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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "debian".
</h3>
25 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid
</a>
31 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
32 project
</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
33 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
34 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
35 encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
36 today a major mile stone was reached.
</p>
38 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
39 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
40 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
41 during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
42 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
43 Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
44 build everything directly from Debian. :)
</p>
46 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
47 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>,
48 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth
</a>,
49 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite
</a>,
50 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor
</a>,
51 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>,
52 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud
</a> and
53 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq
</a>. There
54 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
55 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
56 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
57 the manual
</a> and help us improve it.
</p>
59 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
60 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
64 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
65 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
67 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
69 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
72 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
73 devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
74 details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
75 make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
76 virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
77 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
78 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
79 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.
</p>
81 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
82 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
83 the preseed values:
</p>
86 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
89 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
92 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
93 systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
94 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
95 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
96 during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
97 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
98 be run from the plinth web interface.
</p>
100 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
101 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
102 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
103 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
104 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
105 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
111 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>.
116 <div class=
"padding"></div>
120 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software
</a>
126 <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
127 solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
128 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
129 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
130 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
131 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
132 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
133 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
134 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
135 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
136 I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
137 have looked at a system called
138 <a href=
"https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL
</a>, a locally
139 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.
</p>
141 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
142 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
143 Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
144 providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
145 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
146 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
147 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
148 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
149 while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
150 have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
151 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
152 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
153 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.
</p>
155 <p>It is simple to use. I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
156 package is included already. So to get started, run
<tt>apt-get
157 install s3ql
</tt>. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
158 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
159 <a href=
"https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
160 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service
</a>, because I trust the laws
161 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
162 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
163 in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
164 <a href=
"http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
165 Filesystem for HPC Storage
</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
166 Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
167 the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
168 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
171 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
172 system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
173 file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
174 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
175 I'll refer to it as
<tt>bucket-name
</tt> below. In addition, one need
176 the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
177 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
181 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
182 backend-login: API-login
183 backend-password: API-password
184 fs-passphrase: local-password
185 </pre></blockquote></p>
187 <p>I create my local passphrase using
<tt>pwget
50</tt> or similar,
188 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
189 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
190 details and password to create it:
</p>
193 # mkdir -m
700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
194 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
195 --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
197 Enter backend password:
198 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
199 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
200 Enter encryption password:
201 Confirm encryption password:
202 Generating random encryption key...
203 Creating metadata tables...
213 Compressing and uploading metadata...
214 Wrote
0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
215 #
</pre></blockquote></p>
217 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
220 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
221 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
222 Using
4 upload threads.
223 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
233 Mounting filesystem...
235 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
236 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1.0T
0 1.0T
0% /s3ql
238 </pre></blockquote></p>
240 <p>The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
241 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
242 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
243 running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
244 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
245 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
250 </pre></blockquote></p>
252 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
253 correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
254 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
255 mounted" flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
259 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
260 Using cached metadata.
261 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
262 Checking DB integrity...
263 Creating temporary extra indices...
264 Checking lost+found...
265 Checking cached objects...
266 Checking names (refcounts)...
267 Checking contents (names)...
268 Checking contents (inodes)...
269 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
270 Checking objects (reference counts)...
271 Checking objects (backend)...
272 ..processed
5000 objects so far..
273 ..processed
10000 objects so far..
274 ..processed
15000 objects so far..
275 Checking objects (sizes)...
276 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
277 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
278 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
279 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
280 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
281 Checking inodes (sizes)...
282 Checking extended attributes (names)...
283 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
284 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
285 Checking directory reachability...
286 Checking unix conventions...
287 Checking referential integrity...
288 Dropping temporary indices...
289 Backing up old metadata...
299 Compressing and uploading metadata...
300 Wrote
0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
302 </pre></blockquote></p>
304 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
305 quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
306 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
307 house. Uploading
685 MiB with a
100 MiB cache gave me
305 kiB/s,
308 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
309 Debian installation ISO gave me
610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
310 Both were measured using
<tt>dd
</tt>. So for me, the bottleneck is my
311 network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
312 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
315 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
316 time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
320 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
321 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
322 Using
8 upload threads.
323 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
325 </pre></blockquote></p>
327 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
328 metadata is uploaded once every
24 hour by default. To ensure the
329 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
330 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
334 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
335 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
337 </pre></blockquote></p>
339 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
340 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
341 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
346 Directory entries:
9141
349 Total data size:
22049.38 MB
350 After de-duplication:
21955.46 MB (
99.57% of total)
351 After compression:
21877.28 MB (
99.22% of total,
99.64% of de-duplicated)
352 Database size:
2.39 MB (uncompressed)
353 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
355 </pre></blockquote></p>
357 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
358 storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
359 <a href=
"https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud
</a>,
360 <a href=
"http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive
</a>,
361 <a href=
"http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces
</a>,
362 <a href=
"http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace
</a> and
363 <a href=
"http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud
</A>. The latter even
364 accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
365 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
366 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
369 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
370 and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
371 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
372 science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
374 "
<a href=
"http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
375 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
376 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach
</a>" by Hsing-Bung
377 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
378 and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.</p>
380 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
381 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
382 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
383 it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
384 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html
">my
385 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
386 no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
387 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
389 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
390 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
391 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/
">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
392 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
393 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
394 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
395 only read from it.</p>
397 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
398 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
399 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
405 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
410 <div class="padding
"></div>
414 <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>
420 <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
">Freedombox
421 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
422 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
423 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
424 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
425 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
428 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
429 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
430 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
431 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
432 file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
433 where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
434 the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
435 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
437 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap
</a>
438 with a user with sudo access to become root:
441 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
443 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
444 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
446 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
449 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
450 devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
451 want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to
<a
452 href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
453 vmdebootstrap
</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
456 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
457 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
458 the preseed values:
</p>
461 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
464 <p>But note that due to
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
465 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie
</a>, the installer will
466 currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
467 '
<tt>apt-cdrom ident
</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
468 installation will get the installation going. This affect all
469 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.
</p>
471 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
472 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
473 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
474 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
475 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
476 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
482 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>.
487 <div class=
"padding"></div>
491 <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>
497 <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
498 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
499 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>. I called the project
500 ng-utils, and it has served me well. I placed the project under the
501 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer
</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
502 repository. But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
503 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
504 proper home since then.
</p>
506 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
507 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
508 a proper source control system. I applied for a project on
509 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth
</a>, but did not have time
510 to follow up on it. Until today. :)
</p>
512 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
513 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
514 history of the project. I published all release tarballs and imported
515 them into the git repository. As the project is really stable and not
516 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
517 release and call it
1.0. Visit the new project home on
518 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/
</a>
519 if you want to check it out. The new version is also uploaded into
520 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable
</a>.
</p>
526 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>.
531 <div class=
"padding"></div>
535 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd
</a>
541 <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
542 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
543 boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
544 <a href=
"https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
545 Google Summer of Code work
</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
546 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
547 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
548 <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>,
549 and started it using virt-manager.
</p>
551 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
552 password) was to get the network operational. I followed
553 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
554 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page
</a> and ran these
555 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
556 kvm internal DHCP server:
</p>
559 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
560 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $
2}')
561 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $
2}')
563 </pre></blockquote></p>
565 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
566 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
567 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.
</p>
569 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
570 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
571 set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
572 compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
575 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
579 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list
<<EOF
580 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
584 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
585 sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
586 update-alternatives --config runsystem
587 </pre></blockquote></p>
589 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
590 <tt>reboot-hurd
</tt> instead of just
<tt>reboot
</tt>, as there is not
591 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
592 'reboot' command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
593 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
594 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
595 start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
596 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
599 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
600 fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
601 figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
602 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
603 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
604 adding this repository to the machine:
</p>
607 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list
<<EOF
608 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
610 </pre></blockquote></p>
612 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
613 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
614 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
615 BTS. This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:
</p>
618 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
619 i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
621 i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
622 i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
623 i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
624 i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
625 i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
626 i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
627 i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
628 i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
629 i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
630 i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
631 i xorg - X.Org X Window System
632 i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
633 i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
635 </pre></blockquote></p>
637 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
638 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
639 the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
640 command line stuff.
<p>
646 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>.
651 <div class=
"padding"></div>
655 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release
0.16</a>
661 <p><a href=
"http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity
</a> is a nice tool to
662 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
663 analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
664 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
665 the source. The company behind it provide
666 <a href=
"https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
667 a community service
</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
668 already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
669 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
670 <a href=
"http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash
</a> and
671 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool
</a>
672 projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
673 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
674 check, and decided to
<a href=
"http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
675 checking of the chrpath project
</a>. It was
676 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
677 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
678 error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
679 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
680 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
681 the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
682 <a href=
"https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
683 mailing list for the chrpath developers
</a>, I decided it was time to
684 publish a new release. These are the release notes:
</p>
686 <p>New in
0.16 released
2014-
01-
14:
</p>
690 <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.
</li>
691 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.
</li>
692 <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.
</li>
697 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
698 new version
0.16 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
699 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
700 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
701 include a test suite check.
</p>
707 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>.
712 <div class=
"padding"></div>
716 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release
0.15</a>
722 <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
723 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
724 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
725 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
726 compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
727 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
728 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc
64-bit Little Endian) he
729 is working on. I checked the
730 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian
</a>,
731 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu
</a> and
732 <a href=
"https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora
</a>
733 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
734 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
735 These are the release notes:
</p>
737 <p>New in
0.15 released
2013-
11-
24:
</p>
741 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
742 with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
745 <li>Updated README with current URLs.
</li>
747 <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
750 <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
751 Petr Machata found in Fedora.
</li>
753 <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
754 .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
755 Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.
</li>
760 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
761 new version
0.15 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
762 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
763 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
764 include a testsuite check.
</p>
770 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>.
775 <div class=
"padding"></div>
779 <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>
785 <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
786 <a href=
"http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
787 init.d scripts
</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
788 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
789 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:
</p>
792 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
795 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
796 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
797 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
798 # Default-Start:
2 3 4 5
799 # Default-Stop:
0 1 6
800 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
801 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
802 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
803 # used as a drop-in replacement.
805 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
806 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
809 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
810 script was
137 lines, and the above is just
15 lines, most of it meta
813 <p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
814 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
819 # Define LSB log_* functions.
820 # Depend on lsb-base (
>=
3.2-
14) to ensure that this file is present
821 # and status_of_proc is working.
822 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
825 # Function that starts the daemon/service
831 #
0 if daemon has been started
832 #
1 if daemon was already running
833 #
2 if daemon could not be started
834 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test
> /dev/null \
836 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
839 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
840 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
841 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
845 # Function that stops the daemon/service
850 #
0 if daemon has been stopped
851 #
1 if daemon was already stopped
852 #
2 if daemon could not be stopped
853 # other if a failure occurred
854 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/
30/KILL/
5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
856 [ "$RETVAL" =
2 ] && return
2
857 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
858 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
859 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
860 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
861 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
862 # sleep for some time.
863 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=
0/
30/KILL/
5 --exec $DAEMON
864 [ "$?" =
2 ] && return
2
865 # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
871 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
875 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
876 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
877 # then implement that here.
879 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal
1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
884 scriptbasename="$(basename $
1)"
885 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
886 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
894 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
895 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
897 # Exit if the package is not installed
898 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit
0
900 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
901 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
903 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
908 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
911 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
912 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
916 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
919 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
920 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
924 status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit
0 || exit $?
926 #reload|force-reload)
928 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
929 # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
931 #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
935 restart|force-reload)
937 # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
938 # 'force-reload' alias
940 log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
947 1) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Old process is still running
948 *) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Failed to start
958 echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}"
>&
2
966 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
967 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
968 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
969 optimize it nor make it more robust either.
</p>
971 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
972 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
973 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
974 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
975 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.
</p>
981 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>.
986 <div class=
"padding"></div>
990 <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>
996 <p><a href=
"http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol
</a> for
997 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
998 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
999 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
1000 missing in Debian. The
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
1001 for a package
</a> was from
2012-
04-
10 with no progress since
1002 2013-
04-
01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
1003 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
1004 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
1005 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
1006 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
1007 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.
</p>
1009 <p>The source is now available from
1010 <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>
1016 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>.
1021 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1025 <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>
1032 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap
</a>
1033 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
1034 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
1035 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
1036 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
1037 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi
</a>, as part
1038 of a plan to simplify the build system for
1039 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
1040 project
</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
1041 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
1042 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
1045 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
1046 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
1047 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
1048 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
1049 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
1050 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
1051 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi
</a>. First, the
1052 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler
</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
1053 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
1054 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
1055 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
1056 two new options
<tt>--bootsize size
</tt> and
<tt>--boottype
1057 fstype
</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
1058 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
1059 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a
<tt>--variant
1060 variant
</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
1061 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
1062 <tt>--no-extlinux
</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
1063 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
1064 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
1065 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
1067 <a href=
"http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
1068 upstream project page
</a>.
</p>
1070 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
1071 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
1072 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
1077 set -e # Exit on first error
1080 cat
<<EOF
> etc/apt/sources.list
1081 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
1083 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
1084 # install a kernel somewhere too.
1085 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
1086 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1087 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1088 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
1089 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
1090 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
1093 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
1094 to build the image:
</p>
1097 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
1100 --distribution jessie \
1101 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
1110 --root-password raspberry \
1111 --hostname raspberrypi \
1112 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
1113 --customize `pwd`/customize \
1115 --package git-core \
1116 --package binutils \
1117 --package ca-certificates \
1122 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
1123 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
1124 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
1125 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
1126 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
1127 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
1128 using a non-free binary blob.
</p>
1130 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
1131 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
1132 build dependency list.
</p>
1134 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
1135 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
1136 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
1137 than
<a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian
</a> based images.
</p>
1143 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>.
1148 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1152 <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>
1158 <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
1159 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
1162 <p>Via
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
1163 Project News for
2013-
10-
14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
1164 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
1165 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
1166 to match
<a href=
"http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
1167 earmarked
</a> for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
1168 hope you will to. :)
</p>
1170 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
1171 create
<a href=
"https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
1172 documentaries about the excessive spying
</a> on every Internet user that
1173 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I've already
1174 donated. Are you next?
</p>
1176 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
1177 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
1178 statement under the heading
1179 <a href=
"http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
1180 Access
</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
1181 Norwegian government. So far
499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
1188 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>.
1193 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1197 <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>
1203 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
1204 project
</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
1205 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
1206 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.
</p>
1210 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
1211 2,
5 minute marketing film
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1213 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
1214 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1216 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
1217 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
1218 Web
2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting
2010</a>
1221 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem
2011
1222 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1224 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
1225 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1227 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
1228 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
1229 York City in
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1231 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
1232 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in
2012</a>
1235 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
1236 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat,
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1238 <li><a href=
"https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
1239 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem
2013</a> (FOSDEM)
</li>
1241 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
1242 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
1243 2013</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1247 <p>A larger list is available from
1248 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
1249 Freedombox Wiki
</a>.
</p>
1251 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
1252 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
1253 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
1254 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
1255 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
1256 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
1257 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
1258 us on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
1259 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)
</a> and
1260 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1261 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
1267 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>.
1272 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1276 <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>
1282 <p>I was introduced to the
1283 <a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project
</a>
1284 in
2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
1285 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
1286 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
1287 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
1288 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
1289 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
1290 control over their own basic infrastructure.
</p>
1292 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
1293 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
1294 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
1295 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
1296 actually started working on the project a while back.
</p>
1298 <p>The
<a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
1299 Debian initiative
</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
1300 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
1301 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
1302 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
1303 <a href=
"http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug
</a>,
1304 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
1305 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
1306 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
1307 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker
</a>
1308 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
1309 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
1310 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
1311 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
1312 missing in Debian).
</p>
1314 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
1316 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>),
1317 and a administrative web interface
1318 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth
</a> + exmachina +
1319 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
1320 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>
1321 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
1322 client (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat
</a>)
1323 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
1324 (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd
</a>). The
1325 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
1326 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
1327 this is really working yet, see
1328 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
1329 project TODO
</a> for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
1330 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
1331 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
1332 users. I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
1333 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
1334 with lots of half baked features.
</p>
1336 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
1337 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
1340 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64
</strong></p>
1344 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.
</li>
1345 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.
</li>
1346 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
1347 to the Debian installer:
<p>
1348 <pre>url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat
</a></pre></li>
1350 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
1353 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
1354 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.
</li>
1358 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian
</strong></p>
1362 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.
</li>
1363 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.
</li>
1364 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:
</p>
1366 deb
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox
</a> wheezy main
1368 <li><p>Run this as root:
</p>
1370 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
1373 apt-get install freedombox-setup
1374 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
1376 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.
</li>
1380 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
1381 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
1382 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
1383 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
1384 short "
<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy
</tt>" away. :)</p>
1386 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
1387 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
1388 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
1389 disable
</tt>" as root.</p>
1391 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
1392 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
1393 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:
6667/%
23freedombox
">#freedombox</a> on
1394 irc.debian.org and the
1395 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
">project
1396 mailing list</a>.</p>
1398 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
1399 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
1400 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
1401 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
1402 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is 'admin' and the
1403 default password is 'secret'.</p>
1409 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>.
1414 <div class="padding
"></div>
1418 <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>
1424 <p>Earlier, I reported about
1425 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html
">my
1426 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>. Friday I was
1427 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
1428 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
1429 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
1430 currently on the disk.</p>
1432 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
1433 <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>
1434 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
1435 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
1436 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
1437 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
1438 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
1439 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
1440 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
1441 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
1442 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
1443 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
1444 the broken disks.</p>
1450 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>.
1455 <div class="padding
"></div>
1459 <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>
1465 <p>Today I switched to
1466 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">my
1467 new laptop</a>. I've previously written about the problems I had with
1468 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
1469 <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
1470 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
1471 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
1472 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
1473 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
1474 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
1475 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
1476 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
1477 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
1478 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
1479 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
1480 station from now on.</p>
1482 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
1483 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
1484 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
1485 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
1486 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
1487 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning. The
1488 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git
">source
1489 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
1490 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
1491 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
1492 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
1493 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
1495 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
1496 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
1497 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
1498 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
1499 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
1500 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
1501 parameters are tuned:</p>
1505 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
1506 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
1508 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
1509 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
1510 0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
1512 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
1515 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
1518 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
1520 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
1523 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
1524 to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
1528 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
1529 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
1530 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
1531 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
1532 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
1533 from getting the data on the disk (see
1534 <a href="http://xkcd.com/
538/
">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
1535 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
1536 right thing to do.</p>
1538 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
1539 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
1540 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
1542 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
1543 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
1544 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
1545 instead of during my work.</p>
1547 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
1548 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
1550 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
1551 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
1552 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
1554 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
1557 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
1558 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
1559 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
1560 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
1561 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
1562 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
1569 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>.
1574 <div class="padding
"></div>
1578 <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>
1584 <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
1585 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">the
1586 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
1587 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
1588 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
1589 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/
">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
1590 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
1591 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
1593 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
1594 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
1595 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
1596 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
1597 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
1598 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%. But around 60%, the disk
1599 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
1600 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
1601 lock up when I download a new
1602 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
1603 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
1604 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
1606 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
1607 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
1608 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
1609 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
1610 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
1611 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
1613 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB,
1614 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-
302, FW:
1615 LF1i,
22APR2013, PBA: G39779-
300, LBA
351,
651,
888, LI P/N:
0C38722,
1616 Pb-free
2LI, LC P/N:
16-
200366, WWN:
55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
1617 SSDSC2BW180A3L
2.5"
6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
1618 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
1620 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
1621 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
1622 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
1623 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
1630 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>.
1635 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1639 <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>
1645 <p>The upcoming Saturday,
2013-
07-
13, we are organising a combined
1646 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
1647 party in Oslo. It is organised by
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the
1648 member assosiation NUUG
</a> and
1649 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1650 project
</a> together with
<a href=
"http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
1653 <p>It starts
10:
00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
1654 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
1655 hand limited space, and only room for
30 people. Please put your name
1656 on
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
1657 wiki page
</a> if you plan to join us.
</p>
1663 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>.
1668 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1672 <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>
1678 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
1679 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
1680 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41
</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
1681 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
1682 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
1684 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230
</a>
1685 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
1686 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
1687 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
1690 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1691 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1692 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
1693 feature at
<a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
1694 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1695 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
1696 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
1697 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
1698 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.
</p>
1700 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
1701 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
1702 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
1703 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
1704 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
1705 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
1706 needed a new laptop now. :)
</p>
1708 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
1709 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.
</p>
1711 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The
180 GB SSD disk
1712 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
1713 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
1714 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
1715 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
1716 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
1717 reported to Debian as
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
1718 report #
691427 2012-
10-
25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
1719 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
1720 kernel developers as
1721 <a href=
"https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
1722 report #
51861 2012-
12-
20</a> (Intel SSD
520 stops working under load
1723 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
1724 Lenovo forums, both for
1725 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
1726 2012-
11-
10</a> and for
1727 <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
1728 03-
20-
2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
1729 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
1730 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
1731 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
1733 <a href=
"https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
1734 available
</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
1735 minutes by writing to a file.
</p>
1737 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
1738 contacting PCHELP Norway (request
01D1FDP) which handle support
1739 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
1740 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
1741 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
1742 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
1749 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>.
1754 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1758 <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>
1764 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
1765 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
1766 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
1767 picking a
<a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
1768 X230
</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
1769 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
1770 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
1771 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
1772 with an expencive door stop.
</p>
1774 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1775 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1776 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
1777 feature at
<ahref=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
1778 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1779 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
1780 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.
</p>
1782 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
1783 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
1784 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
1785 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
1786 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
1787 new laptop now. :)
</p>
1789 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.
</p>
1795 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>.
1800 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1804 <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>
1810 <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
1811 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
1812 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
1813 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
1814 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
1815 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version
0.4 of the
1816 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package
</a>
1817 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
1818 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
1819 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
1820 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:
</p>
1823 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1824 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
1825 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
1826 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
1827 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
1828 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
1831 Preconfiguring packages ...
1832 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
1833 (Reading database ...
259727 files and directories currently installed.)
1834 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
1835 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (
0.28+squeeze1) ...
1839 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
1840 printed instead:
</p>
1843 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1844 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
1848 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
1849 me some time when setting up new machines. :)
</p>
1851 <p>So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
1852 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
1853 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
1854 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
1855 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
1856 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
1857 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
1858 <tt>apt-get install
</tt>. The end result is a slightly better working
1861 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
1862 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
1863 finally fix
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
1864 #
655507</a>. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
1865 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
1866 from the nearby Debian mirror.
</p>
1872 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>.
1877 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1881 <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>
1887 <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
1888 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
1889 or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
1890 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
1891 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
1892 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
1893 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
1894 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
1895 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
1896 i915 driver used by the
1897 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
1898 EasyNote LV
</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.
</p>
1900 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
1901 i915.invert_brightness=
1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
1902 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=
1
1903 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
1904 can be done by running these commands as root:
</p>
1907 echo options i915 invert_brightness=
1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
1908 update-initramfs -u -k all
1911 <p>Since March
2012 there is
1912 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
1913 mechanism in the Linux kernel
</a> to tell the i915 driver which
1914 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
1915 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
1916 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
1917 intel_quirks array
</a> in the driver source
1918 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
</tt> (look for "
<tt>static
1919 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks
</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
1920 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
1923 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
1924 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
1927 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
1928 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
1929 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
1930 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
1931 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
1932 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
1933 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
1934 <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
1936 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
1937 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
1938 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
1939 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
1940 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
1941 Capabilities: <access denied>
1942 Kernel driver in use: i915
1945 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
1948 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
1950 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
1951 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
1956 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
1957 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
1958 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
1959 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
">dri-devel
1960 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
1961 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
1963 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/
2013-June/thread.html
">the
1964 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
1965 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
1966 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
1967 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
1968 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
1970 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
1971 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
1972 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
1973 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
1974 the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
1975 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
1976 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
1977 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
1978 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
1979 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
1980 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
1981 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
1983 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
1984 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
1985 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
1986 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
1993 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>.
1998 <div class="padding
"></div>
2002 <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>
2008 <p>Two days ago, I asked
2009 <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
2010 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
2011 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>. I found a solution, but am horrified
2012 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
2015 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
2016 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
2017 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
2018 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
2021 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
2022 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
2023 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
2024 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and
2025 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
2026 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms
2027 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
2028 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
2031 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
2032 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
2033 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
2034 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is
2035 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
2036 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
2037 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
2038 without risking to loose the warranty?
</p>
2041 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
2042 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV
</a>, to ensure the next person
2043 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
2046 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
2047 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.
</p>
2053 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>.
2058 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2062 <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>
2068 <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
2069 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
2070 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
2071 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
2072 computer is preinstalled with Windows
8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
2073 instead of a BIOS to boot.
</p>
2075 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
2076 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
2077 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
2078 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
2079 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
2080 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
2081 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
2082 Windows
8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
2083 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
2084 to get it to boot the Linux installer.
</p>
2086 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
2087 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2088 EasyNote LV
</a> model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
2089 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
2090 page. If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
2091 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.
</p>
2093 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
2094 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
2101 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>.
2106 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2110 <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>
2116 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is
2117 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
2118 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
2119 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
2120 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
2121 educational software. The project was founded almost
12 years ago,
2122 2001-
07-
02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
2123 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
2124 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
2125 donate some money
</a>.
2127 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
2128 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
2129 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
2130 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
2131 the Debian Edu installer.
</p>
2134 <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/>
2135 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
2136 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
2137 into a Debian Edu Workstation:
</p>
2141 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.
</li>
2142 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.
</li>
2143 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
2144 our configuration.
</li>
2145 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
2146 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
2147 according to the profile specified in the config above,
2148 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.
</li>
2149 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
2150 that could not be done using preseeding.
</li>
2151 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.
</li>
2155 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
2156 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
2157 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
2158 the needed packages.
</p>
2160 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
2161 setting up
<a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi
</a> as a
2162 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
2163 <a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage">Raspbian
</a> installation and
2164 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
2165 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).
</p>
2167 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
2168 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
2169 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:
</p>
2172 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
2176 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
2177 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
2178 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
2185 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>.
2190 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2194 <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>
2201 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
2202 announced a
</a> new
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
2203 channel #debian-lego
</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
2204 community interested in
<a href=
"http://www.lego.com/">LEGO
</a>, the
2205 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
2206 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page
</a> to have
2207 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
2208 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
2209 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
2210 <a href=
"http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego
</a>
2211 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count
10 packages related to
2212 LEGO and
<a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms
</a>:
</p>
2215 <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>
2216 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad
</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software
</td></tr>
2217 <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>
2218 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd
</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS
</td></tr>
2219 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc
</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
</td></tr>
2220 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc
</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX
</td></tr>
2221 <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>
2222 <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>
2223 <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>
2224 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n
</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
</td></tr>
2227 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
2228 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
2229 available in experimental.
</p>
2231 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
2232 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
2233 for LEGO designers.
</p>
2239 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>.
2244 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2248 <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>
2254 <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
2255 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
2256 for Debian Wheezy
</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
2257 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
2260 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
2261 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
2262 <a href=
"http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch
</a> program, made famous by
2263 the
<a href=
"http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code
</a> movement, is
2264 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
2265 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle
</a> and
2266 <a href=
"http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart
</a>,
2267 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
2268 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
2269 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
2272 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
2273 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
2274 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
2275 alpha release
</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
2282 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>.
2287 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2291 <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>
2297 <p>Today the
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
2298 package
</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
2299 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
2300 2013-
01-
27, and today it was accepted into the archive.
</p>
2302 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
2303 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
2304 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
2305 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
2306 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
2313 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>.
2318 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2322 <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>
2329 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
2330 bitcoin related blog post
</a> mentioned that the new
2331 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package
</a> for
2332 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
2333 2013-
01-
19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
2334 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
2337 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
2338 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
2339 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
2340 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
2341 architectures (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #
672524</a>).
2342 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
2343 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
2344 failing, please let us know via the BTS.
</p>
2346 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
2347 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
2348 if it run short on space (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
2349 #
696715</a>). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
2352 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2353 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2354 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2360 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>.
2365 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2369 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!
</a>
2376 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
2377 for testers
</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
2378 pluggable hardware devices, which I
2379 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
2380 out to create
</a> earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
2381 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
2382 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
2383 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
2384 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
2385 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
2386 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint
</a>
2387 repository in Debian. The new name? It is
<strong>Isenkram
</strong>.
2388 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use
</p>
2391 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
2392 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
2395 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
2396 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
2397 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
2398 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)
</p>
2400 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
2401 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
2402 stuff, in other words. I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
2403 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
2406 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
2407 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
2410 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
2411 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.
</p>
2417 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>.
2422 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2426 <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>
2432 <p>Early this month I set out to try to
2433 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
2434 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices
</a>. Now my
2435 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
2437 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
2438 from the Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>, build and install the
2439 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
2440 autostart script.
</p>
2442 <p>The design is simple:
</p>
2446 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
2447 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.
</li>
2449 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
2450 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
2453 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
2454 the APT database, a database
2455 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
2456 via HTTP
</a> and a database available as part of the package.
</li>
2458 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
2459 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
2460 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
2461 package or packages.
</li>
2463 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
2464 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.
</li>
2466 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
2467 package while showing progress information in a window.
</li>
2471 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
2472 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
2473 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
2474 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.
</p>
2476 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
2477 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
2478 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
2479 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
2480 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width=
"70%"></p>
2482 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
2483 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
2484 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
2485 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
2486 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
2487 method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
2488 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
2489 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.
</p>
2491 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
21 16:
50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
2492 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
2494 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
2495 hw-support-handler; debuild
</tt>'. If you lack debuild, install the
2496 devscripts package.
</p>
2498 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
23 12:
00</strong>: The project is now
2499 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
2500 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
2501 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
2502 instructions
</a> for details.
</p>
2508 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>.
2513 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2517 <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>
2523 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
2524 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
2525 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
2526 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
2527 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
2528 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
2529 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
2530 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
2531 not a durable solution.
2533 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
2534 got a new one more than
10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
</p>
2538 <li>Lightweight (around
1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
2540 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
</li>
2541 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
</li>
2542 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
</li>
2543 <li>Internal WIFI network card.
</li>
2544 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.
</li>
2545 <li>Some USB slots (
2-
3 is plenty)
</li>
2546 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
</li>
2547 <li>Video resolution at least
1024x768, with size around
12" (A4 paper
2549 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
2550 X.org packages.
</li>
2551 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
2556 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
2557 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
2558 last
10-
15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
2559 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
2560 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
2561 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
2562 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
2563 still be useful.
</p>
2565 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
2566 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
2567 <a href=
"http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site
</a> for
2568 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
2569 of the vendors listed on the
<a href=
"http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
2570 Pre-loaded site
</a>.
</p>
2576 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>.
2581 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2585 <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>
2591 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
2592 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
2593 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
2594 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
2595 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
2596 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
2597 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
2603 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
2608 version = pkg.candidate
2610 version = pkg.installed
2613 record = version.record
2614 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
2616 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
2617 for t in mime_types:
2618 t = t.rstrip().strip()
2620 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
2622 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
2623 if
1 < len(sys.argv):
2624 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
2625 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
2626 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
2630 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
2633 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
2634 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
2636 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
2637 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
2638 browser-plugin-gnash
2642 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
2643 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
2644 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
2645 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
2647 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
18 14:
20</strong>: The Debian BTS
2648 request for icweasel support for this feature is
2649 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#
484010</a> from
2008 (and
2650 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#
698426</a> from today). Lack
2651 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
2652 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.
</p>
2658 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>.
2663 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2667 <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>
2673 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
2674 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
2675 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
2676 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
2677 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
2678 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
2679 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
2680 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
2682 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
2683 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
2684 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
2686 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
2687 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
2688 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
2689 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
2690 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
2692 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
2696 ----- -----------------------
2712 18 application/x-ogg
2719 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
2723 ----- -----------------------
2739 18 application/x-ogg
2746 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
2750 ----- -----------------------
2767 18 application/x-ogg
2773 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
2774 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
2775 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
2778 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
2779 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
2785 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>.
2790 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2794 <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>
2800 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
2801 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
2802 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
2803 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
2804 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
2805 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
2806 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
2807 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
2808 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
2811 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
2812 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
2813 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
2817 Package: package-name
2818 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
2821 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
2822 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
2824 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
2825 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
2829 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
2832 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
2833 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
2836 Package: pcmciautils
2837 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
2840 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
2841 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
2844 Package: colorhug-client
2845 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
2848 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
2849 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
2850 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
2852 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
2853 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
2854 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
2855 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
2856 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
2857 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
2858 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
2861 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
2862 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
2863 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
2864 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
2866 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
2867 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
2868 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
2869 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
2871 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
2872 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
2875 % ./hw-support-lookup
2876 <br>yubikey-personalization
2880 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
2881 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
2884 % ./hw-support-lookup
2889 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
2890 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
2891 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
2893 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
2894 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
2895 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
2896 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
2897 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
2898 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
2899 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
2902 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2903 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2904 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2905 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
2911 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>.
2916 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2920 <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>
2926 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
2927 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
2928 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
2929 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
2931 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
2932 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
2934 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
2936 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
2937 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
2938 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
2939 <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> >,
2940 <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> > and
2941 <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> >.
2943 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
2944 this shell script:
</p>
2947 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
2950 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
2954 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
2955 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
2956 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
2960 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
2962 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
2963 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
2966 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
2969 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
2974 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
2975 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
2977 sc
00 (bus subclass)
2981 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
2982 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
2983 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
2984 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
2986 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
2989 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
2991 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
2992 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
2995 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
2998 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
3001 v
1D6B (device vendor)
3002 p
0001 (device product)
3004 dc
09 (device class)
3005 dsc
00 (device subclass)
3006 dp
00 (device protocol)
3007 ic
09 (interface class)
3008 isc
00 (interface subclass)
3009 ip
00 (interface protocol)
3012 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
3013 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
3014 these alias entries show up:
</p>
3017 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
3018 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
3019 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
3020 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
3023 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
3024 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
3025 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
3027 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
3029 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
3030 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
3033 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
3036 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
3038 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
3040 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
3041 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
3042 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
3045 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
3048 <p>The values present are
</p>
3051 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
3052 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
3053 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
3054 svn IBM (system vendor)
3055 pn
2371H4G (product name)
3056 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
3057 rvn IBM (board vendor)
3058 rn
2371H4G (board name)
3059 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
3060 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
3061 ct
10 (chassis type)
3062 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
3065 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
3066 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
3070 4 Low Profile Desktop
3083 17 Main Server Chassis
3084 18 Expansion Chassis
3086 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
3087 21 Peripheral Chassis
3089 23 Rack Mount Chassis
3098 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
3099 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
3100 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
3102 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
3104 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
3108 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
3111 <p>The values present are
</p>
3120 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
3121 the valid values are.
</p>
3123 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
3125 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
3126 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
3127 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
3128 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
3129 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
3130 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
3131 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
3133 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
3135 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
3136 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
3139 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
3141 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
3145 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
3146 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
3150 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
3152 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
3154 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
3155 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
3156 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
3157 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
3158 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
3159 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
3160 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
3161 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
3165 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
3166 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
3167 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
3168 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
3170 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
3171 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
3172 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
3178 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>.
3183 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3187 <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>
3193 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
3194 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
3195 Launcher and updated the Debian package
3196 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
3197 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
3198 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
3199 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
3200 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
3201 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
3202 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
3203 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
3204 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
3205 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
3206 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
3207 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
3208 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
3209 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
3210 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
3216 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>.
3221 <div class="padding
"></div>
3225 <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>
3231 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
3232 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
3233 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
3234 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
3235 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
3236 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
3237 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
3238 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
3239 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
3240 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
3241 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
3243 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
3244 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
3245 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
3250 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
3251 starting when a user log in.</li>
3253 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
3254 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
3256 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
3257 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
3260 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
3261 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
3265 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
3266 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
3267 discover database to find packages and
3268 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
3271 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
3272 draft package is now checked into
3273 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
3274 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
3275 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
3276 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
3277 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
3278 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
3279 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
3280 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
3281 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
3282 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
3283 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
3284 because of the freeze).</p>
3286 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
3287 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
3290 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
3292 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
3293 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
3294 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
3296 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
3297 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
3298 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
3299 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
3300 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
3301 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
3302 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
3304 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
3305 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
3306 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
3307 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
3308 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
3309 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
3310 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
3311 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
3312 not be installed?
</p>
3314 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
3315 please send me an email. :)
</p>
3321 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 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3330 <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>
3336 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
3337 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
3338 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
3339 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
3340 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
3341 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
3342 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
3343 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
3344 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
3345 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
3347 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
3348 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
3349 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
3355 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>.
3360 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3364 <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>
3370 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
3371 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
3373 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
3374 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
3375 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
3376 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
3377 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
3378 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
3379 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
3380 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
3381 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
3384 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
3385 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
3386 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
3389 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
3391 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
3392 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
3395 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
3396 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
3397 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
3398 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
3399 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
3400 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
3401 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
3402 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
3403 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
3405 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3406 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3407 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3413 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>.
3418 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3422 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
3428 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
3429 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
3430 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
3431 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
3432 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
3433 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
3434 is now maintained by a
3435 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
3436 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
3437 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
3438 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
3439 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
3440 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
3441 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
3442 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
3443 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
3445 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
3446 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
3449 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
3450 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
3451 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
3452 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
3453 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
3454 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
3455 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
3456 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
3457 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
3458 new version to unstable.
3460 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
3461 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
3462 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
3463 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
3464 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
3465 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
3466 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
3467 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
3468 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
3469 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
3470 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
3471 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
3472 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
3473 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
3474 have not tested them.
</p>
3477 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
3478 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
3479 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
3480 years ago, as can be
3481 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
3482 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
3483 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
3484 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
3485 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
3486 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
3487 the same address as last time,
3488 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3494 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>.
3499 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3503 <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>
3510 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
3511 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
3512 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
3513 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
3514 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
3516 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
3517 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
3518 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
3519 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
3521 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
3522 PostScript formats at
3523 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
3524 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
3530 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>.
3535 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3539 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med
19-årsdagen, Debian!
</a>
3546 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet
19
3547 år
</a>. Jeg har fulgt det de siste
12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
3548 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!
</p>
3554 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
3559 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3563 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
3569 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
3570 <a href=
"http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø
</a>, I started
3571 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
3572 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
3573 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
3574 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
3575 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
3576 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
3577 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
3578 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
3579 missing in my book.
</p>
3581 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
3582 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
3583 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
3584 Especially now that
<a href=
"http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
3585 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
3586 out
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
3587 Computer Science Songbook
</a>.
3593 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>.
3598 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3602 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
3608 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
3609 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
3610 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
3611 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
3612 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
3613 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
3614 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
3615 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
3616 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
3617 the tools to do so.
</p>
3619 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
3620 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
3621 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
3622 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
3624 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
3625 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
3626 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
3627 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
3628 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
3629 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
3630 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
3631 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
3633 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
3634 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
3635 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
3641 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
3643 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
3645 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
3647 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
3648 eval "use $module;";
3650 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
3651 system("yum install -y $pkg");
3652 eval "use $module;";
3656 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
3662 sub run_firmware_script {
3663 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
3665 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
3668 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
3670 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
3671 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
3673 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
3677 sub run_firmware_scripts {
3678 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
3679 # Run firmware packages
3680 for my $dir (@dirs) {
3681 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
3682 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
3683 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
3684 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
3685 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
3693 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
3694 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
3699 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
3702 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
3704 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
3705 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
3707 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
3711 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
3712 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
3713 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
3714 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
3717 for my $url (@paths) {
3718 fetch_dell_fw($url);
3720 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
3722 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3723 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3727 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3728 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3734 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
3738 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
3739 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
3740 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
3741 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
3742 my $filename = shift;
3744 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
3746 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
3748 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
3750 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
3752 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
3753 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
3754 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
3756 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
3757 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
3759 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
3761 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
3763 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
3766 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
3767 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
3769 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
3770 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
3772 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
3773 for my $path (@paths) {
3774 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
3775 push(@paths, $cpath);
3783 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
3784 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
3785 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
3786 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
3793 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>.
3798 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3802 <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>
3808 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
3809 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
3810 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
3811 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
3812 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
3813 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
3814 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
3815 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
3816 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
3819 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
3820 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
3821 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
3824 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
3825 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
3826 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
3827 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
3828 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
3829 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
3830 hard to explain.
</p>
3832 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
3833 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
3834 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
3835 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
3836 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
3837 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
3838 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
3839 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
3840 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
3841 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
3842 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
3845 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
3846 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
3847 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
3848 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
3849 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
3850 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
3851 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
3852 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
3853 after visiting single user mode.</p>
3855 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
3856 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
3857 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
3858 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
3859 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
3860 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
3861 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
3862 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
3864 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
3865 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
3866 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
3872 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>.
3877 <div class="padding
"></div>
3881 <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>
3887 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
3888 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
3889 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
3890 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
3891 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
3892 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
3893 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
3894 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
3895 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
3896 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
3897 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
3898 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
3899 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
3901 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
3902 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
3903 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
3904 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
3905 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
3906 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
3907 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
3908 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
3909 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
3911 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
3912 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
3913 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
3916 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
3917 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
3918 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
3919 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
3920 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
3921 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
3922 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
3923 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
3924 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
3925 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
3926 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
3927 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
3928 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
3929 find time to push this forward.</p>
3935 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>.
3940 <div class="padding
"></div>
3944 <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>
3950 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
3951 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
3952 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
3953 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
3956 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
3957 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
3958 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
3962 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
3963 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
3964 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
3965 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
3966 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
3967 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
3968 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
3971 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
3972 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
3973 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
3974 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
3975 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
3976 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
3977 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
3978 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
3979 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
3980 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
3981 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
3982 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
3983 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
3985 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
3986 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
3987 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
3988 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
3989 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
3990 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
3991 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
3992 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
3993 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
3994 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
3996 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
3997 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
3998 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
3999 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
4000 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
4001 latter behaviour.</li>
4005 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
4006 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
4007 it do not matter much.</p>
4009 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
4010 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
4011 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
4017 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>.
4022 <div class="padding
"></div>
4026 <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>
4032 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
4033 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
4034 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
4035 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
4036 security support for a few years.</p>
4038 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
4039 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
4040 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
4041 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
4042 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
4043 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
4044 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
4045 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
4046 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
4047 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
4048 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
4049 easier in the future.</p>
4051 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
4052 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
4053 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
4054 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
4055 do not have time for.</p>
4061 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>.
4066 <div class="padding
"></div>
4070 <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>
4076 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
4077 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
4078 update in English.</p>
4080 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
4081 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
4082 of the British service
4083 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
4084 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
4085 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
4086 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
4087 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
4088 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
4089 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
4090 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
4091 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
4092 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
4093 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
4094 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
4095 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
4097 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
4098 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
4099 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
4100 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
4101 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
4102 public infrastructure.</p>
4104 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
4111 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>.
4116 <div class="padding
"></div>
4120 <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>
4126 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
4127 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
4128 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
4129 available on the Internet, and check our locally
4130 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
4131 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
4132 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
4133 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
4134 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
4135 out which security holes were present in our free software
4138 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
4139 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
4140 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
4141 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
4142 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
4143 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
4144 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
4145 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
4146 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
4147 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
4148 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
4149 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
4150 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
4151 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
4152 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
4153 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
4155 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
4156 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
4157 check out, one could look up
4158 <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
4159 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
4160 The most recent one is
4161 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
4162 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
4163 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
4165 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
4166 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
4167 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
4168 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
4169 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
4170 security issues out.</p>
4172 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
4173 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
4174 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
4176 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
4177 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
4178 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
4180 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
4181 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
4182 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
4183 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
4184 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
4185 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
4186 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
4187 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
4188 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
4189 established soon.</p>
4191 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
4192 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
4193 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
4194 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
4195 for their packages.</p>
4201 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>.
4206 <div class="padding
"></div>
4210 <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>
4217 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
4218 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
4219 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
4220 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
4221 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
4222 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
4223 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
4224 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
4225 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
4226 one of my machines like this:</p>
4230 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
4233 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
4242 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
4243 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
4246 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
4247 echo loaded pci modules:
4249 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
4250 for address in * ; do
4251 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4252 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4253 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4254 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
4255 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
4265 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
4269 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
4270 echo loaded usb modules:
4272 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
4273 for address in * ; do
4274 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4275 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4276 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4277 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
4278 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
4290 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
4297 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>.
4302 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4306 <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>
4312 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
4313 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
4314 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
4315 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
4316 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
4317 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
4318 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
4319 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
4322 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
4323 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
4324 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
4325 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
4326 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
4327 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
4328 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
4329 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
4331 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
4332 I perform on a new model.
</p>
4336 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
4337 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
4338 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
4340 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
4341 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
4343 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
4344 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
4345 reported by the program.
</li>
4347 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
4348 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
4349 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
4350 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
4351 normally test this by playing
4352 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
4353 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
4355 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
4356 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
4358 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
4359 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
4361 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
4362 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
4364 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
4365 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
4368 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
4369 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
4372 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
4373 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
4376 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
4377 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
4378 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
4379 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
4382 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
4383 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
4384 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
4389 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
4390 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
4391 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
4392 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
4393 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
4394 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
4395 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
4396 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
4402 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4407 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4411 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
4417 <p>As I continue to explore
4418 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
4419 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
4420 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
4422 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
4423 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
4424 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
4425 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
4426 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
4427 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
4428 all transactions. There I can see that my address
4429 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
4430 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
4431 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
4432 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
4433 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
4434 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
4435 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
4436 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
4437 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
4438 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
4439 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
4440 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
4441 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
4443 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
4444 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
4445 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
4446 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
4447 If the Skolelinux foundation
4448 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
4449 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
4450 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
4451 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
4452 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
4453 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
4454 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
4455 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
4457 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
4458 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
4459 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
4460 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
4461 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
4462 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
4463 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
4464 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
4465 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
4466 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
4467 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
4468 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
4469 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
4470 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
4473 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
4474 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
4475 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
4476 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
4477 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
4478 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
4479 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
4480 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
4482 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
4483 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
4484 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
4485 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
4488 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
4489 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
4490 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
4491 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
4492 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
4498 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>.
4503 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4507 <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>
4513 <p>With this weeks lawless
4514 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
4515 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
4516 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
4517 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
4518 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
4520 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
4521 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
4522 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
4523 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
4524 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
4525 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
4526 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
4528 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
4529 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
4530 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
4531 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
4532 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
4533 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
4534 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
4535 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
4536 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
4537 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
4539 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
4540 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
4541 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
4542 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
4543 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
4544 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
4546 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
4547 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
4548 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
4549 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
4551 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
4552 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
4553 donations to the address
4554 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
4560 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>.
4565 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4569 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
4575 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
4576 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
4577 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
4578 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
4579 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
4580 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
4581 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
4582 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
4584 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
4585 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
4586 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
4587 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
4588 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
4589 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
4590 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
4591 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
4592 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
4593 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
4594 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
4596 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
4597 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
4598 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
4599 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
4600 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
4601 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
4602 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
4603 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
4604 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
4605 what is going on.
</p>
4611 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>.
4616 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4620 <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>
4626 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
4627 upgrade testing of the
4628 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
4629 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
4630 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
4631 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
4633 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
4635 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
4642 browser-plugin-gnash
4649 freedesktop-sound-theme
4651 gconf-defaults-service
4666 gnome-desktop-environment
4670 gnome-session-canberra
4675 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
4681 libapache2-mod-dnssd
4684 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
4687 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
4688 libboost-python1.42
.0
4689 libboost-thread1.42
.0
4691 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
4693 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
4700 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
4715 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
4720 libgtksourceview2.0-common
4721 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
4722 libmono-addins0.2-cil
4723 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
4724 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
4725 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
4726 libmono-posix2.0-cil
4727 libmono-security2.0-cil
4728 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
4729 libmono-system2.0-cil
4732 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
4733 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
4743 libtelepathy-farsight0
4752 nautilus-sendto-empathy
4756 python-aptdaemon-gtk
4758 python-beautifulsoup
4773 python-gtksourceview2
4784 python-pkg-resources
4791 python-twisted-conch
4797 python-zope.interface
4802 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
4809 system-config-printer-udev
4811 telepathy-mission-control-
5
4824 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
4832 fast-user-switch-applet
4851 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
4853 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
4859 system-config-printer
4866 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
4869 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4872 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
4878 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
4880 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
4886 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
4893 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
4909 kdeartwork-emoticons
4911 kdeartwork-theme-icon
4915 kdebase-workspace-bin
4916 kdebase-workspace-data
4930 kscreensaver-xsavers
4945 plasma-dataengines-workspace
4947 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
4948 plasma-runners-addons
4949 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
4950 plasma-scriptengine-python
4951 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
4952 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
4953 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
4954 plasma-scriptengines
4955 plasma-wallpapers-addons
4956 plasma-widget-folderview
4957 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
4961 xscreensaver-data-extra
4963 xscreensaver-gl-extra
4964 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
4967 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
4971 google-gadgets-common
4989 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
4994 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
5003 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
5005 libplasmagenericshell4
5019 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
5020 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
5022 libsmokektexteditor3
5030 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
5036 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
5048 plasma-dataengines-addons
5049 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
5050 plasma-widget-lancelot
5051 plasma-widgets-addons
5052 plasma-widgets-workspace
5056 update-notifier-common
5059 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
5060 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
5061 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
5062 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
5068 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>.
5073 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5077 <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>
5083 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
5084 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
5085 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
5086 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
5087 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
5088 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
5089 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
5090 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
5091 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
5094 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
5095 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
5096 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
5097 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
5098 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
5099 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
5105 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
5110 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
5111 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
5117 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
5118 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
5122 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
5123 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
5124 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
5125 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
5128 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
5129 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
5131 parted $img mklabel msdos
5132 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
5133 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
5134 parted $img set
1 boot on
5137 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
5138 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
5140 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
5141 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
5142 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
5144 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
5145 losetup -d /dev/loop0
5148 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
5149 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
5151 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
5152 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
5153 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
5154 seem to work just fine.
</p>
5160 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>.
5165 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5169 <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>
5175 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
5176 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
5177 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
5178 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
5180 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
5181 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
5182 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
5184 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
5186 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
5189 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
5190 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
5191 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
5192 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
5193 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
5194 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
5195 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
5196 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
5197 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
5198 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
5199 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5200 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5201 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
5202 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
5203 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
5204 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
5205 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
5206 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
5207 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5208 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
5209 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
5210 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5211 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
5212 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
5213 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
5214 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5215 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5216 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
5217 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5218 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
5219 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
5220 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
5221 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
5222 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
5223 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
5224 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
5225 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
5226 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
5227 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
5228 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
5229 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
5230 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
5231 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
5232 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
5233 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
5234 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
5235 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
5236 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
5237 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
5238 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
5239 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
5240 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
5241 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5242 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
5243 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
5244 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
5245 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
5246 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
5250 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
5253 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
5254 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
5255 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
5256 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
5257 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
5258 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
5259 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
5260 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
5261 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
5262 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
5263 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
5264 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
5265 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
5266 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
5267 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
5268 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
5269 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
5270 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
5271 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
5272 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
5273 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
5274 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
5275 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
5276 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
5277 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
5278 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
5279 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
5280 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
5281 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
5284 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
5287 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5290 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
5296 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
5298 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
5301 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
5302 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
5303 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
5304 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
5305 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
5306 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
5307 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
5308 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
5309 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
5310 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
5311 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
5312 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
5313 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
5314 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
5315 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
5316 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
5317 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
5318 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
5319 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
5320 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
5321 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
5322 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
5323 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
5324 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
5325 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
5326 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
5327 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
5328 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
5329 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
5333 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
5336 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
5337 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
5338 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
5339 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
5340 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
5341 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
5342 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
5343 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
5344 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
5345 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
5346 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
5347 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
5348 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
5349 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
5350 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
5351 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
5352 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
5353 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
5354 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
5355 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
5356 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
5357 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
5358 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
5359 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
5360 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
5361 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
5362 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
5363 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
5364 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
5365 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
5366 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
5367 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
5368 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
5371 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
5374 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
5375 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
5376 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
5377 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
5378 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
5379 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
5380 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
5383 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
5386 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
5393 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>.
5398 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5402 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
5409 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
5410 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
5411 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
5412 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
5413 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
5414 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
5415 releases out more often.
</p>
5417 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
5418 I have considered setting up a
<a
5419 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
5420 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
5421 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
5422 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
5423 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
5424 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
5425 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
5426 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
5427 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
5428 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
5429 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
5430 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
5436 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>.
5441 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5445 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
5451 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
5453 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
5455 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
5456 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
5462 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>.
5467 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5471 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
5477 <p>Some updates.
</p>
5479 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
5480 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
5481 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
5482 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
5483 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
5486 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
5487 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
5488 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
5490 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
5491 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
5492 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
5493 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
5494 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
5495 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
5497 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
5498 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
5499 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
5500 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
5501 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
5502 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
5503 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
5504 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
5505 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
5506 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
5512 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>.
5517 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5521 <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>
5527 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
5528 popularity-contest numbers
</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
5529 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
5530 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
5531 working flash is important for Debian users. Around
10 percent of the
5532 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
5535 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August
2008
5536 («
<a href=
"http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
5537 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
5538 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs
</a>»), one of the most important problems
5539 schools experienced with
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
5540 Edu/Skolelinux
</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
5541 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
5542 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
5543 good reason to stay with Windows.
</p>
5545 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
5546 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
5547 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
5548 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
5549 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
5550 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
5551 example Internet Explorer
6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
5552 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
5553 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
5554 pages they want to visit.
</p>
5556 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
5557 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
5558 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
5559 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
5560 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
5561 the new release
0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
5562 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version
0.8.7.
5563 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
5564 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
5565 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
5566 accept the new package into Squeeze.
</p>
5572 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>.
5577 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5581 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
5587 <p>I discovered this while doing
5588 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
5589 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
5590 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
5591 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
5592 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
5594 <p>An example is from todays
5595 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
5596 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
5597 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
5598 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
5599 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
5600 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
5601 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
5603 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
5606 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
5607 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
5608 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
5609 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
5610 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
5613 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
5614 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
5615 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
5616 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
5617 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
5618 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
5619 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
5620 of dependency loops.
</p>
5623 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
5624 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
5626 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
5627 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
5629 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
5630 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
5631 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
5632 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
5633 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
5640 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>.
5645 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5649 <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>
5656 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
5658 <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
5660 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
5661 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
5663 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
5664 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
5665 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
5666 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
5668 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
5669 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
5670 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
5672 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
5674 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
5675 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
5678 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
5679 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
5680 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
5681 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
5682 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
5683 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
5685 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
5686 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
5687 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
5688 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
5689 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
5690 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
5691 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
5692 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
5693 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
5694 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
5695 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
5696 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
5697 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
5698 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
5699 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
5700 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
5703 ldapsearch -h ldap \
5704 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
5705 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
5706 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
5707 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
5708 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
5709 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
5711 ldapsearch -h ldap \
5712 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
5713 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
5714 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
5715 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
5716 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
5719 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
5720 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
5721 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
5722 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5726 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5728 objectclass: dnsdomain
5729 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5732 associateddomain: tjener.intern
5734 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5736 objectclass: dnsdomain2
5737 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5739 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
5740 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
5743 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
5744 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
5745 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
5746 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
5747 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
5748 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
5749 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
5750 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
5751 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
5752 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
5753 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
5756 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
5760 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
5761 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
5762 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
5763 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
5764 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
5765 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
5767 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
5768 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
5771 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
5772 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
5773 reverse lookups.
</p>
5775 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
5776 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
5777 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
5778 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
5780 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
5781 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
5782 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
5784 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
5785 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
5786 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
5787 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
5788 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
5790 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
5791 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
5792 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
5793 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
5794 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
5796 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
5797 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
5798 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
5799 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
5800 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
5801 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
5804 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
5807 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
5808 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
5809 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
5810 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
5811 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
5815 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
5816 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
5817 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
5818 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
5819 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
5820 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
5822 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
5824 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
5825 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
5826 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
5827 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
5828 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
5830 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
5831 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
5832 stored. These are the relevant entries from
5833 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
5836 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
5837 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
5840 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
5841 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
5842 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
5843 search result is this entry:
</p>
5846 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5849 objectClass: dhcpServer
5850 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5853 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
5854 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
5855 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
5856 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
5857 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
5858 The search result is this entry:
</p>
5861 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5864 objectClass: dhcpService
5865 objectClass: dhcpOptions
5866 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5867 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
5868 dhcpStatements: authoritative
5869 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
5870 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
5871 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
5874 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
5875 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
5876 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
5877 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
5878 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
5879 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
5880 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
5881 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
5882 related computer objects.
</p>
5884 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
5885 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
5886 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
5887 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
5888 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
5892 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5895 objectClass: dhcpHost
5896 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
5897 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
5900 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
5901 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
5902 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
5903 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
5904 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
5905 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
5906 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
5907 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
5908 structural object class.
5910 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
5912 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
5913 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
5914 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
5915 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
5916 in the configuration.
</p>
5918 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
5919 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
5920 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
5921 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
5922 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
5925 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
5926 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
5930 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
5931 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
5932 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
5933 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
5934 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
5935 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
5936 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
5937 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
5938 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
5939 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
5942 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
5943 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
5944 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
5945 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
5947 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
5951 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5954 objectClass: dhcpHost
5955 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5956 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
5957 associateddomain: hostname.intern
5958 arecord:
10.11.12.13
5959 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
5960 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
5963 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
5964 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
5965 auxiliary object class.
</p>
5971 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>.
5976 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5980 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
5986 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
5987 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
5988 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
5989 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
5990 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
5992 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
5993 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
5995 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
5996 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
5997 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
5998 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
5999 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
6000 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
6002 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
6003 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
6004 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
6005 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
6006 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
6009 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
6010 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
6011 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
6015 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6017 objectClass: dhcphost
6018 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6019 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
6020 associateddomain: hostname.intern
6021 arecord:
10.11.12.13
6022 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
6023 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
6027 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
6028 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
6029 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
6030 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
6032 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
6033 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
6034 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
6035 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
6036 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
6037 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
6038 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
6039 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
6041 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6042 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
6048 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>.
6053 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6057 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
6063 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
6064 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
6065 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
6066 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
6068 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
6069 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
6070 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
6071 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
6074 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
6075 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
6076 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
6078 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
6079 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
6080 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
6083 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
6085 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
6087 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
6088 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
6089 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
6091 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
6092 # existence of attribute names.
6094 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
6095 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
6096 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
6098 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
6099 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
6101 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
6104 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
6106 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
6107 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
6108 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
6109 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
6110 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
6111 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
6112 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
6113 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
6114 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
6115 # bass value on to clients
6116 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
6122 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
6123 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
6124 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
6125 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
6126 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
6128 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6129 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
6131 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
6132 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
6133 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
6134 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
6135 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
6136 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
6142 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>.
6147 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6151 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
6158 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
6159 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
6160 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
6161 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
6162 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
6163 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
6164 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
6165 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
6166 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
6167 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
6168 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
6169 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
6170 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
6176 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>.
6181 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6185 <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>
6191 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
6192 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
6193 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
6194 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
6195 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
6196 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
6197 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
6198 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
6200 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
6201 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
6202 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
6203 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
6204 publish the difference.
</p>
6206 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
6209 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6210 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
6211 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
6212 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6213 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
6214 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
6215 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
6216 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
6219 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
6222 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
6223 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
6224 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
6225 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
6226 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
6227 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
6228 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6229 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
6230 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
6231 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
6232 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
6233 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
6234 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
6235 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
6236 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
6237 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
6238 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
6239 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
6240 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
6241 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
6244 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
6247 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
6248 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
6249 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6250 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6251 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
6252 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
6253 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
6254 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6255 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6256 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6257 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6258 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
6259 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
6260 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
6261 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
6262 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
6263 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
6264 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
6265 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
6266 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
6267 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
6270 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
6273 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
6274 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
6275 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
6278 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
6279 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
6280 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
6281 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
6282 the difference somewhat.
6288 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>.
6293 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6297 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
6303 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
6304 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
6305 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
6306 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
6307 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
6308 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
6309 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
6310 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
6311 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
6312 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
6314 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
6315 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
6316 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
6317 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
6320 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
6321 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
6322 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
6323 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
6325 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
6326 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
6328 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
6329 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
6330 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
6331 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
6332 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
6338 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>.
6343 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6347 <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>
6354 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
6355 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
6356 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
6357 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
6359 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
6360 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
6361 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
6362 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
6364 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
6365 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
6366 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
6369 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
6371 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
6372 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
6373 available today from IETF.
</p>
6376 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
6377 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
6379 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
6381 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
6385 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
6386 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
6389 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
6390 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
6391 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
6393 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6394 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
6400 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>.
6405 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6409 <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>
6415 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
6416 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
6417 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
6418 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
6419 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
6423 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
6424 tasksel --new-install
6427 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
6428 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
6429 any output what so ever.
6431 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
6432 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
6433 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
6434 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
6435 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
6436 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
6440 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
6441 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
6445 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
6446 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
6447 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
6448 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
6449 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
6450 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
6453 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
6454 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
6461 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>.
6466 <div class="padding
"></div>
6470 <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>
6477 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
6478 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
6479 finally made the upgrade logs available from
6480 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
6481 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
6482 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
6483 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
6485 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
6486 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
6487 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
6488 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
6489 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
6490 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
6491 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
6492 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
6494 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
6495 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
6496 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
6499 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
6500 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
6501 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
6502 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
6503 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
6504 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
6505 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
6508 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
6509 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
6510 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
6511 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
6512 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
6513 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
6514 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
6515 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6516 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6517 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
6518 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
6519 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
6520 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
6521 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6522 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6523 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6524 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6525 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6526 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
6527 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
6528 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
6529 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
6530 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
6531 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
6532 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
6533 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
6534 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
6535 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
6536 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
6537 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
6539 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
6541 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
6542 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
6543 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
6544 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
6545 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
6546 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
6547 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
6548 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
6549 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
6550 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
6551 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6552 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
6553 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
6554 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
6555 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
6556 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
6557 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
6558 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
6559 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
6560 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
6561 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
6562 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
6563 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
6564 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
6565 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
6566 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
6567 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
6568 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
6569 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
6570 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6571 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
6574 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
6576 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
6577 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
6578 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
6579 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
6580 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
6581 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
6582 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6583 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6584 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
6585 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
6586 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
6587 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
6588 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6589 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6590 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6591 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6592 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6593 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
6594 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
6595 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
6596 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
6597 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
6598 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
6599 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
6600 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
6601 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
6602 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
6603 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
6605 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
6606 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
6607 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6608 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
6609 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
6610 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6611 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
6612 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
6613 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6614 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
6615 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
6616 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
6617 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
6618 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
6619 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
6620 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
6621 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
6622 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6623 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6624 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
6625 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
6626 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6627 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
6628 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
6629 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6630 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6631 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
6632 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
6633 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
6634 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
6635 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
6636 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
6637 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
6638 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
6639 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
6640 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6641 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
6649 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>.
6654 <div class="padding
"></div>
6658 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
6664 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
6665 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
6666 have been discovered and reported in the process
6667 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
6668 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
6669 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
6670 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
6671 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
6673 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
6674 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
6675 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
6676 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
6677 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
6678 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
6680 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
6681 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
6682 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
6683 is created. The bug report
6684 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
6685 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
6686 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
6687 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
6688 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
6689 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
6690 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
6691 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
6692 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
6693 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
6694 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
6695 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
6698 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
6699 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
6717 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
6718 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
6720 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
6721 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
6722 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
6726 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
6730 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
6731 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
6732 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
6734 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
6736 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
6737 # to return the correct answers.
6738 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
6739 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
6741 # Include the desktop and laptop task
6742 for test in desktop laptop ; do
6743 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
6747 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
6750 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
6751 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
6752 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
6753 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
6755 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
6756 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
6757 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
6758 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
6762 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
6763 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
6764 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
6765 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
6766 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
6767 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
6769 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
6770 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
6771 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
6772 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
6773 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
6774 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
6775 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
6777 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
6778 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
6779 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
6780 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
6781 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
6788 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>.
6793 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6797 <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>
6803 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
6804 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
6805 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
6806 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
6807 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
6808 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
6809 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
6811 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
6812 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
6821 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
6823 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
6826 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
6830 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
6837 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
6838 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
6839 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
6841 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
6842 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
6849 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>.
6854 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6858 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
6865 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
6866 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
6867 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
6868 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
6869 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
6875 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>.
6880 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6884 <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>
6890 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
6891 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
6892 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
6893 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
6894 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
6897 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
6899 Dell Computer Corporation
1
6902 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
6908 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
6909 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
6910 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
6911 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
6912 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
6915 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
6916 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
6917 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
6918 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
6919 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
6920 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
6927 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>.
6932 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6936 <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>
6942 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
6943 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
6944 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
6945 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
6948 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
6949 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
6950 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
6951 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
6952 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
6953 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
6955 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
6956 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
6957 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
6958 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
6959 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
6960 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
6961 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
6962 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
6964 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
6970 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>.
6975 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6979 <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>
6985 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
6986 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
6987 issues are known and should be solved:
6991 <li>The wicd package seen to
6992 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
6993 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
6994 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
6995 seem to be on the case.
</li>
6997 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
6998 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
6999 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
7000 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
7002 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
7003 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
7004 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
7005 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
7006 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
7007 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
7008 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
7009 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
7013 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
7014 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
7015 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
7016 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
7018 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7019 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7020 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7021 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
7023 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
7029 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>.
7034 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7038 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
7044 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
7045 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
7046 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
7047 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
7049 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
7050 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
7051 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
7052 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
7053 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
7054 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
7055 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
7056 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
7057 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
7058 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
7059 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
7060 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
7061 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
7064 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
7065 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
7066 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
7067 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
7068 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
7069 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
7070 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
7071 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
7072 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
7073 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
7076 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
7077 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
7078 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
7079 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
7080 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
7081 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
7083 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
7084 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
7090 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>.
7095 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7099 <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>
7105 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
7106 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
7107 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
7108 expected, if I am to believe the
7109 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
7110 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
7111 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
7112 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
7113 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
7114 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
7117 More information about
7118 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
7119 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
7120 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
7121 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
7127 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7128 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7129 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7130 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
7136 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>.
7141 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7145 <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>
7151 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
7152 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
7153 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
7154 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
7155 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
7156 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
7157 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
7158 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
7160 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
7161 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
7162 this on the collector host:
</p>
7165 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
7168 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
7169 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
7171 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
7172 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
7173 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
7174 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
7181 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>.
7186 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7190 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
7196 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
7197 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
7199 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
7201 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
7202 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
7203 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
7204 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
7205 based boot system. Tollef is
7206 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
7207 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
7208 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
7209 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
7210 at the moment do not.
</p>
7212 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
7213 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
7214 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
7215 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
7216 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
7219 <p>In the mean time, based on the
7220 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
7221 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
7222 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
7223 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
7224 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
7225 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
7226 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
7227 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
7233 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>.
7238 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7242 <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>
7248 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
7249 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
7250 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
7251 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
7252 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
7253 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
7254 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
7257 CONCURRENCY=makefile
7260 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
7261 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
7262 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
7263 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
7264 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
7265 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
7266 make this happen.
</p>
7268 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
7269 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
7270 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
7271 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
7272 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
7274 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
7275 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
7276 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
7277 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
7279 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7280 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7281 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7282 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
7288 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>.
7293 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7297 <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>
7303 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version
2.87dsf-
2,
7304 and the upload of insserv version
1.12.0-
10 yesterday, Debian unstable
7305 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
7306 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
7307 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
7308 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
7309 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.
</p>
7311 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
7312 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
7313 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.
</p>
7319 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>.
7324 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7328 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development
</a>
7334 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
7335 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
7336 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
7337 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
7338 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
7339 the package up to date.
</p>
7341 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
7342 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About
10 days ago, I made
7343 a new upstream tarball with version number
2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
7344 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
7345 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
7346 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
7347 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
7348 upstream project at
<a href=
"http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah
</a>, and continue
7349 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
7350 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
7351 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
7352 working on the future release.
</p>
7354 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
7355 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.
</p>
7361 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>.
7366 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7370 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker
</a>
7376 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
7377 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
7378 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
7380 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
7381 gathering
</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
7382 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
7383 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
7384 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
7385 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.
</p>
7387 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
7388 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
7393 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.
</li>
7395 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
7396 clock is in UTC.
</li>
7398 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
7399 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
7400 based boot sequencing
</a>, and enable concurrent booting.
</li>
7404 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
7405 <a href=
"http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
7408 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
7409 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut
6 seconds
7410 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
7411 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
7412 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
7415 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
7416 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
7417 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
7418 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
7419 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
7420 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
7421 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)
</p>
7427 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>.
7432 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7436 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand
</a>
7442 <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
7443 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
7444 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
7445 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
7447 <a href=
"http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
7448 rapport
</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
7449 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
7450 <a href=
"http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
7451 höftade Sverigesiffror
</a>, oppsummeres slik:
</p>
7454 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att
25 procent av all mjukvara i
7455 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
7456 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
7457 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
7460 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er
<a
7461 href=
"http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
7462 piracy figures need a shot of reality
</a> og
<a
7463 href=
"http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
7464 Copyright Treaty Work?
</a></p>
7466 <p>Fant lenkene via
<a
7467 href=
"http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
7468 på Slashdot
</a>.
</p>
7474 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>.
7479 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7483 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med
21% i
2009</a>
7490 <a href=
"http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
7491 tall
</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
7492 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
7493 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har
490
7494 (
61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og
196
7495 (
25%) windowstjenere, samt
112 (
14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
7496 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.
</p>
7502 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
7507 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7511 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis
</a>
7517 <p><a href=
"http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
7518 IT melder
</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
7519 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
7520 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
7521 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
7522 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
7523 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
7524 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
7525 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
7526 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
7527 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
7528 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
7529 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
7530 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
7531 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
7532 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
7533 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
7534 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
7535 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
7536 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.
</p>
7538 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
7539 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
7540 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
7541 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
7542 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
7543 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
7544 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
7551 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
7556 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7560 <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>
7566 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
7567 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
7568 do not yet know them.
</p>
7570 <p>The first one is
<a href=
"http://valgrind.org/">valgrind
</a>, a
7571 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
7572 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
7573 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
7574 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
7575 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
7576 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
7577 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
7578 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
7579 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
7580 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
7582 <p>The second one is
7583 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity
</a> which is
7584 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
7585 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
7586 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
7587 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
7588 and the company behind it is running
7589 <a href=
"http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service
</a> for the
7590 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
7591 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
7592 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
7593 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
7594 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
7595 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
7596 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.
</p>
7598 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
7599 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
7600 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
7601 surrounded by today.
</p>
7607 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>.
7612 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7616 <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>
7623 <a href=
"http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
7624 patch is better than a useless patch
</a>. I completely disagree, as a
7625 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
7626 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
7627 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
7634 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>.
7639 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7643 <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>
7649 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
7650 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
7651 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
7652 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
7653 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
7654 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
7655 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
7658 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
7659 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
7660 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
7661 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
7662 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
7663 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
7664 blocked from doing so.
</p>
7666 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
7667 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
7668 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
7669 requirements change.
</p>
7671 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
7672 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
7673 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
7679 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>.
7684 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7688 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
7694 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
7695 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
7696 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
7697 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
7698 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
7699 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
7700 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
7701 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
7702 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
7703 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
7704 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
7705 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
7706 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
7707 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
7714 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>.
7719 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7723 <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>
7729 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
7730 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
7731 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
7732 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
7733 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
7734 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
7736 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
7737 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
7738 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
7739 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
7740 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
7741 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
7742 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
7743 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
7744 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
7745 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
7746 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
7747 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
7748 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
7750 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
7751 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
7752 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
7753 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
7755 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
7756 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
7758 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
7759 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
7760 new IETF work group?
</p>
7766 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>.
7771 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7775 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut
</a>
7781 <p>Endelig er
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>
7782 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny
</a> gitt ut.
7783 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
7784 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
7785 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
7786 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> /
7787 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> ferdig
7788 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
7789 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
7790 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
7791 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
7792 <tt>insserv
</tt>.
</p>
7798 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
7803 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7807 <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>
7813 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
7814 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
7815 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
7816 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
7817 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
7818 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
7819 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
7820 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
7822 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
7823 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
7824 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
7825 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
7832 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>.
7837 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7841 <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>
7847 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
7848 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
7849 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
7850 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
7851 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
7852 notes are available on
7853 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
7854 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
7855 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
7856 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
7857 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
7858 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
7859 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
7860 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
7861 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
7863 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
7864 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
7870 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>.
7875 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7877 <p style=
"text-align: right;"><a href=
"debian.rss"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
"RSS Feed" width=
"36" height=
"14" /></a></p>
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2)
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3)
</a></li>
7892 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (
8)
</a></li>
7894 <li><a href=
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5)
</a></li>
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11)
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</a></li>
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6)
</a></li>
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4)
</a></li>
7977 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
7979 <li><a href=
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3)
</a></li>
7981 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (
1)
</a></li>
7988 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
7990 <li><a href=
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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8048 <li><a href=
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245)
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162)
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11)
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1)
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1)
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11)
</a></li>
8133 <li><a href=
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2)
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8135 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
9)
</a></li>
8137 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
8139 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (
4)
</a></li>
8141 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (
2)
</a></li>
8143 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (
40)
</a></li>
8145 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (
4)
</a></li>
8147 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (
4)
</a></li>
8149 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (
44)
</a></li>
8151 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (
3)
</a></li>
8153 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (
9)
</a></li>
8155 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (
25)
</a></li>
8157 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (
1)
</a></li>
8159 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (
8)
</a></li>
8161 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (
40)
</a></li>
8163 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (
4)
</a></li>
8165 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (
30)
</a></li>
8171 <p style=
"text-align: right">
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