12437 Ogg Theora</a> to
12438 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
12439 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
12440 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
12441 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
12442 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
12443 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
12444 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
12445
12446 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
12447 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
12448 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
12449 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
12450 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
12451 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
12452 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
12453
12454 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
12455 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
12456
12457       </div>
12458       <div class="tags">
12459
12460
12461         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12462
12463
12464       </div>
12465     </div>
12466     <div class="padding"></div>
12467
12468     <div class="entry">
12469       <div class="title">
12470         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
12471       </div>
12472       <div class="date">
12473         27th December 2010
12474       </div>
12475       <div class="body">
12476         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
12477 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
12478 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
12479 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
12480 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
12481 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
12482 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
12483 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
12484
12485 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
12486 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
12487 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
12488 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
12489 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
12490 page</a>.</p>
12491
12492 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
12493 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
12494 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
12495 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
12496 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
12497 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
12498 specification on equal terms.</p>
12499
12500 <blockquote>
12501
12502 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
12503 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
12504 open standard:</p>
12505
12506 <ul>
12507
12508 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12509 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12510 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
12511 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
12512
12513 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
12514 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
12515 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
12516 nominal fee.</li>
12517
12518 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
12519 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
12520 free basis.</li>
12521
12522 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
12523
12524 </ul>
12525 </blockquote>
12526
12527 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
12528 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
12529 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
12530 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
12531 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
12532 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
12533 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
12534
12535 <blockquote>
12536
12537 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
12538
12539 <ol>
12540
12541 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
12542 tilgængelig.</li>
12543
12544 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
12545 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
12546
12547 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
12548 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
12549
12550 </ol>
12551
12552 </blockquote>
12553
12554 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
12555 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
12556
12557 <blockquote>
12558
12559 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
12560
12561 <ol>
12562
12563 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
12564 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
12565
12566 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
12567 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
12568 Standard themselves;</li>
12569
12570 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
12571 any party or in any business model;</li>
12572
12573 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
12574 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
12575 parties;</li>
12576
12577 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
12578 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
12579 parties.</li>
12580
12581 </ol>
12582
12583 </blockquote>
12584
12585 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
12586 its
12587 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
12588 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
12589
12590 <blockquote>
12591 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
12592
12593 <ul>
12594
12595 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
12596   democratic:
12597
12598          <ul>
12599
12600          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
12601             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
12602             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
12603             and managed.</li>
12604
12605          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
12606             method, can be changed through input from all
12607             participants.</li>
12608
12609          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
12610             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
12611
12612          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
12613             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
12614
12615          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
12616             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
12617             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
12618
12619          </ul>
12620
12621 </li>
12622
12623 </ul>
12624
12625 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
12626 <ul>
12627
12628 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
12629   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
12630   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
12631   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
12632   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
12633
12634 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
12635   a technical or economic barriers</li>
12636
12637 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
12638   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
12639   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
12640   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
12641   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
12642   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
12643   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
12644   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
12645   intended to function.</li>
12646
12647 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
12648   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
12649   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
12650
12651 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
12652   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
12653   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
12654   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
12655   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
12656   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
12657   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
12658   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
12659
12660       <ul>
12661
12662       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
12663         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
12664         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
12665
12666       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
12667         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
12668         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
12669         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
12670
12671       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
12672         licensor</li>
12673
12674       </ul>
12675 </li>
12676
12677 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
12678   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
12679   or restricted licensing terms</li>
12680
12681 </ul>
12682
12683 </blockquote>
12684
12685 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
12686 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
12687 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
12688 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
12689 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
12690 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
12691 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
12692 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
12693 Standards.</p>
12694
12695       </div>
12696       <div class="tags">
12697
12698
12699         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12700
12701
12702       </div>
12703     </div>
12704     <div class="padding"></div>
12705
12706     <div class="entry">
12707       <div class="title">
12708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
12709       </div>
12710       <div class="date">
12711         25th December 2010
12712       </div>
12713       <div class="body">
12714         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
12715 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
12716
12717 <blockquote>
12718
12719 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
12720 as follows:</p>
12721
12722 <ol>
12723
12724 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
12725 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
12726 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
12727
12728 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12729 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12730 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
12731 parties.</li>
12732
12733 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
12734 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
12735 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
12736
12737 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
12738 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
12739
12740 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
12741
12742 </ol>
12743
12744 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
12745 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
12746 products based on the standard.</p>
12747 </blockquote>
12748
12749 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
12750 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
12751 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
12752 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
12753 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
12754 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
12755 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
12756 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
12757
12758 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
12759
12760 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
12761 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
12762 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
12763 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
12764 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
12765 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
12766 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
12767 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
12768 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
12769 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
12770 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
12771 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
12772 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
12773 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
12774
12775 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
12776
12777 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
12778 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
12779 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
12780 documentation indicating this.</p>
12781
12782 <p>According to
12783 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
12784 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
12785 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
12786 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
12787 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
12788 report is correct.</p>
12789
12790 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
12791
12792 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
12793 container format</a> and both the
12794 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
12795 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
12796 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
12797
12798 <blockquote>
12799
12800 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
12801 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
12802 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
12803 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
12804 specification compliance.
12805
12806 </blockquote>
12807
12808 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
12809 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
12810 this is the term:<p>
12811
12812 <blockquote>
12813
12814 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
12815 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
12816 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
12817 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
12818 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
12819 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
12820 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
12821 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
12822 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
12823 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
12824 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
12825 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
12826
12827 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
12828 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
12829 </blockquote>
12830
12831 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
12832 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
12833 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
12834 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
12835 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
12836
12837 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
12838
12839 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
12840 Theora format.
12841 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
12842 and
12843 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
12844 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
12845 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
12846 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
12847 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
12848 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
12849 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
12850 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
12851
12852 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
12853
12854 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
12855
12856 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
12857
12858 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
12859 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
12860 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
12861 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
12862 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
12863 this.</p>
12864
12865 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
12866 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
12867
12868       </div>
12869       <div class="tags">
12870
12871
12872         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12873
12874
12875       </div>
12876     </div>
12877     <div class="padding"></div>
12878
12879     <div class="entry">
12880       <div class="title">
12881         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
12882       </div>
12883       <div class="date">
12884         25th December 2010
12885       </div>
12886       <div class="body">
12887         <p>A few days ago
12888 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
12889 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
12890 2.0 of
12891 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
12892 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
12893 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
12894 Nothing very surprising there, given
12895 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
12896 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
12897 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
12898 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
12899 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
12900 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
12901 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
12902 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
12903 standard definition from its content.</p>
12904
12905 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
12906 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
12907 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
12908 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
12909 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
12910 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
12911 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
12912 background information about that story is available in
12913 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
12914 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
12915
12916 <blockquote>
12917 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
12918 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
12919 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
12920
12921 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
12922
12923 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
12924
12925 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
12926
12927 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
12928
12929 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
12930
12931 <p>
12932 <ul>
12933 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
12934 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
12935 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
12936 </ul>
12937 </p>
12938
12939 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
12940
12941 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
12942
12943 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
12944
12945 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
12946
12947 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
12948
12949
12950 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
12951 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
12952 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
12953 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
12954 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
12955 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
12956
12957 </p>
12958
12959 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
12960
12961 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
12962
12963 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
12964
12965 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
12966
12967 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
12968
12969 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
12970
12971 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
12972
12973 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
12974
12975 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
12976
12977 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
12978
12979 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
12980
12981 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
12982
12983 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
12984
12985 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
12986
12987 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
12988
12989 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
12990
12991 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
12992
12993 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
12994
12995 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
12996
12997 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
12998
12999 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
13000
13001 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
13002
13003 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
13004
13005 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
13006
13007 <p>On security:</p>
13008
13009 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
13010
13011 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
13012
13013 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
13014
13015 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
13016
13017 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
13018
13019 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
13020
13021 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
13022
13023 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
13024
13025 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
13026
13027 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
13028
13029 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
13030
13031 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
13032
13033 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
13034
13035 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
13036
13037 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
13038
13039 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
13040
13041 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
13042
13043 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
13044
13045 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
13046
13047 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
13048
13049 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
13050
13051 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
13052
13053 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
13054
13055 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
13056
13057 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
13058
13059 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
13060
13061 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
13062
13063 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
13064
13065 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
13066
13067 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
13068
13069 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
13070
13071 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
13072
13073 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
13074
13075 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
13076
13077 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
13078
13079 <p>Cordially,<br>
13080 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
13081 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
13082 </blockquote>
13083
13084       </div>
13085       <div class="tags">
13086
13087
13088         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13089
13090
13091       </div>
13092     </div>
13093     <div class="padding"></div>
13094
13095     <div class="entry">
13096       <div class="title">
13097         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
13098       </div>
13099       <div class="date">
13100         25th December 2010
13101       </div>
13102       <div class="body">
13103         <p>Half a year ago I
13104 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
13105 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
13106 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
13107 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
13108
13109 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
13110 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
13111 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
13112 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
13113 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
13114 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
13115 got such a great test tool available.</p>
13116
13117       </div>
13118       <div class="tags">
13119
13120
13121         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13122
13123
13124       </div>
13125     </div>
13126     <div class="padding"></div>
13127
13128     <div class="entry">
13129       <div class="title">
13130         <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>
13131       </div>
13132       <div class="date">
13133         22nd December 2010
13134       </div>
13135       <div class="body">
13136         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
13137 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
13138 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
13139 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
13140 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
13141 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
13142 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
13143 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
13144 university.</p>
13145
13146 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
13147 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
13148 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
13149 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
13150 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
13151 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
13152 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
13153 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
13154
13155 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
13156 I perform on a new model.</p>
13157
13158 <ul>
13159
13160 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
13161 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
13162 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
13163
13164 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
13165 installation, X.org is working.</li>
13166
13167 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
13168 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
13169 reported by the program.</li>
13170
13171 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
13172 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
13173 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
13174 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
13175 normally test this by playing
13176 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
13177 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
13178
13179 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
13180 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13181
13182 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
13183 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13184
13185 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
13186 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
13187
13188 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
13189 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
13190 few.</li>
13191
13192 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
13193 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
13194 notice this.</li>
13195
13196 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
13197 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
13198 resume.</li>
13199
13200 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
13201 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
13202 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
13203 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
13204 not.</li>
13205
13206 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
13207 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
13208 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
13209 existence.</li>
13210
13211 </ul>
13212
13213 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
13214 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
13215 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
13216 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
13217 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
13218 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
13219 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
13220 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
13221
13222       </div>
13223       <div class="tags">
13224
13225
13226         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>.
13227
13228
13229       </div>
13230     </div>
13231     <div class="padding"></div>
13232
13233     <div class="entry">
13234       <div class="title">
13235         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
13236       </div>
13237       <div class="date">
13238         11th December 2010
13239       </div>
13240       <div class="body">
13241         <p>As I continue to explore
13242 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
13243 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
13244 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
13245
13246 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
13247 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
13248 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
13249 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
13250 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
13251 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
13252 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
13253 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
13254 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
13255 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
13256 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
13257 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
13258 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
13259 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
13260 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
13261 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
13262 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
13263 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
13264 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
13265 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
13266
13267 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
13268 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
13269 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
13270 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
13271 If the Skolelinux foundation
13272 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
13273 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
13274 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
13275 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
13276 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
13277 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
13278 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
13279 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
13280
13281 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
13282 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
13283 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
13284 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
13285 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
13286 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
13287 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
13288 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
13289 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
13290 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
13291 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
13292 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
13293 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
13294 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
13295 currencies.</p>
13296
13297 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
13298 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
13299 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
13300 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
13301 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
13302 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
13303 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
13304 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
13305 BitCoins.  Check out
13306 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
13307 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
13308 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
13309 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
13310 yet.</p>
13311
13312 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
13313 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
13314 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
13315 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
13316 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
13317
13318       </div>
13319       <div class="tags">
13320
13321
13322         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>.
13323
13324
13325       </div>
13326     </div>
13327     <div class="padding"></div>
13328
13329     <div class="entry">
13330       <div class="title">
13331         <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>
13332       </div>
13333       <div class="date">
13334         10th December 2010
13335       </div>
13336       <div class="body">
13337         <p>With this weeks lawless
13338 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
13339 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
13340 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
13341 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
13342 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
13343 A blog post from
13344 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
13345 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
13346 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
13347 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
13348 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
13349 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
13350 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
13351
13352 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
13353 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
13354 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
13355 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
13356 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
13357 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
13358 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
13359 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
13360 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
13361 Debian</a> soon.</p>
13362
13363 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
13364 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
13365 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
13366 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
13367 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
13368 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
13369 you can even get
13370 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
13371 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
13372 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
13373 on the current exchange rates.</p>
13374
13375 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
13376 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
13377 donations to the address
13378 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
13379
13380       </div>
13381       <div class="tags">
13382
13383
13384         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>.
13385
13386
13387       </div>
13388     </div>
13389     <div class="padding"></div>
13390
13391     <div class="entry">
13392       <div class="title">
13393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
13394       </div>
13395       <div class="date">
13396          9th December 2010
13397       </div>
13398       <div class="body">
13399         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
13400 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
13401 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
13402 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
13403 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
13404 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
13405 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
13406 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
13407 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
13408 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
13409 operational.</p>
13410
13411 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
13412 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
13413 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
13414 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
13415 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
13416 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
13417 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
13418
13419       </div>
13420       <div class="tags">
13421
13422
13423         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
13424
13425
13426       </div>
13427     </div>
13428     <div class="padding"></div>
13429
13430     <div class="entry">
13431       <div class="title">
13432         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
13433       </div>
13434       <div class="date">
13435         29th November 2010
13436       </div>
13437       <div class="body">
13438         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13439 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
13440 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
13441 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
13442 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
13443 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13444
13445 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
13446 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
13447 will hold its
13448 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
13449 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
13450 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
13451 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
13452 vote this year.</p>
13453
13454       </div>
13455       <div class="tags">
13456
13457
13458         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13459
13460
13461       </div>
13462     </div>
13463     <div class="padding"></div>
13464
13465     <div class="entry">
13466       <div class="title">
13467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
13468       </div>
13469       <div class="date">
13470         27th November 2010
13471       </div>
13472       <div class="body">
13473         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
13474 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
13475 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
13476 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
13477 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
13478 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
13479 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
13480 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
13481
13482 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
13483 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13484 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
13485 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
13486 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
13487 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
13488 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
13489 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
13490 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
13491 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
13492 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
13493
13494 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
13495 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
13496 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
13497 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
13498 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
13499 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
13500 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
13501 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
13502 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
13503 what is going on.</p>
13504
13505       </div>
13506       <div class="tags">
13507
13508
13509         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>.
13510
13511
13512       </div>
13513     </div>
13514     <div class="padding"></div>
13515
13516     <div class="entry">
13517       <div class="title">
13518         <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>
13519       </div>
13520       <div class="date">
13521         22nd November 2010
13522       </div>
13523       <div class="body">
13524         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
13525 upgrade testing of the
13526 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13527 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
13528 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
13529 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
13530
13531 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13532
13533 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13534
13535 <blockquote><p>
13536   apache2.2-bin
13537   aptdaemon
13538   baobab
13539   binfmt-support
13540   browser-plugin-gnash
13541   cheese-common
13542   cli-common
13543   cups-pk-helper
13544   dmz-cursor-theme
13545   empathy
13546   empathy-common
13547   freedesktop-sound-theme
13548   freeglut3
13549   gconf-defaults-service
13550   gdm-themes
13551   gedit-plugins
13552   geoclue
13553   geoclue-hostip
13554   geoclue-localnet
13555   geoclue-manual
13556   geoclue-yahoo
13557   gnash
13558   gnash-common
13559   gnome
13560   gnome-backgrounds
13561   gnome-cards-data
13562   gnome-codec-install
13563   gnome-core
13564   gnome-desktop-environment
13565   gnome-disk-utility
13566   gnome-screenshot
13567   gnome-search-tool
13568   gnome-session-canberra
13569   gnome-system-log
13570   gnome-themes-extras
13571   gnome-themes-more
13572   gnome-user-share
13573   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13574   gstreamer0.10-tools
13575   gtk2-engines
13576   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13577   gtk2-engines-smooth
13578   hamster-applet
13579   libapache2-mod-dnssd
13580   libapr1
13581   libaprutil1
13582   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
13583   libaprutil1-ldap
13584   libart2.0-cil
13585   libboost-date-time1.42.0
13586   libboost-python1.42.0
13587   libboost-thread1.42.0
13588   libchamplain-0.4-0
13589   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
13590   libcheese-gtk18
13591   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13592   libcryptui0
13593   libdiscid0
13594   libelf1
13595   libepc-1.0-2
13596   libepc-common
13597   libepc-ui-1.0-2
13598   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13599   libfreerdp0
13600   libgconf2.0-cil
13601   libgdata-common
13602   libgdata7
13603   libgdu-gtk0
13604   libgee2
13605   libgeoclue0
13606   libgexiv2-0
13607   libgif4
13608   libglade2.0-cil
13609   libglib2.0-cil
13610   libgmime2.4-cil
13611   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13612   libgnome2.24-cil
13613   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
13614   libgpod-common
13615   libgpod4
13616   libgtk2.0-cil
13617   libgtkglext1
13618   libgtksourceview2.0-common
13619   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13620   libmono-addins0.2-cil
13621   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
13622   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13623   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
13624   libmono-posix2.0-cil
13625   libmono-security2.0-cil
13626   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13627   libmono-system2.0-cil
13628   libmtp8
13629   libmusicbrainz3-6
13630   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
13631   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
13632   libopal3.6.8
13633   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
13634   libpt2.6.7
13635   libpython2.6
13636   librpm1
13637   librpmio1
13638   libsdl1.2debian
13639   libsrtp0
13640   libssh-4
13641   libtelepathy-farsight0
13642   libtelepathy-glib0
13643   libtidy-0.99-0
13644   media-player-info
13645   mesa-utils
13646   mono-2.0-gac
13647   mono-gac
13648   mono-runtime
13649   nautilus-sendto
13650   nautilus-sendto-empathy
13651   p7zip-full
13652   pkg-config
13653   python-aptdaemon
13654   python-aptdaemon-gtk
13655   python-axiom
13656   python-beautifulsoup
13657   python-bugbuddy
13658   python-clientform
13659   python-coherence
13660   python-configobj
13661   python-crypto
13662   python-cupshelpers
13663   python-elementtree
13664   python-epsilon
13665   python-evolution
13666   python-feedparser
13667   python-gdata
13668   python-gdbm
13669   python-gst0.10
13670   python-gtkglext1
13671   python-gtksourceview2
13672   python-httplib2
13673   python-louie
13674   python-mako
13675   python-markupsafe
13676   python-mechanize
13677   python-nevow
13678   python-notify
13679   python-opengl
13680   python-openssl
13681   python-pam
13682   python-pkg-resources
13683   python-pyasn1
13684   python-pysqlite2
13685   python-rdflib
13686   python-serial
13687   python-tagpy
13688   python-twisted-bin
13689   python-twisted-conch
13690   python-twisted-core
13691   python-twisted-web
13692   python-utidylib
13693   python-webkit
13694   python-xdg
13695   python-zope.interface
13696   remmina
13697   remmina-plugin-data
13698   remmina-plugin-rdp
13699   remmina-plugin-vnc
13700   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13701   rhythmbox-plugins
13702   rpm-common
13703   rpm2cpio
13704   seahorse-plugins
13705   shotwell
13706   software-center
13707   system-config-printer-udev
13708   telepathy-gabble
13709   telepathy-mission-control-5
13710   telepathy-salut
13711   tomboy
13712   totem
13713   totem-coherence
13714   totem-mozilla
13715   totem-plugins
13716   transmission-common
13717   xdg-user-dirs
13718   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
13719   xserver-xephyr
13720 </p></blockquote>
13721
13722 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13723
13724 <blockquote><p>
13725   cheese
13726   ekiga
13727   eog
13728   epiphany-extensions
13729   evolution-exchange
13730   fast-user-switch-applet
13731   file-roller
13732   gcalctool
13733   gconf-editor
13734   gdm
13735   gedit
13736   gedit-common
13737   gnome-games
13738   gnome-games-data
13739   gnome-nettool
13740   gnome-system-tools
13741   gnome-themes
13742   gnuchess
13743   gucharmap
13744   guile-1.8-libs
13745   libavahi-ui0
13746   libdmx1
13747   libgalago3
13748   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13749   libgtksourceview2.0-0
13750   liblircclient0
13751   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
13752   libspeexdsp1
13753   libsvga1
13754   rhythmbox
13755   seahorse
13756   sound-juicer
13757   system-config-printer
13758   totem-common
13759   transmission-gtk
13760   vinagre
13761   vino
13762 </p></blockquote>
13763
13764 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13765
13766 <blockquote><p>
13767   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13768 </p></blockquote>
13769
13770 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13771
13772 <blockquote><p>
13773 [nothing]
13774 </p></blockquote>
13775
13776 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
13777
13778 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13779
13780 <blockquote><p>
13781   ksmserver
13782 </p></blockquote>
13783
13784 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13785
13786 <blockquote><p>
13787   kwin
13788   network-manager-kde
13789 </p></blockquote>
13790
13791 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13792
13793 <blockquote><p>
13794   arts
13795   dolphin
13796   freespacenotifier
13797   google-gadgets-gst
13798   google-gadgets-xul
13799   kappfinder
13800   kcalc
13801   kcharselect
13802   kde-core
13803   kde-plasma-desktop
13804   kde-standard
13805   kde-window-manager
13806   kdeartwork
13807   kdeartwork-emoticons
13808   kdeartwork-style
13809   kdeartwork-theme-icon
13810   kdebase
13811   kdebase-apps
13812   kdebase-workspace
13813   kdebase-workspace-bin
13814   kdebase-workspace-data
13815   kdeeject
13816   kdelibs
13817   kdeplasma-addons
13818   kdeutils
13819   kdewallpapers
13820   kdf
13821   kfloppy
13822   kgpg
13823   khelpcenter4
13824   kinfocenter
13825   konq-plugins-l10n
13826   konqueror-nsplugins
13827   kscreensaver
13828   kscreensaver-xsavers
13829   ktimer
13830   kwrite
13831   libgle3
13832   libkde4-ruby1.8
13833   libkonq5
13834   libkonq5-templates
13835   libnetpbm10
13836   libplasma-ruby
13837   libplasma-ruby1.8
13838   libqt4-ruby1.8
13839   marble-data
13840   marble-plugins
13841   netpbm
13842   nuvola-icon-theme
13843   plasma-dataengines-workspace
13844   plasma-desktop
13845   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
13846   plasma-runners-addons
13847   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
13848   plasma-scriptengine-python
13849   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
13850   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
13851   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
13852   plasma-scriptengines
13853   plasma-wallpapers-addons
13854   plasma-widget-folderview
13855   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13856   ruby
13857   sweeper
13858   update-notifier-kde
13859   xscreensaver-data-extra
13860   xscreensaver-gl
13861   xscreensaver-gl-extra
13862   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13863 </p></blockquote>
13864
13865 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13866
13867 <blockquote><p>
13868   ark
13869   google-gadgets-common
13870   google-gadgets-qt
13871   htdig
13872   kate
13873   kdebase-bin
13874   kdebase-data
13875   kdepasswd
13876   kfind
13877   klipper
13878   konq-plugins
13879   konqueror
13880   ksysguard
13881   ksysguardd
13882   libarchive1
13883   libcln6
13884   libeet1
13885   libeina-svn-06
13886   libggadget-1.0-0b
13887   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
13888   libgps19
13889   libkdecorations4
13890   libkephal4
13891   libkonq4
13892   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
13893   libkscreensaver5
13894   libksgrd4
13895   libksignalplotter4
13896   libkunitconversion4
13897   libkwineffects1a
13898   libmarblewidget4
13899   libntrack-qt4-1
13900   libntrack0
13901   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
13902   libplasmaclock4a
13903   libplasmagenericshell4
13904   libprocesscore4a
13905   libprocessui4a
13906   libqalculate5
13907   libqedje0a
13908   libqtruby4shared2
13909   libqzion0a
13910   libruby1.8
13911   libscim8c2a
13912   libsmokekdecore4-3
13913   libsmokekdeui4-3
13914   libsmokekfile3
13915   libsmokekhtml3
13916   libsmokekio3
13917   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
13918   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
13919   libsmokekparts3
13920   libsmokektexteditor3
13921   libsmokekutils3
13922   libsmokenepomuk3
13923   libsmokephonon3
13924   libsmokeplasma3
13925   libsmokeqtcore4-3
13926   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
13927   libsmokeqtgui4-3
13928   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
13929   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
13930   libsmokeqtscript4-3
13931   libsmokeqtsql4-3
13932   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
13933   libsmokeqttest4-3
13934   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
13935   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
13936   libsmokeqtxml4-3
13937   libsmokesolid3
13938   libsmokesoprano3
13939   libtaskmanager4a
13940   libtidy-0.99-0
13941   libweather-ion4a
13942   libxklavier16
13943   libxxf86misc1
13944   okteta
13945   oxygencursors
13946   plasma-dataengines-addons
13947   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
13948   plasma-widget-lancelot
13949   plasma-widgets-addons
13950   plasma-widgets-workspace
13951   polkit-kde-1
13952   ruby1.8
13953   systemsettings
13954   update-notifier-common
13955 </p></blockquote>
13956
13957 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
13958 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
13959 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
13960 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
13961
13962       </div>
13963       <div class="tags">
13964
13965
13966         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>.
13967
13968
13969       </div>
13970     </div>
13971     <div class="padding"></div>
13972
13973     <div class="entry">
13974       <div class="title">
13975         <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>
13976       </div>
13977       <div class="date">
13978         22nd November 2010
13979       </div>
13980       <div class="body">
13981         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
13982 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
13983 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
13984 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
13985 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
13986 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
13987 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
13988 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
13989 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
13990
13991 <p>I found
13992 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
13993 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
13994 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
13995 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
13996 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
13997 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
13998
13999 <pre>
14000 #!/bin/sh
14001
14002 # Based on
14003 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
14004
14005 set -e
14006 set -x
14007
14008 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
14009     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
14010     exit 1
14011 else
14012     host="$1"
14013 fi
14014
14015 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
14016     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
14017     exit 1
14018 fi
14019
14020 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
14021 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
14022 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
14023 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
14024
14025 img=$host.img
14026 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
14027 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
14028
14029 parted $img mklabel msdos
14030 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
14031 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
14032 parted $img set 1 boot on
14033
14034 modprobe dm-mod
14035 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
14036 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
14037
14038 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
14039 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
14040 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
14041
14042 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
14043 losetup -d /dev/loop0
14044 </pre>
14045
14046 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
14047 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
14048
14049 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
14050 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
14051 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
14052 seem to work just fine.</p>
14053
14054       </div>
14055       <div class="tags">
14056
14057
14058         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>.
14059
14060
14061       </div>
14062     </div>
14063     <div class="padding"></div>
14064
14065     <div class="entry">
14066       <div class="title">
14067         <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>
14068       </div>
14069       <div class="date">
14070         20th November 2010
14071       </div>
14072       <div class="body">
14073         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
14074 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
14075 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
14076 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
14077
14078 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
14079 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
14080 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
14081
14082 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
14083
14084 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14085
14086 <blockquote><p>
14087   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
14088   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
14089   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
14090   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
14091   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
14092   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
14093   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
14094   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
14095   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
14096   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
14097   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14098   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14099   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
14100   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
14101   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
14102   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
14103   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
14104   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
14105   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14106   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
14107   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
14108   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14109   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
14110   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
14111   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
14112   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14113   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14114   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
14115   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14116   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
14117   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
14118   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14119   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
14120   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
14121   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
14122   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
14123   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
14124   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
14125   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
14126   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
14127   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
14128   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
14129   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
14130   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
14131   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
14132   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
14133   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
14134   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
14135   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
14136   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
14137   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
14138   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
14139   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14140   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
14141   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
14142   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
14143   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
14144   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
14145   zip
14146 </p></blockquote>
14147
14148 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
14149
14150 <blockquote><p>
14151   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
14152   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
14153   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
14154   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
14155   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
14156   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
14157   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
14158   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
14159   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
14160   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
14161   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
14162   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14163   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14164   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14165   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14166   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
14167   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14168   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
14169   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
14170   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
14171   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
14172   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
14173   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14174   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
14175   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
14176   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
14177   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
14178   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
14179   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
14180 </p></blockquote>
14181
14182 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14183
14184 <blockquote><p>
14185   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14186 </p></blockquote>
14187
14188 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14189
14190 <blockquote><p>
14191 [nothing]
14192 </p></blockquote>
14193
14194 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14195
14196 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14197
14198 <blockquote><p>
14199   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
14200   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
14201   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
14202   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
14203   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
14204   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
14205   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
14206   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
14207   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
14208   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
14209   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
14210   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
14211   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
14212   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
14213   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
14214   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
14215   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
14216   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
14217   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
14218   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
14219   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
14220   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
14221   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
14222   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
14223   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
14224   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
14225   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
14226   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
14227   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
14228   ttf-sazanami-gothic
14229 </p></blockquote>
14230
14231 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14232
14233 <blockquote><p>
14234   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
14235   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
14236   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
14237   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
14238   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
14239   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
14240   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
14241   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
14242   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
14243   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
14244   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
14245   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
14246   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
14247   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
14248   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
14249   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
14250   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
14251   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
14252   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
14253   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
14254   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14255   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
14256   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
14257   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
14258   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
14259   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
14260   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
14261   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
14262   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
14263   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
14264   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
14265   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
14266   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
14267 </p></blockquote>
14268
14269 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14270
14271 <blockquote><p>
14272   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
14273   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
14274   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
14275   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
14276   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14277   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
14278   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14279 </p></blockquote>
14280
14281 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14282
14283 <blockquote><p>
14284   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
14285 </p></blockquote>
14286
14287       </div>
14288       <div class="tags">
14289
14290
14291         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>.
14292
14293
14294       </div>
14295     </div>
14296     <div class="padding"></div>
14297
14298     <div class="entry">
14299       <div class="title">
14300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
14301       </div>
14302       <div class="date">
14303         20th November 2010
14304       </div>
14305       <div class="body">
14306         <p>Answering
14307 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
14308 call from the Gnash project</a> for
14309 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
14310 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
14311 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
14312 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
14313 releases out more often.</p>
14314
14315 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
14316 I have considered setting up a <a
14317 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
14318 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
14319 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
14320 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
14321 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
14322 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
14323 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
14324 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
14325 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
14326 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
14327 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
14328 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
14329
14330       </div>
14331       <div class="tags">
14332
14333
14334         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>.
14335
14336
14337       </div>
14338     </div>
14339     <div class="padding"></div>
14340
14341     <div class="entry">
14342       <div class="title">
14343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
14344       </div>
14345       <div class="date">
14346          9th November 2010
14347       </div>
14348       <div class="body">
14349         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
14350
14351 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
14352 3D linked in from
14353 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
14354 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
14355
14356       </div>
14357       <div class="tags">
14358
14359
14360         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>.
14361
14362
14363       </div>
14364     </div>
14365     <div class="padding"></div>
14366
14367     <div class="entry">
14368       <div class="title">
14369         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
14370       </div>
14371       <div class="date">
14372          7th November 2010
14373       </div>
14374       <div class="body">
14375         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
14376 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
14377 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
14378 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
14379 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
14380 working using this DVD.</p>
14381
14382 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
14383 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
14384 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
14385 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
14386 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
14387 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
14388 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
14389
14390 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
14391 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
14392 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
14393 Debian archive.</p>
14394
14395 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
14396 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
14397 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
14398 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
14399 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
14400 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
14401 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
14402 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
14403 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
14404 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
14405 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
14406 free X driver should work.</p>
14407
14408 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
14409 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
14410 DVD more useful again.</p>
14411
14412       </div>
14413       <div class="tags">
14414
14415
14416         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14417
14418
14419       </div>
14420     </div>
14421     <div class="padding"></div>
14422
14423     <div class="entry">
14424       <div class="title">
14425         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
14426       </div>
14427       <div class="date">
14428         24th October 2010
14429       </div>
14430       <div class="body">
14431         <p>Some updates.</p>
14432
14433 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
14434 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
14435 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
14436 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
14437 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
14438 :)</p>
14439
14440 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
14441 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
14442 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
14443 It is called
14444 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
14445 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
14446 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
14447 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
14448 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
14449 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
14450
14451 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
14452 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
14453 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
14454 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
14455 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
14456 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
14457 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
14458 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
14459 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
14460 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
14461
14462       </div>
14463       <div class="tags">
14464
14465
14466         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>.
14467
14468
14469       </div>
14470     </div>
14471     <div class="padding"></div>
14472
14473     <div class="entry">
14474       <div class="title">
14475         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
14476       </div>
14477       <div class="date">
14478         19th October 2010
14479       </div>
14480       <div class="body">
14481         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
14482 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
14483 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
14484 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
14485 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
14486 AVM2 flash files.</p>
14487
14488 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
14489 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
14490 following text:</P>
14491
14492 <p><blockquote>
14493
14494   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
14495   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
14496
14497   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
14498
14499   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
14500
14501   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
14502   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
14503   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
14504   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
14505   days. The project web page is available from
14506   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
14507   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
14508   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
14509
14510   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
14511   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
14512   to get this to happen.</p>
14513
14514   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
14515   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
14516
14517 </blockquote></p>
14518
14519 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
14520 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
14521 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
14522 :)</p>
14523
14524       </div>
14525       <div class="tags">
14526
14527
14528         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14529
14530
14531       </div>
14532     </div>
14533     <div class="padding"></div>
14534
14535     <div class="entry">
14536       <div class="title">
14537         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
14538       </div>
14539       <div class="date">
14540          9th October 2010
14541       </div>
14542       <div class="body">
14543         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
14544 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
14545 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
14546 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
14547 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
14548 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
14549 robots.</p>
14550
14551 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
14552 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
14553 a few less important features too.</p>
14554
14555 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
14556 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
14557 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
14558 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
14559
14560 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
14561 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
14562 source or binary package:</p>
14563
14564 <p><ul>
14565 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
14566 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
14567 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
14568 </ul></p>
14569
14570 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
14571 please let me know.</p>
14572
14573       </div>
14574       <div class="tags">
14575
14576
14577         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
14578
14579
14580       </div>
14581     </div>
14582     <div class="padding"></div>
14583
14584     <div class="entry">
14585       <div class="title">
14586         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
14587       </div>
14588       <div class="date">
14589          3rd October 2010
14590       </div>
14591       <div class="body">
14592         <p><ul>
14593
14594 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
14595 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
14596
14597 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
14598 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
14599 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
14600
14601 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
14602 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
14603 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
14604 simple setup.
14605
14606 </ul></p>
14607
14608       </div>
14609       <div class="tags">
14610
14611
14612         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14613
14614
14615       </div>
14616     </div>
14617     <div class="padding"></div>
14618
14619     <div class="entry">
14620       <div class="title">
14621         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
14622       </div>
14623       <div class="date">
14624          9th September 2010
14625       </div>
14626       <div class="body">
14627         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
14628 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
14629 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
14630 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
14631 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
14632 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
14633 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
14634 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
14635 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
14636
14637 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
14638 written:</p>
14639
14640 <blockquote>
14641 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
14642 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
14643 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
14644 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
14645 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
14646
14647 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
14648 standard.</p>
14649 </blockquote>
14650
14651 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
14652 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
14653 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
14654 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
14655
14656 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
14657 read
14658 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
14659 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
14660 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
14661 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
14662 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
14663 the issue.  The solution is to support the
14664 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
14665 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
14666 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
14667
14668       </div>
14669       <div class="tags">
14670
14671
14672         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14673
14674
14675       </div>
14676     </div>
14677     <div class="padding"></div>
14678
14679     <div class="entry">
14680       <div class="title">
14681         <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>
14682       </div>
14683       <div class="date">
14684          4th September 2010
14685       </div>
14686       <div class="body">
14687         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
14688 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
14689 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
14690 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
14691 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
14692 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
14693 installed.</p>
14694
14695 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
14696 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
14697 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
14698 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
14699 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14700 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
14701 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
14702 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
14703 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
14704
14705 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
14706 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
14707 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
14708 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
14709 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
14710 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
14711 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
14712 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
14713 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
14714 pages they want to visit.</p>
14715
14716 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
14717 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
14718 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
14719 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
14720 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
14721 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
14722 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
14723 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
14724 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
14725 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
14726 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
14727
14728       </div>
14729       <div class="tags">
14730
14731
14732         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>.
14733
14734
14735       </div>
14736     </div>
14737     <div class="padding"></div>
14738
14739     <div class="entry">
14740       <div class="title">
14741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
14742       </div>
14743       <div class="date">
14744          1st September 2010
14745       </div>
14746       <div class="body">
14747         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
14748 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
14749 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
14750 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
14751 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
14752 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
14753 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
14754 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
14755 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
14756 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
14757 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
14758 drive around.</p>
14759
14760 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
14761 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
14762
14763 <p><pre>
14764 use Spykee;
14765 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
14766 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
14767 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
14768 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
14769 $spykee->left();
14770 sleep 2;
14771 $spykee->right();
14772 sleep 2;
14773 $spykee->forward();
14774 sleep 2;
14775 $spykee->back();
14776 sleep 2;
14777 $spykee->stop();
14778 </pre></p>
14779
14780 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
14781 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
14782 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
14783 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
14784 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
14785 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
14786 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
14787 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
14788 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
14789 going. :).</p>
14790
14791 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
14792 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
14793 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
14794 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
14795
14796       </div>
14797       <div class="tags">
14798
14799
14800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
14801
14802
14803       </div>
14804     </div>
14805     <div class="padding"></div>
14806
14807     <div class="entry">
14808       <div class="title">
14809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
14810       </div>
14811       <div class="date">
14812         30th August 2010
14813       </div>
14814       <div class="body">
14815         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
14816 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
14817 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
14818 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
14819 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
14820 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
14821 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
14822
14823 <pre>
14824 % ln foo bar
14825 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
14826 %
14827 </pre>
14828
14829 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
14830 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
14831 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
14832 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
14833 nevertheless. :)</p>
14834
14835 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
14836 git from
14837 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
14838
14839       </div>
14840       <div class="tags">
14841
14842
14843         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14844
14845
14846       </div>
14847     </div>
14848     <div class="padding"></div>
14849
14850     <div class="entry">
14851       <div class="title">
14852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
14853       </div>
14854       <div class="date">
14855         26th August 2010
14856       </div>
14857       <div class="body">
14858         <p>My file system sematics program
14859 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
14860 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
14861 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
14862 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
14863 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
14864 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
14865 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
14866 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
14867 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
14868 script:</p>
14869
14870 <pre>
14871 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
14872   mode_t retval = 0;
14873   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
14874   if (-1 != fd) {
14875     unlink(name);
14876     struct stat statbuf;
14877     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
14878       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
14879     }
14880     close(fd);
14881   }
14882   return retval;
14883 }
14884
14885 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
14886 int test_umask(void) {
14887   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
14888
14889   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
14890   mode_t newmode;
14891   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
14892     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
14893            newmode);
14894   }
14895   umask(007);
14896   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
14897     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
14898            newmode);
14899   }
14900
14901   umask (orig_umask);
14902   return 0;
14903 }
14904
14905 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
14906   [...]
14907   test_umask();
14908   return 0;
14909 }
14910 </pre>
14911
14912 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
14913
14914 <pre>
14915 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14916 info: testing symlink creation
14917 info: testing subdirectory creation
14918 info: testing fcntl locking
14919   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14920   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14921   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14922   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14923   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14924   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14925 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14926 </pre>
14927
14928 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
14929 result:</p>
14930
14931 <pre>
14932 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14933 info: testing symlink creation
14934 info: testing subdirectory creation
14935 info: testing fcntl locking
14936   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14937   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14938   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14939   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14940   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14941   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14942 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14943   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
14944   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
14945 </pre>
14946
14947 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
14948 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
14949 directory.</p>
14950
14951 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
14952 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
14953
14954 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
14955 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
14956 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
14957
14958       </div>
14959       <div class="tags">
14960
14961
14962         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14963
14964
14965       </div>
14966     </div>
14967     <div class="padding"></div>
14968
14969     <div class="entry">
14970       <div class="title">
14971         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
14972       </div>
14973       <div class="date">
14974         15th August 2010
14975       </div>
14976       <div class="body">
14977         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
14978 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
14979 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
14980 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
14981 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
14982 long time.</p>
14983
14984       </div>
14985       <div class="tags">
14986
14987
14988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
14989
14990
14991       </div>
14992     </div>
14993     <div class="padding"></div>
14994
14995     <div class="entry">
14996       <div class="title">
14997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
14998       </div>
14999       <div class="date">
15000          9th August 2010
15001       </div>
15002       <div class="body">
15003         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
15004 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
15005 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
15006 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
15007 generated configuration.</p>
15008
15009 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
15010 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
15011 without any manual configuration.</p>
15012
15013 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
15014 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
15015 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
15016 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
15017 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
15018 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
15019 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
15020 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
15021 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
15022 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
15023 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
15024 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
15025 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
15026 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
15027 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
15028 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
15029 use.</p>
15030
15031 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
15032 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
15033 working properly out of the box:</p>
15034
15035 <ul>
15036 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
15037 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
15038 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
15039 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
15040 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
15041 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
15042 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
15043 </ul>
15044
15045 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
15046
15047 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
15048 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
15049 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
15050 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
15051 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
15052
15053 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
15054 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
15055 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
15056 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
15057 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
15058 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
15059 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
15060 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
15061
15062 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
15063 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
15064 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
15065 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
15066 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
15067 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
15068 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
15069 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
15070 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
15071 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
15072 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
15073 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15074 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
15075 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
15076 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
15077 current DNS domain is used.</p>
15078
15079 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
15080 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
15081 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
15082 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
15083 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
15084 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
15085 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
15086 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
15087 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
15088 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
15089 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
15090 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
15091 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
15092
15093 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
15094 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
15095 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
15096 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
15097 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
15098 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
15099 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
15100 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
15101 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
15102 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
15103 do for now. :)</p>
15104
15105 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
15106 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
15107 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
15108 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
15109 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
15110 yet.</p>
15111
15112 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15113 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15114
15115 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
15116 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
15117 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
15118 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
15119
15120       </div>
15121       <div class="tags">
15122
15123
15124         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15125
15126
15127       </div>
15128     </div>
15129     <div class="padding"></div>
15130
15131     <div class="entry">
15132       <div class="title">
15133         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
15134       </div>
15135       <div class="date">
15136          8th August 2010
15137       </div>
15138       <div class="body">
15139         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
15140 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
15141 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
15142 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
15143 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
15144 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
15145 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
15146
15147 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
15148 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
15149 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
15150 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
15151 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
15152 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
15153 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
15154
15155 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
15156 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
15157 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
15158 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
15159 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
15160
15161 <pre>
15162 /*
15163  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
15164  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
15165  * directory.
15166  * License: GPL v2 or later
15167  *
15168  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
15169  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
15170 */
15171
15172 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
15173 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
15174 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
15175
15176 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
15177
15178 #include &lt;errno.h>
15179 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
15180 #include &lt;stdio.h>
15181 #include &lt;string.h>
15182 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
15183 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
15184 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
15185 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
15186 #include &lt;unistd.h>
15187
15188 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15189 /*
15190  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
15191  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
15192  * below.
15193  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
15194  */
15195 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
15196 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
15197   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
15198 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
15199   char *zErrMsg;
15200   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15201   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
15202   unlink(name);
15203   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
15204   if( rc ){
15205     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
15206     sqlite3_close(db);
15207     return -1;
15208   }
15209
15210   /* create tables */
15211   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
15212   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
15213     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
15214     sqlite3_close(db);
15215     return -1;
15216   }
15217   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
15218   sqlite3_close(db);
15219   return 0;
15220 }
15221 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15222
15223 /*
15224  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
15225  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
15226  * done in the sqlite3 library.
15227  * See also
15228  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
15229  * POSIX specification
15230  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
15231  */
15232 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
15233   struct flock fl;
15234   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15235   unlink(name);
15236   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
15237   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
15238
15239   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
15240   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
15241   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15242   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15243   fl.l_len    = 1;
15244   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15245   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15246
15247   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15248   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15249   fl.l_len    = 510;
15250   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15251   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15252
15253   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15254   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15255   fl.l_len    = 1;
15256   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15257   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15258
15259   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15260   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15261   fl.l_len    = 1;
15262   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
15263   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15264
15265   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15266   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15267   fl.l_len    = 510;
15268   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15269
15270   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
15271   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15272   fl.l_len    = 2;
15273   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15274   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15275
15276   close(fd);
15277   return 0;
15278 }
15279
15280 /*
15281  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
15282  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
15283  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
15284  * slowing down file operations.
15285  */
15286 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
15287 #define LEVELS 5
15288   char *path = strdup("test");
15289   char *dirs[LEVELS];
15290   int level;
15291   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
15292   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
15293     char *newpath = NULL;
15294     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
15295       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
15296              path, strerror(errno));
15297       break;
15298     }
15299     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
15300     free(path);
15301     path = newpath;
15302   }
15303   return 0;
15304 }
15305
15306 /*
15307  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
15308  * KDE.
15309  */
15310 int test_symlinks(void) {
15311   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
15312   unlink("symlink");
15313   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
15314     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
15315   return 0;
15316 }
15317
15318 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
15319   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
15320   test_symlinks();
15321   test_subdirectory_creation();
15322 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15323   test_sqlite_open();
15324 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15325   test_gcompris_locking();
15326   return 0;
15327 }
15328 </pre>
15329
15330 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
15331 this:</p>
15332
15333 <pre>
15334 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15335 info: testing symlink creation
15336 info: testing subdirectory creation
15337 info: sqlite worked
15338 info: testing fcntl locking
15339   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15340   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15341   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15342   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15343   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15344   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15345 </pre>
15346
15347 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
15348 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
15349 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
15350 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
15351 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
15352 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
15353 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
15354 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
15355
15356 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
15357 it. :)</p>
15358
15359 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
15360 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
15361 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
15362
15363       </div>
15364       <div class="tags">
15365
15366
15367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15368
15369
15370       </div>
15371     </div>
15372     <div class="padding"></div>
15373
15374     <div class="entry">
15375       <div class="title">
15376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
15377       </div>
15378       <div class="date">
15379          7th August 2010
15380       </div>
15381       <div class="body">
15382         <p>A few days ago, I
15383 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
15384 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
15385 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
15386 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
15387 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
15388 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
15389 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
15390 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
15391 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
15392
15393 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
15394 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
15395 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
15396 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
15397 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
15398 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
15399 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
15400 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
15401 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
15402 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
15403 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
15404 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
15405 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
15406 gave it a IP address.</p>
15407
15408 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
15409 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
15410 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
15411 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
15412 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
15413 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15414 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
15415 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
15416
15417 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
15418 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
15419 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
15420 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
15421 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
15422 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
15423
15424 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
15425 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
15426 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
15427 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
15428 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
15429 with UID and GID values.</p>
15430
15431 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15432 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15433
15434       </div>
15435       <div class="tags">
15436
15437
15438         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15439
15440
15441       </div>
15442     </div>
15443     <div class="padding"></div>
15444
15445     <div class="entry">
15446       <div class="title">
15447         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
15448       </div>
15449       <div class="date">
15450          3rd August 2010
15451       </div>
15452       <div class="body">
15453         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
15454 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
15455 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
15456 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
15457 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
15458 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
15459 servers.</p>
15460
15461 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
15462 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
15463 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
15464 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
15465 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
15466 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
15467 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
15468 .uio.no.</p>
15469
15470 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
15471 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
15472 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
15473 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
15474 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
15475 university servers.</p>
15476
15477 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
15478 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
15479 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
15480 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
15481 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
15482 uses.</p>
15483
15484       </div>
15485       <div class="tags">
15486
15487
15488         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15489
15490
15491       </div>
15492     </div>
15493     <div class="padding"></div>
15494
15495     <div class="entry">
15496       <div class="title">
15497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
15498       </div>
15499       <div class="date">
15500         27th July 2010
15501       </div>
15502       <div class="body">
15503         <p>I discovered this while doing
15504 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
15505 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
15506 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
15507 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
15508 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
15509
15510 <p>An example is from todays
15511 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
15512 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
15513 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
15514 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
15515 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
15516 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
15517 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
15518
15519 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
15520
15521 <blockquote><pre>
15522 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
15523  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
15524   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
15525 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
15526  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
15527 </pre></blockquote>
15528
15529 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
15530 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
15531 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
15532 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
15533 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
15534 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
15535 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
15536 of dependency loops.</p>
15537
15538 <p>Thanks to
15539 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
15540 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
15541 dependencies
15542 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
15543 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
15544
15545 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
15546 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
15547 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
15548 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
15549 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
15550 it.</p>
15551
15552       </div>
15553       <div class="tags">
15554
15555
15556         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>.
15557
15558
15559       </div>
15560     </div>
15561     <div class="padding"></div>
15562
15563     <div class="entry">
15564       <div class="title">
15565         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
15566       </div>
15567       <div class="date">
15568         27th July 2010
15569       </div>
15570       <div class="body">
15571         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
15572 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
15573 completed.</p>
15574
15575 <blockquote>
15576 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
15577 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
15578 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
15579 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
15580 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
15581 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
15582 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
15583 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
15584
15585 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
15586 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
15587 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
15588
15589 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
15590 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
15591 much.</p>
15592
15593 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
15594
15595 <ul>
15596 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
15597 <ul>
15598   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
15599          combination with some new artwork
15600   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
15601   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
15602   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
15603   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
15604   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
15605   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
15606   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
15607   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
15608   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
15609 </ul></li>
15610 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
15611     Enabled for:
15612 <ul>
15613   <li>PAM
15614   <li>LDAP
15615   <li>IMAP
15616   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
15617 </ul>
15618 </li>
15619 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
15620 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
15621     fetched from LDAP.</li>
15622 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
15623 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
15624 </ul>
15625 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
15626
15627 <ul>
15628 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
15629     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
15630     for testing.</li>
15631 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
15632     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
15633     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
15634 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
15635 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
15636 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
15637 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
15638     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
15639 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
15640     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
15641     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
15642 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
15643     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
15644     and help out with translations.</li>
15645 </ul>
15646
15647 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
15648
15649 <ul>
15650 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
15651 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
15652 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15653 </ul>
15654 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
15655
15656 <ul>
15657 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
15658 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
15659 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15660 </ul>
15661
15662 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
15663 get closer to the final release.</p>
15664
15665 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
15666
15667 <ul>
15668 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15669 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15670 </ul>
15671
15672 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
15673 <ul>
15674 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15675 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15676 </ul>
15677 <p>How to report bugs:
15678 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
15679
15680 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
15681 </blockquote>
15682
15683       </div>
15684       <div class="tags">
15685
15686
15687         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15688
15689
15690       </div>
15691     </div>
15692     <div class="padding"></div>
15693
15694     <div class="entry">
15695       <div class="title">
15696         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
15697       </div>
15698       <div class="date">
15699         25th July 2010
15700       </div>
15701       <div class="body">
15702         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
15703 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
15704 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
15705 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
15706 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
15707
15708 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
15709 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
15710 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
15711 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
15712 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
15713 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
15714 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
15715
15716 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
15717 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
15718 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
15719 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
15720 up. :)</p>
15721
15722 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
15723 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
15724 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
15725
15726 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
15727 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
15728 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
15729 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
15730 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
15731 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
15732 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
15733 release another day.</p>
15734
15735 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
15736 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15737
15738       </div>
15739       <div class="tags">
15740
15741
15742         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
15743
15744
15745       </div>
15746     </div>
15747     <div class="padding"></div>
15748
15749     <div class="entry">
15750       <div class="title">
15751         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
15752       </div>
15753       <div class="date">
15754         18th July 2010
15755       </div>
15756       <div class="body">
15757         <p>Thanks to
15758 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
15759 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
15760 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
15761 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
15762 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
15763 only available from the development server, until more experience is
15764 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
15765
15766 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
15767 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
15768 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
15769 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
15770 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
15771 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
15772 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
15773
15774       </div>
15775       <div class="tags">
15776
15777
15778         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15779
15780
15781       </div>
15782     </div>
15783     <div class="padding"></div>
15784
15785     <div class="entry">
15786       <div class="title">
15787         <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>
15788       </div>
15789       <div class="date">
15790         17th July 2010
15791       </div>
15792       <div class="body">
15793         <p>This is a
15794 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
15795 on my
15796 <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
15797 work</a> on
15798 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
15799 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
15800
15801 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
15802 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
15803 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
15804 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
15805
15806 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
15807 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
15808 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
15809
15810 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
15811
15812 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
15813 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
15814 the web.
15815
15816 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
15817 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
15818 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
15819 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
15820 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
15821 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
15822
15823 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
15824 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
15825 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
15826 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
15827 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
15828 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
15829 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
15830 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
15831 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
15832 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
15833 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
15834 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
15835 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
15836 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
15837 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
15838 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
15839
15840 <blockquote><pre>
15841 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15842   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15843   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15844   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15845   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15846   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15847   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15848
15849 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15850   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15851   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
15852   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
15853   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
15854   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
15855 </pre></blockquote>
15856
15857 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
15858 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
15859 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
15860 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15861 also exist.</p>
15862
15863 <blockquote><pre>
15864 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15865 objectclass: top
15866 objectclass: dnsdomain
15867 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15868 dc: tjener
15869 arecord: 10.0.2.2
15870 associateddomain: tjener.intern
15871
15872 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15873 objectclass: top
15874 objectclass: dnsdomain2
15875 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15876 dc: 2
15877 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
15878 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
15879 </pre></blockquote>
15880
15881 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
15882 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
15883 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
15884 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
15885 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
15886 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
15887 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
15888 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
15889 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
15890 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
15891 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
15892 instead.</p>
15893
15894 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
15895 like this:</p>
15896
15897 <blockquote><pre>
15898 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15899   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15900   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15901   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15902   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15903   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15904
15905 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15906   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
15907 </pre></blockquote>
15908
15909 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
15910 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
15911 reverse lookups.</p>
15912
15913 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
15914 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
15915 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
15916 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
15917
15918 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
15919 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
15920 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
15921
15922 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
15923 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
15924 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
15925 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
15926 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
15927
15928 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
15929 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
15930 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
15931 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
15932 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
15933
15934 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
15935 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
15936 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
15937 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
15938 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
15939 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
15940
15941 <blockquote><pre>
15942 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
15943     SUP top
15944     AUXILIARY
15945     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
15946           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
15947           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
15948           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
15949           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
15950     ))
15951 </pre></blockquote>
15952
15953 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
15954 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
15955 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
15956 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
15957 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
15958 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
15959
15960 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
15961
15962 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
15963 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
15964 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
15965 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
15966 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
15967
15968 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
15969 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
15970 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
15971 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
15972
15973 <blockquote><pre>
15974 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
15975 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
15976 </pre></blockquote>
15977
15978 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
15979 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
15980 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
15981 search result is this entry:</p>
15982
15983 <blockquote><pre>
15984 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15985 cn: dhcp
15986 objectClass: top
15987 objectClass: dhcpServer
15988 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15989 </pre></blockquote>
15990
15991 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
15992 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
15993 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
15994 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
15995 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
15996 The search result is this entry:</p>
15997
15998 <blockquote><pre>
15999 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16000 cn: DHCP Config
16001 objectClass: top
16002 objectClass: dhcpService
16003 objectClass: dhcpOptions
16004 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16005 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
16006 dhcpStatements: authoritative
16007 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
16008 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
16009 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
16010 </pre></blockquote>
16011
16012 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
16013 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
16014 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
16015 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
16016 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
16017 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
16018 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
16019 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
16020 related computer objects.</p>
16021
16022 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
16023 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
16024 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
16025 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
16026 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
16027 like:</p>
16028
16029 <blockquote><pre>
16030 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16031 cn: hostname
16032 objectClass: top
16033 objectClass: dhcpHost
16034 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16035 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
16036 </pre></blockquote>
16037
16038 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
16039 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
16040 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
16041 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
16042 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
16043 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
16044 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
16045 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
16046 structural object class.
16047
16048 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
16049
16050 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
16051 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
16052 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
16053 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
16054 in the configuration.</p>
16055
16056 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
16057 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
16058 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
16059 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
16060 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
16061 structure.</p>
16062
16063 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
16064 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
16065
16066 <blockquote><pre>
16067 ou=services
16068   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
16069     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
16070     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
16071       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
16072         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
16073     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
16074       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
16075         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
16076     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
16077       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
16078 </pre></blockquote>
16079
16080 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
16081 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
16082 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
16083 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
16084
16085 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
16086 like this:</p>
16087
16088 <blockquote><pre>
16089 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16090 dc: hostname
16091 objectClass: top
16092 objectClass: dhcpHost
16093 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16094 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
16095 associateddomain: hostname.intern
16096 arecord: 10.11.12.13
16097 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16098 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
16099 </pre></blockquote>
16100
16101 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
16102 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
16103 auxiliary object class.</p>
16104
16105       </div>
16106       <div class="tags">
16107
16108
16109         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>.
16110
16111
16112       </div>
16113     </div>
16114     <div class="padding"></div>
16115
16116     <div class="entry">
16117       <div class="title">
16118         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
16119       </div>
16120       <div class="date">
16121         14th July 2010
16122       </div>
16123       <div class="body">
16124         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
16125 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
16126 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
16127 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
16128 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
16129
16130 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
16131 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
16132
16133 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
16134 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
16135 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
16136 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
16137 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
16138 to a slave DNS server.</p>
16139
16140 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
16141 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
16142 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
16143 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
16144 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
16145 seem to work.</p>
16146
16147 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
16148 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
16149 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
16150 this:</p>
16151
16152 <blockquote><pre>
16153   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16154   cn: hostname
16155   objectClass: dhcphost
16156   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16157   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
16158   associateddomain: hostname.intern
16159   arecord: 10.11.12.13
16160   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16161   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
16162   ldapconfigsound: Y
16163 </pre></blockquote>
16164
16165 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
16166 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
16167 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
16168 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
16169
16170 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
16171 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
16172 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
16173 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
16174 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
16175 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
16176 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
16177 might be a good place to put it.</p>
16178
16179 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16180 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16181
16182       </div>
16183       <div class="tags">
16184
16185
16186         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>.
16187
16188
16189       </div>
16190     </div>
16191     <div class="padding"></div>
16192
16193     <div class="entry">
16194       <div class="title">
16195         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
16196       </div>
16197       <div class="date">
16198         11th July 2010
16199       </div>
16200       <div class="body">
16201         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
16202 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
16203 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
16204 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
16205
16206 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
16207 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
16208 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
16209 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
16210 LTSP clients.</p>
16211
16212 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
16213 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
16214 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
16215
16216 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
16217 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
16218 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
16219
16220 <blockquote><pre>
16221 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
16222 #
16223 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
16224 #
16225 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
16226 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
16227 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
16228 #
16229 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
16230 # existence of attribute names.
16231 #
16232 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
16233 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
16234 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
16235 #
16236 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
16237 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
16238 #
16239 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
16240 #     SUP top
16241 #     AUXILIARY
16242 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
16243
16244 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
16245 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
16246     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
16247     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
16248         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
16249         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
16250             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
16251             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
16252             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
16253             # bass value on to clients
16254             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
16255         done
16256     done
16257 fi
16258 </pre></blockquote>
16259
16260 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
16261 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
16262 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
16263 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
16264 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
16265
16266 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16267 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16268
16269 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
16270 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
16271 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
16272 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
16273 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
16274 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
16275
16276       </div>
16277       <div class="tags">
16278
16279
16280         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>.
16281
16282
16283       </div>
16284     </div>
16285     <div class="padding"></div>
16286
16287     <div class="entry">
16288       <div class="title">
16289         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16290       </div>
16291       <div class="date">
16292          9th July 2010
16293       </div>
16294       <div class="body">
16295         <p>Since
16296 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
16297 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
16298 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
16299 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
16300 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
16301 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
16302 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
16303 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
16304 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
16305 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
16306 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
16307 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
16308 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
16309
16310       </div>
16311       <div class="tags">
16312
16313
16314         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>.
16315
16316
16317       </div>
16318     </div>
16319     <div class="padding"></div>
16320
16321     <div class="entry">
16322       <div class="title">
16323         <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>
16324       </div>
16325       <div class="date">
16326          3rd July 2010
16327       </div>
16328       <div class="body">
16329         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
16330 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
16331 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
16332 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
16333 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
16334 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
16335 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
16336 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
16337
16338 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
16339 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
16340 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
16341 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
16342 publish the difference.</p>
16343
16344 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16345
16346 <blockquote><p>
16347   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16348   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
16349   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
16350   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16351   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
16352   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16353   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
16354   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
16355 </p></blockquote>
16356
16357 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16358
16359 <blockquote><p>
16360   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
16361   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
16362   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
16363   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
16364   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
16365   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
16366   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
16367   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
16368   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16369   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16370   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
16371   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
16372   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
16373   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
16374   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
16375   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
16376   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
16377   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
16378   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
16379   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
16380 </p></blockquote>
16381
16382 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16383
16384 <blockquote><p>
16385   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
16386   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
16387   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16388   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16389   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
16390   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
16391   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
16392   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16393   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16394   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16395   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16396   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
16397   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
16398   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
16399   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
16400   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
16401   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
16402   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
16403   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
16404   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
16405   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
16406 </p></blockquote>
16407
16408 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16409
16410 <blockquote><p>
16411   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
16412   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
16413   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
16414 </p></blockquote>
16415
16416 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
16417 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
16418 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
16419 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
16420 the difference somewhat.
16421
16422       </div>
16423       <div class="tags">
16424
16425
16426         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>.
16427
16428
16429       </div>
16430     </div>
16431     <div class="padding"></div>
16432
16433     <div class="entry">
16434       <div class="title">
16435         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
16436       </div>
16437       <div class="date">
16438          1st July 2010
16439       </div>
16440       <div class="body">
16441         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
16442 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
16443 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
16444 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
16445 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
16446 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
16447 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
16448 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
16449 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
16450
16451 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
16452
16453 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
16454 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
16455 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
16456 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
16457 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
16458 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
16459 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
16460 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
16461 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
16462 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
16463 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
16464 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
16465 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
16466 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
16467 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
16468
16469 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
16470
16471 <blockquote><pre>
16472 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
16473 </pre></blockquote>
16474
16475 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
16476 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
16477 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
16478 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
16479 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
16480 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
16481 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
16482 on how to get this working.</p>
16483
16484 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
16485 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
16486 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
16487 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
16488 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
16489 instructions I found in the
16490 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
16491 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
16492
16493 <blockquote><pre>
16494         debug-level             0
16495         reload-count            unlimited
16496         paranoia                no
16497
16498         enable-cache            passwd          yes
16499         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
16500         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
16501         suggested-size          passwd          211
16502         check-files             passwd          yes
16503         persistent              passwd          yes
16504         shared                  passwd          yes
16505         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
16506         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
16507
16508         enable-cache            group           yes
16509         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
16510         negative-time-to-live   group           20
16511         suggested-size          group           211
16512         check-files             group           yes
16513         persistent              group           yes
16514         shared                  group           yes
16515         max-db-size             group           33554432
16516         auto-propagate          group           yes
16517
16518         enable-cache            hosts           no
16519         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
16520         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
16521         suggested-size          hosts           211
16522         check-files             hosts           yes
16523         persistent              hosts           yes
16524         shared                  hosts           yes
16525         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
16526
16527         enable-cache            services        yes
16528         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
16529         negative-time-to-live   services        20
16530         suggested-size          services        211
16531         check-files             services        yes
16532         persistent              services        yes
16533         shared                  services        yes
16534         max-db-size             services        33554432
16535 </pre></blockquote>
16536
16537 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
16538 automatically like the one provided in
16539 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
16540 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
16541 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
16542 look like this:</p>
16543
16544 <blockquote><pre>
16545 passwd:         files ldap
16546 group:          files ldap
16547 shadow:         files ldap
16548 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
16549 networks:       files
16550 protocols:      files
16551 services:       files
16552 ethers:         files
16553 rpc:            files
16554 netgroup:       files ldap
16555 </pre></blockquote>
16556
16557 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
16558 shadow and netgroup.</p>
16559
16560 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
16561 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
16562 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
16563 attributes cached.
16564
16565 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
16566   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
16567
16568 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
16569 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
16570 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
16571 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
16572 discovered sssd.</p>
16573
16574 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
16575
16576 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
16577 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
16578 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
16579 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
16580 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
16581 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
16582 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
16583 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
16584 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
16585 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
16586 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
16587 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
16588 version 1.2 is now in testing.
16589
16590 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
16591 roaming setup I want</p>
16592
16593 <blockquote><pre>
16594 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
16595 </pre></blockquote>
16596
16597 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
16598 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
16599
16600 <blockquote><pre>
16601 [sssd]
16602 config_file_version = 2
16603 reconnection_retries = 3
16604 sbus_timeout = 30
16605 services = nss, pam
16606 domains = INTERN
16607
16608 [nss]
16609 filter_groups = root
16610 filter_users = root
16611 reconnection_retries = 3
16612
16613 [pam]
16614 reconnection_retries = 3
16615
16616 [domain/INTERN]
16617 enumerate = false
16618 cache_credentials = true
16619
16620 id_provider = ldap
16621 auth_provider = ldap
16622 chpass_provider = ldap
16623
16624 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
16625 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16626 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
16627 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
16628 </pre></blockquote>
16629
16630 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
16631 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
16632
16633 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
16634 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
16635 modify it manually.</p>
16636
16637 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16638 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16639
16640       </div>
16641       <div class="tags">
16642
16643
16644         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16645
16646
16647       </div>
16648     </div>
16649     <div class="padding"></div>
16650
16651     <div class="entry">
16652       <div class="title">
16653         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16654       </div>
16655       <div class="date">
16656         28th June 2010
16657       </div>
16658       <div class="body">
16659         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
16660 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
16661 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
16662 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
16663 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
16664 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
16665 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
16666 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
16667 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
16668 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
16669
16670 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
16671 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
16672 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
16673 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
16674 released.</p>
16675
16676 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
16677 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
16678 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
16679 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
16680
16681 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
16682 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16683
16684 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
16685 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
16686 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
16687 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
16688 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
16689
16690       </div>
16691       <div class="tags">
16692
16693
16694         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>.
16695
16696
16697       </div>
16698     </div>
16699     <div class="padding"></div>
16700
16701     <div class="entry">
16702       <div class="title">
16703         <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>
16704       </div>
16705       <div class="date">
16706         24th June 2010
16707       </div>
16708       <div class="body">
16709         <p>A while back, I
16710 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
16711 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
16712 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
16713 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
16714
16715 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
16716 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
16717 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
16718 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
16719
16720 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
16721 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
16722 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
16723 Debian Edu.</p>
16724
16725 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
16726 the
16727 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
16728 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
16729 available today from IETF.</p>
16730
16731 <pre>
16732 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
16733 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
16734 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
16735  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
16736         NAME 'dhcpHost'
16737         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
16738 -       SUP top
16739 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
16740         MUST cn
16741         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
16742         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
16743 </pre>
16744
16745 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
16746 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
16747 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
16748
16749 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16750 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16751
16752       </div>
16753       <div class="tags">
16754
16755
16756         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>.
16757
16758
16759       </div>
16760     </div>
16761     <div class="padding"></div>
16762
16763     <div class="entry">
16764       <div class="title">
16765         <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>
16766       </div>
16767       <div class="date">
16768         16th June 2010
16769       </div>
16770       <div class="body">
16771         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
16772 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
16773 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
16774 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
16775 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
16776 this:
16777
16778 <blockquote><pre>
16779 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16780 tasksel --new-install
16781 </pre></blockquote>
16782
16783 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
16784 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
16785 any output what so ever.
16786
16787 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
16788 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
16789 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
16790 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
16791 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
16792 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
16793 code like this:
16794
16795 <blockquote><pre>
16796 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16797 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
16798 $cmd
16799 </pre></blockquote>
16800
16801 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
16802 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
16803 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
16804 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
16805 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
16806 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
16807 installation.</p>
16808
16809 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
16810 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
16811 like this.</p>
16812
16813       </div>
16814       <div class="tags">
16815
16816
16817         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>.
16818
16819
16820       </div>
16821     </div>
16822     <div class="padding"></div>
16823
16824     <div class="entry">
16825       <div class="title">
16826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
16827       </div>
16828       <div class="date">
16829         13th June 2010
16830       </div>
16831       <div class="body">
16832         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
16833 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
16834 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
16835 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
16836 pages.</p>
16837
16838 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
16839 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
16840 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
16841 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
16842 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
16843 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
16844 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
16845 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
16846 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
16847 see how the project is doing.</p>
16848
16849 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
16850 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
16851 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
16852 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
16853 Windows.  This is great.</p>
16854
16855       </div>
16856       <div class="tags">
16857
16858
16859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
16860
16861
16862       </div>
16863     </div>
16864     <div class="padding"></div>
16865
16866     <div class="entry">
16867       <div class="title">
16868         <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>
16869       </div>
16870       <div class="date">
16871         13th June 2010
16872       </div>
16873       <div class="body">
16874         <p>My
16875 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
16876 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
16877 finally made the upgrade logs available from
16878 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
16879 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
16880 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
16881 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
16882
16883 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
16884 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
16885 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
16886 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
16887 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
16888 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
16889 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
16890 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
16891
16892 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
16893 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
16894 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
16895 too surprising.</p>
16896
16897 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
16898 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
16899 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
16900 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
16901 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
16902 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
16903 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
16904 continue.</p>
16905
16906 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
16907 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
16908   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
16909   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
16910   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
16911   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
16912   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
16913   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16914   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16915   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16916   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16917   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16918   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16919   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16920   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16921   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16922   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16923   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16924   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16925   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16926   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16927   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16928   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16929   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16930   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16931   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16932   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16933   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16934   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
16935   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
16936
16937 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
16938
16939 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
16940   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
16941   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
16942   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
16943   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16944   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
16945   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
16946   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
16947   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
16948   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
16949   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16950   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
16951   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16952   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
16953   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
16954   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
16955   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
16956   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
16957   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
16958   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
16959   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
16960   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
16961   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
16962   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
16963   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16964   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
16965   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
16966   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
16967   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
16968   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16969   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16970   zip</p>
16971
16972 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
16973
16974 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
16975   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
16976   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
16977   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
16978   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
16979   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
16980   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16981   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16982   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16983   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16984   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16985   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16986   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16987   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16988   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16989   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16990   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16991   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16992   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16993   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16994   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16995   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16996   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16997   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16998   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16999   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
17000   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
17001   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
17002
17003 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
17004 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
17005   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
17006   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
17007   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
17008   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
17009   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
17010   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
17011   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
17012   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
17013   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
17014   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
17015   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
17016   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
17017   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
17018   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
17019   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
17020   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
17021   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
17022   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
17023   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
17024   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
17025   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
17026   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
17027   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
17028   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
17029   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
17030   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
17031   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
17032   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
17033   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
17034   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
17035   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
17036   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
17037   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
17038   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17039   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
17040   xulrunner-1.9</p>
17041
17042
17043       </div>
17044       <div class="tags">
17045
17046
17047         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>.
17048
17049
17050       </div>
17051     </div>
17052     <div class="padding"></div>
17053
17054     <div class="entry">
17055       <div class="title">
17056         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
17057       </div>
17058       <div class="date">
17059         11th June 2010
17060       </div>
17061       <div class="body">
17062         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
17063 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
17064 have been discovered and reported in the process
17065 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
17066 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
17067 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
17068 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
17069 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
17070
17071 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
17072 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
17073 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
17074 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
17075 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
17076 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
17077
17078 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
17079 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
17080 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
17081 is created.  The bug report
17082 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
17083 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
17084 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
17085 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
17086 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
17087 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
17088 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
17089 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
17090 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
17091 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
17092 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
17093 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
17094 Debian Squeeze.</p>
17095
17096 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
17097 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
17098 trick:</p>
17099
17100 <blockquote><pre>
17101 #!/bin/sh
17102 set -ex
17103
17104 if [ "$1" ] ; then
17105     desktop=$1
17106 else
17107     desktop=gnome
17108 fi
17109
17110 from=lenny
17111 to=squeeze
17112
17113 exec &lt; /dev/null
17114 unset LANG
17115 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
17116 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
17117 fuser -mv .
17118 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
17119 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
17120 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
17121 #!/bin/sh
17122 exit 101
17123 EOF
17124 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
17125 exit_cleanup() {
17126     umount $tmpdir/proc
17127 }
17128 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
17129 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
17130 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
17131
17132 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
17133
17134 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
17135 # to return the correct answers.
17136 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
17137     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
17138
17139 # Include the desktop and laptop task
17140 for test in desktop laptop ; do
17141     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
17142 #!/bin/sh
17143 exit 2
17144 EOF
17145     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
17146 done
17147
17148 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17149 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
17150 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
17151 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
17152
17153 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
17154 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
17155 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
17156 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
17157 fuser -mv
17158 </pre></blockquote>
17159
17160 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
17161 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
17162 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
17163 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
17164 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
17165 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
17166
17167 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
17168 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
17169 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
17170 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
17171 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
17172 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
17173 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
17174
17175 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
17176 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
17177 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
17178 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
17179 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
17180 packages.</p>
17181
17182       </div>
17183       <div class="tags">
17184
17185
17186         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>.
17187
17188
17189       </div>
17190     </div>
17191     <div class="padding"></div>
17192
17193     <div class="entry">
17194       <div class="title">
17195         <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>
17196       </div>
17197       <div class="date">
17198          6th June 2010
17199       </div>
17200       <div class="body">
17201         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
17202 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
17203 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
17204 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
17205 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
17206 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
17207 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
17208
17209 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
17210 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
17211 COLUMNS):</p>
17212
17213 <blockquote><pre>
17214 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
17215 previous=N
17216 PREVLEVEL=
17217 RUNLEVEL=
17218 runlevel=S
17219 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
17220 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
17221 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
17222 </pre></blockquote>
17223
17224 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
17225 script.</p>
17226
17227 <blockquote><pre>
17228 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
17229 previous=N
17230 PREVLEVEL=N
17231 RUNLEVEL=S
17232 runlevel=S
17233 </pre></blockquote>
17234
17235 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
17236 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
17237 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
17238
17239 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
17240 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
17241 choice.</p>
17242
17243       </div>
17244       <div class="tags">
17245
17246
17247         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>.
17248
17249
17250       </div>
17251     </div>
17252     <div class="padding"></div>
17253
17254     <div class="entry">
17255       <div class="title">
17256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
17257       </div>
17258       <div class="date">
17259          6th June 2010
17260       </div>
17261       <div class="body">
17262         <p>Via the
17263 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
17264 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
17265 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
17266 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
17267 following the standards wars of today.</p>
17268
17269       </div>
17270       <div class="tags">
17271
17272
17273         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>.
17274
17275
17276       </div>
17277     </div>
17278     <div class="padding"></div>
17279
17280     <div class="entry">
17281       <div class="title">
17282         <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>
17283       </div>
17284       <div class="date">
17285          3rd June 2010
17286       </div>
17287       <div class="body">
17288         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
17289 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
17290 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
17291 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
17292 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
17293
17294 <blockquote><pre>
17295 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
17296   vendor                    count
17297   Dell Computer Corporation     1
17298     PowerEdge 1750              1
17299   IBM                           1
17300     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
17301   Intel                         2
17302   [no-dmi-info]                 3
17303 maintainer:~#
17304 </pre></blockquote>
17305
17306 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
17307 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
17308 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
17309 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
17310 option to list the individual machines.</p>
17311
17312 <p>A larger list is
17313 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
17314 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
17315 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
17316 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
17317 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
17318 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
17319 collector.</p>
17320
17321       </div>
17322       <div class="tags">
17323
17324
17325         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>.
17326
17327
17328       </div>
17329     </div>
17330     <div class="padding"></div>
17331
17332     <div class="entry">
17333       <div class="title">
17334         <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>
17335       </div>
17336       <div class="date">
17337          1st June 2010
17338       </div>
17339       <div class="body">
17340         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
17341 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
17342 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
17343 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
17344 wait.</p>
17345
17346 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
17347 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
17348 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
17349 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
17350 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
17351 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
17352
17353 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
17354 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
17355 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
17356 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
17357 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
17358 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
17359 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
17360 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
17361
17362 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
17363
17364       </div>
17365       <div class="tags">
17366
17367
17368         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17369
17370
17371       </div>
17372     </div>
17373     <div class="padding"></div>
17374
17375     <div class="entry">
17376       <div class="title">
17377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
17378       </div>
17379       <div class="date">
17380         27th May 2010
17381       </div>
17382       <div class="body">
17383         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
17384 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
17385 issues are known and should be solved:
17386
17387 <p><ul>
17388
17389 <li>The wicd package seen to
17390 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
17391 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
17392 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
17393 seem to be on the case.</li>
17394
17395 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
17396 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
17397 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
17398 maintainer is on the case.</li>
17399
17400 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
17401 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
17402 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
17403 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
17404 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
17405 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
17406 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
17407 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
17408
17409 </ul></p>
17410
17411 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
17412 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
17413 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
17414 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
17415
17416 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17417 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17418 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17419 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17420
17421 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
17422
17423       </div>
17424       <div class="tags">
17425
17426
17427         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>.
17428
17429
17430       </div>
17431     </div>
17432     <div class="padding"></div>
17433
17434     <div class="entry">
17435       <div class="title">
17436         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
17437       </div>
17438       <div class="date">
17439         22nd May 2010
17440       </div>
17441       <div class="body">
17442         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
17443 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
17444 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
17445 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
17446
17447 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
17448 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
17449 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
17450 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
17451 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
17452 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
17453 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
17454 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
17455 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
17456 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
17457 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
17458 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
17459 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
17460 going to work.</p>
17461
17462 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
17463 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
17464 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
17465 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
17466 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
17467 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
17468 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
17469 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
17470 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
17471 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
17472 Edu.</p>
17473
17474 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
17475 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
17476 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
17477 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
17478 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
17479 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
17480
17481 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
17482 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
17483
17484       </div>
17485       <div class="tags">
17486
17487
17488         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>.
17489
17490
17491       </div>
17492     </div>
17493     <div class="padding"></div>
17494
17495     <div class="entry">
17496       <div class="title">
17497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
17498       </div>
17499       <div class="date">
17500         19th May 2010
17501       </div>
17502       <div class="body">
17503         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
17504 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
17505 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
17506 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
17507 into unstable.  The
17508 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
17509 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
17510 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
17511 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
17512 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
17513 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
17514 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
17515
17516 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
17517 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
17518 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
17519 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
17520 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
17521 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
17522 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
17523 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
17524
17525 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
17526 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
17527 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
17528 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
17529 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
17530 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
17531 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
17532
17533 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
17534 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
17535 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
17536 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
17537 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
17538 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
17539 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
17540 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
17541 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
17542 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
17543 on the home directory servers.</p>
17544
17545 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
17546 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
17547 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
17548 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
17549 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
17550 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
17551
17552 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17553 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17554
17555       </div>
17556       <div class="tags">
17557
17558
17559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17560
17561
17562       </div>
17563     </div>
17564     <div class="padding"></div>
17565
17566     <div class="entry">
17567       <div class="title">
17568         <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>
17569       </div>
17570       <div class="date">
17571         14th May 2010
17572       </div>
17573       <div class="body">
17574         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
17575 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
17576 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
17577 expected, if I am to believe the
17578 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17579 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
17580 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
17581 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
17582 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
17583 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
17584 version.</p>
17585
17586 More information about
17587 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17588 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
17589 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
17590 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
17591
17592 <blockquote><pre>
17593 CONCURRENCY=none
17594 </pre></blockquote>
17595
17596 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17597 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17598 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17599 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17600
17601       </div>
17602       <div class="tags">
17603
17604
17605         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>.
17606
17607
17608       </div>
17609     </div>
17610     <div class="padding"></div>
17611
17612     <div class="entry">
17613       <div class="title">
17614         <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>
17615       </div>
17616       <div class="date">
17617         14th May 2010
17618       </div>
17619       <div class="body">
17620         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
17621 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
17622 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
17623 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
17624 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
17625 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
17626 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
17627 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
17628
17629 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
17630 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
17631 this on the collector host:</p>
17632
17633 <blockquote><pre>
17634 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
17635 </pre></blockquote>
17636
17637 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
17638 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
17639
17640 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
17641 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
17642 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
17643 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
17644 written yet.</p>
17645
17646       </div>
17647       <div class="tags">
17648
17649
17650         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>.
17651
17652
17653       </div>
17654     </div>
17655     <div class="padding"></div>
17656
17657     <div class="entry">
17658       <div class="title">
17659         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
17660       </div>
17661       <div class="date">
17662         13th May 2010
17663       </div>
17664       <div class="body">
17665         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
17666 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
17667 has been
17668 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
17669
17670 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
17671 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
17672 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
17673 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
17674 based boot system.  Tollef is
17675 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
17676 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
17677 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
17678 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
17679 at the moment do not.</p>
17680
17681 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
17682 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
17683 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
17684 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
17685 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
17686 way forward.</p>
17687
17688 <p>In the mean time, based on the
17689 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17690 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
17691 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
17692 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
17693 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
17694 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
17695 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
17696 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
17697
17698       </div>
17699       <div class="tags">
17700
17701
17702         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>.
17703
17704
17705       </div>
17706     </div>
17707     <div class="padding"></div>
17708
17709     <div class="entry">
17710       <div class="title">
17711         <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>
17712       </div>
17713       <div class="date">
17714          6th May 2010
17715       </div>
17716       <div class="body">
17717         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
17718 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
17719 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
17720 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
17721 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17722 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
17723 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
17724
17725 <blockquote><pre>
17726 CONCURRENCY=makefile
17727 </pre></blockquote>
17728
17729 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
17730 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
17731 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
17732 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
17733 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
17734 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
17735 make this happen.</p>
17736
17737 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
17738 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
17739 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
17740 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
17741 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
17742
17743 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
17744 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
17745 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
17746 fix the remaining issues.</p>
17747
17748 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17749 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17750 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17751 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17752
17753       </div>
17754       <div class="tags">
17755
17756
17757         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>.
17758
17759
17760       </div>
17761     </div>
17762     <div class="padding"></div>
17763
17764     <div class="entry">
17765       <div class="title">
17766         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
17767       </div>
17768       <div class="date">
17769          2nd May 2010
17770       </div>
17771       <div class="body">
17772         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
17773 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
17774 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
17775
17776 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
17777 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
17778 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
17779 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
17780 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
17781
17782 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
17783 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
17784
17785 <blockquote><pre>
17786 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17787 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
17788 Password expires                                        : never
17789 Password inactive                                       : never
17790 Account expires                                         : never
17791 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17792 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
17793 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17794 root@tjener:~#
17795 </pre></blockquote>
17796
17797 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
17798 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
17799 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
17800 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
17801 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
17802 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
17803
17804 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
17805 intended:</p>
17806
17807 <blockquote><pre>
17808 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
17809 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17810 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
17811 Password expires                                        : never
17812 Password inactive                                       : never
17813 Account expires                                         : never
17814 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17815 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
17816 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17817 root@tjener:~#
17818 </pre></blockquote>
17819
17820 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
17821 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
17822 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
17823
17824 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
17825 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
17826
17827 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
17828 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17829
17830 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
17831 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
17832 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
17833 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
17834 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
17835 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
17836 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
17837
17838 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
17839 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
17840 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
17841 change.</p>
17842
17843       </div>
17844       <div class="tags">
17845
17846
17847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17848
17849
17850       </div>
17851     </div>
17852     <div class="padding"></div>
17853
17854     <div class="entry">
17855       <div class="title">
17856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
17857       </div>
17858       <div class="date">
17859         28th April 2010
17860       </div>
17861       <div class="body">
17862         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
17863 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
17864 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
17865 and go.</p>
17866
17867 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
17868 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
17869 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
17870 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
17871
17872 <ul>
17873
17874  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
17875    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
17876    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
17877    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
17878    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
17879    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
17880    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
17881    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
17882    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
17883    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
17884    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
17885    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
17886
17887  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
17888    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
17889    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
17890    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
17891    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
17892    or the Fedora developed
17893    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
17894    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
17895
17896  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
17897    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
17898    directory, using unison.</li>
17899
17900  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
17901    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
17902    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
17903    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
17904    implemented.</li>
17905
17906  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
17907    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
17908
17909  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
17910    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
17911    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
17912
17913 </ul>
17914
17915 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
17916 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
17917 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
17918 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
17919 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
17920 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
17921 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
17922 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
17923 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
17924
17925 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17926 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17927
17928       </div>
17929       <div class="tags">
17930
17931
17932         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17933
17934
17935       </div>
17936     </div>
17937     <div class="padding"></div>
17938
17939     <div class="entry">
17940       <div class="title">
17941         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
17942       </div>
17943       <div class="date">
17944         19th April 2010
17945       </div>
17946       <div class="body">
17947         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
17948 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
17949 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
17950 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
17951 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
17952 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
17953 restrictions on the web, for example from
17954 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
17955 epub-version from
17956 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
17957 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
17958 strongly recommend this book.</p>
17959
17960       </div>
17961       <div class="tags">
17962
17963
17964         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17965
17966
17967       </div>
17968     </div>
17969     <div class="padding"></div>
17970
17971     <div class="entry">
17972       <div class="title">
17973         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
17974       </div>
17975       <div class="date">
17976         14th April 2010
17977       </div>
17978       <div class="body">
17979         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
17980 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
17981 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
17982 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
17983 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
17984 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
17985 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
17986 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
17987 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
17988
17989 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
17990 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
17991 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
17992 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
17993 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
17994
17995 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
17996 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
17997
17998 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
17999 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
18000 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
18001 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
18002 to work properly.</p>
18003
18004 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
18005 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
18006 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
18007 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
18008 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
18009 time.</p>
18010
18011 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
18012 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
18013 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
18014 up in a few days.</p>
18015
18016       </div>
18017       <div class="tags">
18018
18019
18020         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18021
18022
18023       </div>
18024     </div>
18025     <div class="padding"></div>
18026
18027     <div class="entry">
18028       <div class="title">
18029         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
18030       </div>
18031       <div class="date">
18032          6th March 2010
18033       </div>
18034       <div class="body">
18035         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
18036 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
18037 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
18038 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
18039 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
18040 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
18041
18042 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
18043 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
18044 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
18045 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
18046
18047 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
18048 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
18049 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
18050 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
18051 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
18052 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
18053
18054       </div>
18055       <div class="tags">
18056
18057
18058         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18059
18060
18061       </div>
18062     </div>
18063     <div class="padding"></div>
18064
18065     <div class="entry">
18066       <div class="title">
18067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
18068       </div>
18069       <div class="date">
18070         11th February 2010
18071       </div>
18072       <div class="body">
18073         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
18074 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
18075 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
18076 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
18077 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
18078 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
18079 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
18080
18081 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
18082
18083 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
18084 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
18085 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
18086 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
18087
18088       </div>
18089       <div class="tags">
18090
18091
18092         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18093
18094
18095       </div>
18096     </div>
18097     <div class="padding"></div>
18098
18099     <div class="entry">
18100       <div class="title">
18101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
18102       </div>
18103       <div class="date">
18104         27th January 2010
18105       </div>
18106       <div class="body">
18107         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
18108 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
18109 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
18110 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
18111 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
18112 further.</p>
18113
18114 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
18115 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
18116 configured to be a server for the
18117 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
18118 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
18119 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
18120 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
18121 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
18122 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
18123 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
18124 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
18125 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
18126 and Nagios configuration.</p>
18127
18128 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
18129 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
18130 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
18131 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
18132
18133 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
18134 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
18135 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
18136 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
18137 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
18138 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
18139 the machine.</p>
18140
18141 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
18142 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
18143 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
18144 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
18145
18146 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
18147 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
18148 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
18149 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
18150 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
18151 everything is taken care of.</p>
18152
18153       </div>
18154       <div class="tags">
18155
18156
18157         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
18158
18159
18160       </div>
18161     </div>
18162     <div class="padding"></div>
18163
18164     <div class="entry">
18165       <div class="title">
18166         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
18167       </div>
18168       <div class="date">
18169         12th August 2009
18170       </div>
18171       <div class="body">
18172         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
18173 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
18174 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
18175 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
18176
18177 <table>
18178 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18179 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18180 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
18181 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
18182 </table>
18183
18184 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
18185 got these numbers:</p>
18186
18187 <table>
18188 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18189 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
18190 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
18191 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
18192 </table>
18193
18194 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
18195
18196 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
18197 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
18198 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
18199 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
18200 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
18201
18202
18203 <table>
18204 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18205 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18206 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
18207 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
18208 </table>
18209
18210 <p>And with 'site:no':
18211
18212 <table>
18213 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18214 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
18215 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
18216 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
18217 </table>
18218
18219 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
18220 numbers.</p>
18221
18222       </div>
18223       <div class="tags">
18224
18225
18226         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18227
18228
18229       </div>
18230     </div>
18231     <div class="padding"></div>
18232
18233     <div class="entry">
18234       <div class="title">
18235         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
18236       </div>
18237       <div class="date">
18238          8th August 2009
18239       </div>
18240       <div class="body">
18241         <p>According to <a
18242 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
18243 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
18244 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
18245 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
18246 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
18247 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
18248 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
18249 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
18250 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
18251 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
18252
18253 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
18254 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
18255 seminar this autumn.</p>
18256
18257       </div>
18258       <div class="tags">
18259
18260
18261         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
18262
18263
18264       </div>
18265     </div>
18266     <div class="padding"></div>
18267
18268     <div class="entry">
18269       <div class="title">
18270         <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>
18271       </div>
18272       <div class="date">
18273         27th July 2009
18274       </div>
18275       <div class="body">
18276         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
18277 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
18278 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
18279 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
18280 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
18281 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
18282 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
18283
18284 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
18285 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
18286 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
18287
18288       </div>
18289       <div class="tags">
18290
18291
18292         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>.
18293
18294
18295       </div>
18296     </div>
18297     <div class="padding"></div>
18298
18299     <div class="entry">
18300       <div class="title">
18301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
18302       </div>
18303       <div class="date">
18304         22nd July 2009
18305       </div>
18306       <div class="body">
18307         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
18308 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
18309 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
18310 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
18311 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
18312 the package up to date.</p>
18313
18314 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
18315 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
18316 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
18317 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
18318 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
18319 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
18320 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
18321 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
18322 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
18323 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
18324 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
18325 working on the future release.</p>
18326
18327 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
18328 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
18329
18330       </div>
18331       <div class="tags">
18332
18333
18334         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>.
18335
18336
18337       </div>
18338     </div>
18339     <div class="padding"></div>
18340
18341     <div class="entry">
18342       <div class="title">
18343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
18344       </div>
18345       <div class="date">
18346         24th June 2009
18347       </div>
18348       <div class="body">
18349         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
18350 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
18351 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
18352 funded
18353 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
18354 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
18355 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
18356 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
18357 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
18358 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
18359
18360 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
18361 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
18362 boot:</p>
18363
18364 <ul>
18365
18366 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
18367
18368 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
18369    clock is in UTC.</li>
18370
18371 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
18372    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
18373    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
18374
18375 </ul>
18376
18377 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
18378 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
18379 Villegas</a>.
18380
18381 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
18382 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
18383 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
18384 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
18385 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
18386 using this.</p>
18387
18388 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
18389 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
18390 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
18391 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
18392 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
18393 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
18394 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
18395
18396       </div>
18397       <div class="tags">
18398
18399
18400         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>.
18401
18402
18403       </div>
18404     </div>
18405     <div class="padding"></div>
18406
18407     <div class="entry">
18408       <div class="title">
18409         <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>
18410       </div>
18411       <div class="date">
18412          2nd May 2009
18413       </div>
18414       <div class="body">
18415         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
18416 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
18417 do not yet know them.</p>
18418
18419 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
18420 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
18421 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
18422 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
18423 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
18424 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
18425 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
18426 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
18427 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
18428 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
18429 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
18430
18431 <p>The second one is
18432 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
18433 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
18434 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
18435 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
18436 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
18437 and the company behind it is running
18438 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
18439 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
18440 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
18441 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
18442 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
18443 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
18444 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
18445 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
18446
18447 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
18448 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
18449 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
18450 surrounded by today.</p>
18451
18452       </div>
18453       <div class="tags">
18454
18455
18456         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>.
18457
18458
18459       </div>
18460     </div>
18461     <div class="padding"></div>
18462
18463     <div class="entry">
18464       <div class="title">
18465         <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>
18466       </div>
18467       <div class="date">
18468         28th April 2009
18469       </div>
18470       <div class="body">
18471         <p>Julien Blache
18472 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
18473 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
18474 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
18475 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
18476 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
18477 properties.</p>
18478
18479       </div>
18480       <div class="tags">
18481
18482
18483         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>.
18484
18485
18486       </div>
18487     </div>
18488     <div class="padding"></div>
18489
18490     <div class="entry">
18491       <div class="title">
18492         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
18493       </div>
18494       <div class="date">
18495          5th April 2009
18496       </div>
18497       <div class="body">
18498         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
18499 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
18500 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
18501 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
18502 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
18503 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
18504 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
18505 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
18506
18507 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
18508 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
18509 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
18510   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18511   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
18512
18513 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
18514 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
18515 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
18516 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
18517
18518 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
18519 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
18520 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
18521 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
18522
18523 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
18524 set -e
18525 URL="$1"
18526 SAVEFILE="$2"
18527 DURATION="$3"
18528 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
18529   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18530   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
18531 pid=$!
18532 sleep $DURATION
18533 kill $pid
18534 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
18535
18536       </div>
18537       <div class="tags">
18538
18539
18540         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
18541
18542
18543       </div>
18544     </div>
18545     <div class="padding"></div>
18546
18547     <div class="entry">
18548       <div class="title">
18549         <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>
18550       </div>
18551       <div class="date">
18552         30th March 2009
18553       </div>
18554       <div class="body">
18555         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
18556 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
18557 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
18558 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
18559 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
18560 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
18561 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
18562 application.</p>
18563
18564 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
18565 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
18566 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
18567 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
18568 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
18569 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
18570 blocked from doing so.</p>
18571
18572 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
18573 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
18574 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
18575 requirements change.</p>
18576
18577 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
18578 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
18579 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
18580
18581       </div>
18582       <div class="tags">
18583
18584
18585         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>.
18586
18587
18588       </div>
18589     </div>
18590     <div class="padding"></div>
18591
18592     <div class="entry">
18593       <div class="title">
18594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
18595       </div>
18596       <div class="date">
18597         29th March 2009
18598       </div>
18599       <div class="body">
18600         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
18601 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
18602 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
18603 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
18604 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
18605 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
18606 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
18607 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
18608 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
18609 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
18610 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
18611 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
18612 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
18613 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
18614 now. :)</p>
18615
18616       </div>
18617       <div class="tags">
18618
18619
18620         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>.
18621
18622
18623       </div>
18624     </div>
18625     <div class="padding"></div>
18626
18627     <div class="entry">
18628       <div class="title">
18629         <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>
18630       </div>
18631       <div class="date">
18632         29th March 2009
18633       </div>
18634       <div class="body">
18635         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
18636 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
18637 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
18638 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
18639 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
18640 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
18641
18642 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
18643 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
18644 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
18645 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
18646 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
18647 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
18648 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
18649 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
18650 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
18651 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
18652 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
18653 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
18654 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
18655
18656 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
18657 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
18658 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
18659 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
18660
18661 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
18662 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
18663
18664 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
18665 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
18666 new IETF work group?</p>
18667
18668       </div>
18669       <div class="tags">
18670
18671
18672         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>.
18673
18674
18675       </div>
18676     </div>
18677     <div class="padding"></div>
18678
18679     <div class="entry">
18680       <div class="title">
18681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
18682       </div>
18683       <div class="date">
18684         28th February 2009
18685       </div>
18686       <div class="body">
18687         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
18688 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
18689 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
18690 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
18691 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
18692 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
18693 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
18694 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
18695 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
18696 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
18697 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
18698 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
18699 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
18700 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
18701 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
18702 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
18703 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
18704 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
18705 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
18706 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
18707 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
18708 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
18709 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
18710 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
18711 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
18712 machine.</p>
18713
18714 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
18715 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
18716 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
18717 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
18718 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
18719 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
18720 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
18721
18722 <pre>
18723 use LWP::Simple;
18724 use POSIX;
18725 use WWW::Mechanize;
18726 use Date::Parse;
18727 [...]
18728 sub get_support_info {
18729     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
18730     my $str;
18731
18732     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
18733         # fetch website from Dell support
18734         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
18735         my $webpage = get($url);
18736         return undef unless ($webpage);
18737
18738         my $daysleft = -1;
18739         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
18740         foreach my $line (@lines) {
18741             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
18742             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18743             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
18744
18745             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
18746             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
18747             my $lastend = "";
18748             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
18749                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
18750
18751                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18752                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18753                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18754                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
18755                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
18756                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
18757                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
18758             }
18759             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18760             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18761                 if ($lastend lt $today);
18762         }
18763     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
18764         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
18765         my $url =
18766             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
18767         $mech->get($url);
18768         my $fields = {
18769             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
18770             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
18771             'country' => 'NO',
18772             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
18773             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
18774         };
18775         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
18776                             fields      => $fields );
18777         # Next step is screen scraping
18778         my $content = $mech->content();
18779
18780         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18781         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18782         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18783         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18784
18785         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18786
18787         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
18788             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
18789                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
18790             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
18791             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18792                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18793             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18794                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
18795
18796             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
18797
18798             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18799                 if ($end lt $today);
18800         }
18801     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
18802         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
18803         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
18804         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
18805             my $content =
18806                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
18807             if ($content) {
18808                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18809                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18810                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18811                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18812
18813                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
18814                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
18815
18816                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
18817
18818                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18819                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18820                     if ($end lt $today);
18821             }
18822         }
18823     }
18824     return $str;
18825 }
18826 </pre>
18827
18828 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
18829 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
18830 from dmidecode.</p>
18831
18832 <pre>
18833 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
18834                        "447707-B21");
18835 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
18836 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
18837                        "1234567");
18838 </pre>
18839
18840 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
18841 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
18842
18843 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
18844 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
18845 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
18846 do so.</p>
18847
18848       </div>
18849       <div class="tags">
18850
18851
18852         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18853
18854
18855       </div>
18856     </div>
18857     <div class="padding"></div>
18858
18859     <div class="entry">
18860       <div class="title">
18861         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
18862       </div>
18863       <div class="date">
18864         20th February 2009
18865       </div>
18866       <div class="body">
18867         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
18868 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
18869 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
18870 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
18871 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
18872 the "missing" computer.</p>
18873
18874 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
18875 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
18876 code blocks as defined in the
18877 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
18878 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
18879 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
18880 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
18881 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
18882 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
18883 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
18884 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
18885 codes.</p>
18886
18887 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
18888 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
18889 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
18890 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
18891 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
18892 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
18893
18894 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
18895 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
18896 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
18897 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
18898 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
18899 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
18900 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
18901 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
18902 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
18903 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
18904
18905 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
18906 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
18907 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
18908
18909       </div>
18910       <div class="tags">
18911
18912
18913         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18914
18915
18916       </div>
18917     </div>
18918     <div class="padding"></div>
18919
18920     <div class="entry">
18921       <div class="title">
18922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
18923       </div>
18924       <div class="date">
18925         17th January 2009
18926       </div>
18927       <div class="body">
18928         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
18929 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
18930 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
18931 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
18932 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
18933 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
18934 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
18935 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
18936 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
18937 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
18938 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
18939 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
18940 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
18941 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
18942
18943 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
18944 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
18945 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
18946 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
18947 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
18948 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
18949 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
18950 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
18951 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
18952 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
18953 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
18954 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
18955 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
18956 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
18957 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
18958 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
18959 playing when the download is done.</p>
18960
18961 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
18962 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
18963 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
18964 too.</p>
18965
18966 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
18967 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
18968 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
18969 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
18970
18971       </div>
18972       <div class="tags">
18973
18974
18975         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18976
18977
18978       </div>
18979     </div>
18980     <div class="padding"></div>
18981
18982     <div class="entry">
18983       <div class="title">
18984         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
18985       </div>
18986       <div class="date">
18987         28th December 2008
18988       </div>
18989       <div class="body">
18990         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
18991 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
18992 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
18993 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
18994 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
18995 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
18996 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
18997 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
18998 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
18999 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
19000 source, sink and mixer applications and
19001 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
19002 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
19003 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
19004 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
19005 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
19006 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
19007 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
19008 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
19009 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
19010
19011 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
19012 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
19013 larger stick as well.</p>
19014
19015       </div>
19016       <div class="tags">
19017
19018
19019         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
19020
19021
19022       </div>
19023     </div>
19024     <div class="padding"></div>
19025
19026     <div class="entry">
19027       <div class="title">
19028         <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>
19029       </div>
19030       <div class="date">
19031          7th December 2008
19032       </div>
19033       <div class="body">
19034         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
19035 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
19036 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
19037 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
19038 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
19039 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
19040 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
19041 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
19042
19043 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
19044 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
19045 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
19046 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
19047 of these cards.</p>
19048
19049       </div>
19050       <div class="tags">
19051
19052
19053         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>.
19054
19055
19056       </div>
19057     </div>
19058     <div class="padding"></div>
19059
19060     <div class="entry">
19061       <div class="title">
19062         <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>
19063       </div>
19064       <div class="date">
19065         25th November 2008
19066       </div>
19067       <div class="body">
19068         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
19069 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
19070 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
19071 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
19072 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
19073 notes are available on
19074 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
19075 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
19076 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
19077 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
19078 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
19079 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
19080 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
19081 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
19082 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
19083
19084 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
19085 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
19086
19087       </div>
19088       <div class="tags">
19089
19090
19091         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>.
19092
19093
19094       </div>
19095     </div>
19096     <div class="padding"></div>
19097
19098     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
19099     <div id="sidebar">
19100
19101
19102
19103 <h2>Archive</h2>
19104 <ul>
19105
19106 <li>2014
19107 <ul>
19108
19109 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
19110
19111 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
19112
19113 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (5)</a></li>
19114
19115 </ul></li>
19116
19117 <li>2013
19118 <ul>
19119
19120 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
19121
19122 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
19123
19124 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
19125
19126 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
19127
19128 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19129
19130 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
19131
19132 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
19133
19134 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
19135
19136 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
19137
19138 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
19139
19140 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
19141
19142 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19143
19144 </ul></li>
19145
19146 <li>2012
19147 <ul>
19148
19149 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
19150
19151 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
19152
19153 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
19154
19155 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
19156
19157 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
19158
19159 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
19160
19161 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
19162
19163 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19164
19165 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
19166
19167 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
19168
19169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
19170
19171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19172
19173 </ul></li>
19174
19175 <li>2011
19176 <ul>
19177
19178 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
19179
19180 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
19181
19182 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
19183
19184 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
19185
19186 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
19187
19188 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
19189
19190 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
19191
19192 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19193
19194 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
19195
19196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19197
19198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19199
19200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
19201
19202 </ul></li>
19203
19204 <li>2010
19205 <ul>
19206
19207 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
19208
19209 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
19210
19211 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
19212
19213 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
19214
19215 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19216
19217 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
19218
19219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
19220
19221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
19222
19223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
19224
19225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
19226
19227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
19228
19229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
19230
19231 </ul></li>
19232
19233 <li>2009
19234 <ul>
19235
19236 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
19237
19238 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
19239
19240 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
19241
19242 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
19243
19244 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19245
19246 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
19247
19248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
19249
19250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
19251
19252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
19253
19254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19255
19256 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19257
19258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19259
19260 </ul></li>
19261
19262 <li>2008
19263 <ul>
19264
19265 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
19266
19267 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19268
19269 </ul></li>
19270
19271 </ul>
19272
19273
19274
19275 <h2>Tags</h2>
19276 <ul>
19277
19278  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
19279
19280  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
19281
19282  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
19283
19284  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
19285
19286  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
19287
19288  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
19289
19290  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
19291
19292  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
19293
19294  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (95)</a></li>
19295
19296  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (145)</a></li>
19297
19298  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
19299
19300  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
19301
19302  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
19303
19304  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (239)</a></li>
19305
19306  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
19307
19308  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
19309
19310  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
19311
19312  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (6)</a></li>
19313
19314  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
19315
19316  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (39)</a></li>
19317
19318  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
19319
19320  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
19321
19322  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
19323
19324  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (7)</a></li>
19325
19326  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
19327
19328  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (7)</a></li>
19329
19330  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (26)</a></li>
19331
19332  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (242)</a></li>
19333
19334  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (162)</a></li>
19335
19336  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (11)</a></li>
19337
19338  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
19339
19340  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (46)</a></li>
19341
19342  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (69)</a></li>
19343
19344  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
19345
19346  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
19347
19348  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
19349
19350  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
19351
19352  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
19353
19354  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
19355
19356  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
19357
19358  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (35)</a></li>
19359
19360  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
19361
19362  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
19363
19364  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
19365
19366  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
19367
19368  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
19369
19370  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (22)</a></li>
19371
19372  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
19373
19374  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
19375
19376  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (40)</a></li>
19377
19378  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
19379
19380  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (29)</a></li>
19381
19382 </ul>
19383
19384
19385     </div>
19386     <p style="text-align: right">
19387  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
19388 </p>
19389
19390   </body>
19391 </html>