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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged english</title>
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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_fault_tolerant_storage_systems.html">Some notes on fault tolerant storage systems</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          1st November 2017
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>If you care about how fault tolerant your storage is, you might
  32 find these articles and papers interesting.  They have formed how I
  33 think of when designing a storage system.</p>
  34
  35 <ul>
  36
  37 <li>USENIX :login; <a
  38 href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2017/ganesan">Redundancy
  39 Does Not Imply Fault Tolerance.  Analysis of Distributed Storage
  40 Reactions to Single Errors and Corruptions</a> by Aishwarya Ganesan,
  41 Ramnatthan Alagappan, Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau, and Remzi
  42 H. Arpaci-Dusseau</li>
  43
  44 <li>ZDNet
  45 <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/">Why
  46 RAID 5 stops working in 2009</a> by Robin Harris</li>
  47
  48 <li>ZDNet
  49 <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/">Why
  50 RAID 6 stops working in 2019</a> by Robin Harris</li>
  51
  52 <li>USENIX FAST'07
  53 <a href="http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf">Failure
  54 Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population</a> by Eduardo Pinheiro,
  55 Wolf-Dietrich Weber and Luiz André Barroso</li>
  56
  57 <li>USENIX ;login: <a
  58 href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/hughes12-04.pdf">Data
  59 Integrity.  Finding Truth in a World of Guesses and Lies</a> by Doug
  60 Hughes</li>
  61
  62 <li>USENIX FAST'08
  63 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/events/fast08/tech/full_papers/bairavasundaram/bairavasundaram_html/">An
  64 cAnalysis of Data Corruption in the Storage Stack</a> by
  65 L. N. Bairavasundaram, G. R. Goodson, B. Schroeder, A. C.
  66 Arpaci-Dusseau, and R. H. Arpaci-Dusseau</li>
  67
  68 <li>USENIX FAST'07 <a
  69 href="https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast07/tech/schroeder/schroeder_html/">Disk
  70 failures in the real world: what does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean
  71 to you?</a> by B. Schroeder and G. A. Gibson.</li>
  72
  73 <li>USENIX ;login: <a
  74 href="https://www.usenix.org/events/fast08/tech/full_papers/jiang/jiang_html/">Are
  75 Disks the Dominant Contributor for Storage Failures?  A Comprehensive
  76 Study of Storage Subsystem Failure Characteristics</a> by Weihang
  77 Jiang, Chongfeng Hu, Yuanyuan Zhou, and Arkady Kanevsky</li>
  78
  79 <li>SIGMETRICS 2007
  80 <a href="http://research.cs.wisc.edu/adsl/Publications/latent-sigmetrics07.pdf">An
  81 analysis of latent sector errors in disk drives</a> by
  82 L. N. Bairavasundaram, G. R. Goodson, S. Pasupathy, and J. Schindler</li>
  83
  84 </ul>
  85
  86 <p>Several of these research papers are based on data collected from
  87 hundred thousands or millions of disk, and their findings are eye
  88 opening.  The short story is simply do not implicitly trust RAID or
  89 redundant storage systems.  Details matter.  And unfortunately there
  90 are few options on Linux addressing all the identified issues.  Both
  91 ZFS and Btrfs are doing a fairly good job, but have legal and
  92 practical issues on their own.  I wonder how cluster file systems like
  93 Ceph do in this regard.  After, all the old saying, you know you have
  94 a distributed system when the crash of a compyter you have never heard
  95 of stops you from getting any work done.  The same holds true if fault
  96 tolerance do not work.</p>
  97
  98 <p>Just remember, in the end, it do not matter how redundant, or how
  99 fault tolerant your storage is, if you do not continuously monitor its
 100 status to detect and replace failed disks.</p>
 101
 102       </div>
 103       <div class="tags">
 104
 105
 106         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
 107
 108
 109       </div>
 110     </div>
 111     <div class="padding"></div>
 112
 113     <div class="entry">
 114       <div class="title">
 115         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_services_for_writing_academic_LaTeX_papers_as_a_team.html">Web services for writing academic LaTeX papers as a team</a>
 116       </div>
 117       <div class="date">
 118         31st October 2017
 119       </div>
 120       <div class="body">
 121         <p>I was surprised today to learn that a friend in academia did not
 122 know there are easily available web services available for writing
 123 LaTeX documents as a team.  I thought it was common knowledge, but to
 124 make sure at least my readers are aware of it, I would like to mention
 125 these useful services for writing LaTeX documents.  Some of them even
 126 provide a WYSIWYG editor to ease writing even further.</p>
 127
 128 <p>There are two commercial services available,
 129 <a href="https://sharelatex.com">ShareLaTeX</a> and
 130 <a href="https://overleaf.com">Overleaf</a>.  They are very easy to
 131 use.  Just start a new document, select which publisher to write for
 132 (ie which LaTeX style to use), and start writing.  Note, these two
 133 have announced their intention to join forces, so soon it will only be
 134 one joint service.  I've used both for different documents, and they
 135 work just fine.  While
 136 <a href="https://github.com/sharelatex/sharelatex">ShareLaTeX is free
 137 software</a>, while the latter is not.  According to <a
 138 href="https://www.overleaf.com/help/17-is-overleaf-open-source">a
 139 announcement from Overleaf</a>, they plan to keep the ShareLaTeX code
 140 base maintained as free software.</p>
 141
 142 But these two are not the only alternatives.
 143 <a href="https://app.fiduswriter.org/">Fidus Writer</a> is another free
 144 software solution with <a href="https://github.com/fiduswriter">the
 145 source available on github</a>.  I have not used it myself.  Several
 146 others can be found on the nice
 147 <a href="https://alternativeto.net/software/sharelatex/">alterntiveTo
 148 web service</a>.
 149
 150 <p>If you like Google Docs or Etherpad, but would like to write
 151 documents in LaTeX, you should check out these services.  You can even
 152 host your own, if you want to. :)</p>
 153
 154
 155       </div>
 156       <div class="tags">
 157
 158
 159         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 160
 161
 162       </div>
 163     </div>
 164     <div class="padding"></div>
 165
 166     <div class="entry">
 167       <div class="title">
 168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Locating_IMDB_IDs_of_movies_in_the_Internet_Archive_using_Wikidata.html">Locating IMDB IDs of movies in the Internet Archive using Wikidata</a>
 169       </div>
 170       <div class="date">
 171         25th October 2017
 172       </div>
 173       <div class="body">
 174         <p>Recently, I needed to automatically check the copyright status of a
 175 set of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/">The Internet Movie database
 176 (IMDB)</a> entries, to figure out which one of the movies they refer
 177 to can be freely distributed on the Internet.  This proved to be
 178 harder than it sounds.  IMDB for sure list movies without any
 179 copyright protection, where the copyright protection has expired or
 180 where the movie is lisenced using a permissive license like one from
 181 Creative Commons.  These are mixed with copyright protected movies,
 182 and there seem to be no way to separate these classes of movies using
 183 the information in IMDB.</p>
 184
 185 <p>First I tried to look up entries manually in IMDB,
 186 <a href="https://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> and
 187 <a href="https://www.archive.org/">The Internet Archive</a>, to get a
 188 feel how to do this.  It is hard to know for sure using these sources,
 189 but it should be possible to be reasonable confident a movie is "out
 190 of copyright" with a few hours work per movie.  As I needed to check
 191 almost 20,000 entries, this approach was not sustainable.  I simply
 192 can not work around the clock for about 6 years to check this data
 193 set.</p>
 194
 195 <p>I asked the people behind The Internet Archive if they could
 196 introduce a new metadata field in their metadata XML for IMDB ID, but
 197 was told that they leave it completely to the uploaders to update the
 198 metadata.  Some of the metadata entries had IMDB links in the
 199 description, but I found no way to download all metadata files in bulk
 200 to locate those ones and put that approach aside.</p>
 201
 202 <p>In the process I noticed several Wikipedia articles about movies
 203 had links to both IMDB and The Internet Archive, and it occured to me
 204 that I could use the Wikipedia RDF data set to locate entries with
 205 both, to at least get a lower bound on the number of movies on The
 206 Internet Archive with a IMDB ID.  This is useful based on the
 207 assumption that movies distributed by The Internet Archive can be
 208 legally distributed on the Internet.  With some help from the RDF
 209 community (thank you DanC), I was able to come up with this query to
 210 pass to <a href="https://query.wikidata.org/">the SPARQL interface on
 211 Wikidata</a>:
 212
 213 <p><pre>
 214 SELECT ?work ?imdb ?ia ?when ?label
 215 WHERE
 216 {
 217   ?work wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q11424.
 218   ?work wdt:P345 ?imdb.
 219   ?work wdt:P724 ?ia.
 220   OPTIONAL {
 221         ?work wdt:P577 ?when.
 222         ?work rdfs:label ?label.
 223         FILTER(LANG(?label) = "en").
 224   }
 225 }
 226 </pre></p>
 227
 228 <p>If I understand the query right, for every film entry anywhere in
 229 Wikpedia, it will return the IMDB ID and The Internet Archive ID, and
 230 when the movie was released and its English title, if either or both
 231 of the latter two are available.  At the moment the result set contain
 232 2338 entries.  Of course, it depend on volunteers including both
 233 correct IMDB and The Internet Archive IDs in the wikipedia articles
 234 for the movie.  It should be noted that the result will include
 235 duplicates if the movie have entries in several languages.  There are
 236 some bogus entries, either because The Internet Archive ID contain a
 237 typo or because the movie is not available from The Internet Archive.
 238 I did not verify the IMDB IDs, as I am unsure how to do that
 239 automatically.</p>
 240
 241 <p>I wrote a small python script to extract the data set from Wikidata
 242 and check if the XML metadata for the movie is available from The
 243 Internet Archive, and after around 1.5 hour it produced a list of 2097
 244 free movies and their IMDB ID.  In total, 171 entries in Wikidata lack
 245 the refered Internet Archive entry.  I assume the 70 "disappearing"
 246 entries (ie 2338-2097-171) are duplicate entries.</p>
 247
 248 <p>This is not too bad, given that The Internet Archive report to
 249 contain <a href="https://archive.org/details/feature_films">5331
 250 feature films</a> at the moment, but it also mean more than 3000
 251 movies are missing on Wikipedia or are missing the pair of references
 252 on Wikipedia.</p>
 253
 254 <p>I was curious about the distribution by release year, and made a
 255 little graph to show how the amount of free movies is spread over the
 256 years:<p>
 257
 258 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-10-25-verk-i-det-fri-filmer.png"></p>
 259
 260 <p>I expect the relative distribution of the remaining 3000 movies to
 261 be similar.</p>
 262
 263 <p>If you want to help, and want to ensure Wikipedia can be used to
 264 cross reference The Internet Archive and The Internet Movie Database,
 265 please make sure entries like this are listed under the "External
 266 links" heading on the Wikipedia article for the movie:</p>
 267
 268 <p><pre>
 269 * {{Internet Archive film|id=FightingLady}}
 270 * {{IMDb title|id=0036823|title=The Fighting Lady}}
 271 </pre></p>
 272
 273 <p>Please verify the links on the final page, to make sure you did not
 274 introduce a typo.</p>
 275
 276 <p>Here is the complete list, if you want to correct the 171
 277 identified Wikipedia entries with broken links to The Internet
 278 Archive: <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1140317">Q1140317</a>,
 279 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q458656">Q458656</a>,
 280 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q458656">Q458656</a>,
 281 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q470560">Q470560</a>,
 282 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q743340">Q743340</a>,
 283 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q822580">Q822580</a>,
 284 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q480696">Q480696</a>,
 285 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q128761">Q128761</a>,
 286 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1307059">Q1307059</a>,
 287 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1335091">Q1335091</a>,
 288 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1537166">Q1537166</a>,
 289 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1438334">Q1438334</a>,
 290 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1479751">Q1479751</a>,
 291 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1497200">Q1497200</a>,
 292 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1498122">Q1498122</a>,
 293 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q865973">Q865973</a>,
 294 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q834269">Q834269</a>,
 295 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q841781">Q841781</a>,
 296 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q841781">Q841781</a>,
 297 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1548193">Q1548193</a>,
 298 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q499031">Q499031</a>,
 299 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1564769">Q1564769</a>,
 300 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1585239">Q1585239</a>,
 301 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1585569">Q1585569</a>,
 302 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1624236">Q1624236</a>,
 303 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4796595">Q4796595</a>,
 304 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4853469">Q4853469</a>,
 305 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4873046">Q4873046</a>,
 306 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q915016">Q915016</a>,
 307 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4660396">Q4660396</a>,
 308 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4677708">Q4677708</a>,
 309 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4738449">Q4738449</a>,
 310 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4756096">Q4756096</a>,
 311 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4766785">Q4766785</a>,
 312 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q880357">Q880357</a>,
 313 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q882066">Q882066</a>,
 314 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q882066">Q882066</a>,
 315 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q204191">Q204191</a>,
 316 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q204191">Q204191</a>,
 317 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1194170">Q1194170</a>,
 318 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q940014">Q940014</a>,
 319 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q946863">Q946863</a>,
 320 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q172837">Q172837</a>,
 321 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q573077">Q573077</a>,
 322 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1219005">Q1219005</a>,
 323 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1219599">Q1219599</a>,
 324 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1643798">Q1643798</a>,
 325 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1656352">Q1656352</a>,
 326 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1659549">Q1659549</a>,
 327 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1660007">Q1660007</a>,
 328 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1698154">Q1698154</a>,
 329 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1737980">Q1737980</a>,
 330 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1877284">Q1877284</a>,
 331 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1199354">Q1199354</a>,
 332 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1199354">Q1199354</a>,
 333 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1199451">Q1199451</a>,
 334 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1211871">Q1211871</a>,
 335 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1212179">Q1212179</a>,
 336 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1238382">Q1238382</a>,
 337 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4906454">Q4906454</a>,
 338 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q320219">Q320219</a>,
 339 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1148649">Q1148649</a>,
 340 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q645094">Q645094</a>,
 341 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5050350">Q5050350</a>,
 342 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5166548">Q5166548</a>,
 343 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2677926">Q2677926</a>,
 344 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2698139">Q2698139</a>,
 345 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2707305">Q2707305</a>,
 346 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2740725">Q2740725</a>,
 347 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2024780">Q2024780</a>,
 348 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2117418">Q2117418</a>,
 349 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2138984">Q2138984</a>,
 350 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1127992">Q1127992</a>,
 351 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1058087">Q1058087</a>,
 352 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1070484">Q1070484</a>,
 353 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1080080">Q1080080</a>,
 354 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1090813">Q1090813</a>,
 355 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1251918">Q1251918</a>,
 356 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1254110">Q1254110</a>,
 357 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1257070">Q1257070</a>,
 358 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1257079">Q1257079</a>,
 359 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1197410">Q1197410</a>,
 360 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1198423">Q1198423</a>,
 361 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q706951">Q706951</a>,
 362 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q723239">Q723239</a>,
 363 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2079261">Q2079261</a>,
 364 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1171364">Q1171364</a>,
 365 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q617858">Q617858</a>,
 366 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5166611">Q5166611</a>,
 367 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5166611">Q5166611</a>,
 368 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q324513">Q324513</a>,
 369 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q374172">Q374172</a>,
 370 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7533269">Q7533269</a>,
 371 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q970386">Q970386</a>,
 372 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q976849">Q976849</a>,
 373 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7458614">Q7458614</a>,
 374 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5347416">Q5347416</a>,
 375 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5460005">Q5460005</a>,
 376 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5463392">Q5463392</a>,
 377 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3038555">Q3038555</a>,
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 385 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1300759">Q1300759</a>,
 386 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5521241">Q5521241</a>,
 387 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7733434">Q7733434</a>,
 388 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7736264">Q7736264</a>,
 389 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7737032">Q7737032</a>,
 390 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7882671">Q7882671</a>,
 391 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7719427">Q7719427</a>,
 392 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7719444">Q7719444</a>,
 393 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7722575">Q7722575</a>,
 394 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2629763">Q2629763</a>,
 395 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2640346">Q2640346</a>,
 396 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2649671">Q2649671</a>,
 397 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7703851">Q7703851</a>,
 398 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7747041">Q7747041</a>,
 399 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q6544949">Q6544949</a>,
 400 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q6672759">Q6672759</a>,
 401 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2445896">Q2445896</a>,
 402 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q12124891">Q12124891</a>,
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 406 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2543165">Q2543165</a>,
 407 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q426628">Q426628</a>,
 408 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q426628">Q426628</a>,
 409 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q12126890">Q12126890</a>,
 410 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q13359969">Q13359969</a>,
 411 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q13359969">Q13359969</a>,
 412 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2294295">Q2294295</a>,
 413 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2294295">Q2294295</a>,
 414 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2559509">Q2559509</a>,
 415 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2559912">Q2559912</a>,
 416 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7760469">Q7760469</a>,
 417 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q6703974">Q6703974</a>,
 418 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4744">Q4744</a>,
 419 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7766962">Q7766962</a>,
 420 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7768516">Q7768516</a>,
 421 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7769205">Q7769205</a>,
 422 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7769988">Q7769988</a>,
 423 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2946945">Q2946945</a>,
 424 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3212086">Q3212086</a>,
 425 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3212086">Q3212086</a>,
 426 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q18218448">Q18218448</a>,
 427 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q18218448">Q18218448</a>,
 428 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q18218448">Q18218448</a>,
 429 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q6909175">Q6909175</a>,
 430 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7405709">Q7405709</a>,
 431 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7416149">Q7416149</a>,
 432 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7239952">Q7239952</a>,
 433 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7317332">Q7317332</a>,
 434 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7783674">Q7783674</a>,
 435 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7783704">Q7783704</a>,
 436 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7857590">Q7857590</a>,
 437 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3372526">Q3372526</a>,
 438 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3372642">Q3372642</a>,
 439 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3372816">Q3372816</a>,
 440 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3372909">Q3372909</a>,
 441 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7959649">Q7959649</a>,
 442 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7977485">Q7977485</a>,
 443 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7992684">Q7992684</a>,
 444 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3817966">Q3817966</a>,
 445 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3821852">Q3821852</a>,
 446 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3420907">Q3420907</a>,
 447 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3429733">Q3429733</a>,
 448 <a href="http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q774474">Q774474</a></p>
 449
 450       </div>
 451       <div class="tags">
 452
 453
 454         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 455
 456
 457       </div>
 458     </div>
 459     <div class="padding"></div>
 460
 461     <div class="entry">
 462       <div class="title">
 463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_one_way_wall_on_the_border_.html">A one-way wall on the border?</a>
 464       </div>
 465       <div class="date">
 466         14th October 2017
 467       </div>
 468       <div class="body">
 469         <p>I find it fascinating how many of the people being locked inside
 470 the proposed border wall between USA and Mexico support the idea.  The
 471 proposal to keep Mexicans out reminds me of
 472 <a href="http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-berlin-wall">the
 473 propaganda twist from the East Germany government</a> calling the wall
 474 the “Antifascist Bulwark” after erecting the Berlin Wall, claiming
 475 that the wall was erected to keep enemies from creeping into East
 476 Germany, while it was obvious to the people locked inside it that it
 477 was erected to keep the people from escaping.</p>
 478
 479 <p>Do the people in USA supporting this wall really believe it is a
 480 one way wall, only keeping people on the outside from getting in,
 481 while not keeping people in the inside from getting out?</p>
 482
 483       </div>
 484       <div class="tags">
 485
 486
 487         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 488
 489
 490       </div>
 491     </div>
 492     <div class="padding"></div>
 493
 494     <div class="entry">
 495       <div class="title">
 496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</a>
 497       </div>
 498       <div class="date">
 499          9th October 2017
 500       </div>
 501       <div class="body">
 502         <p>At my nearby maker space,
 503 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
 504 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
 505 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
 506 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
 507 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
 508 as the software involved,
 509 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
 510 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
 511 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
 512 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
 513 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
 514 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
 515 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
 516
 517 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
 518 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
 519 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
 520 on
 521 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 522 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
 523
 524 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
 525 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
 526 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
 527 upstream version.</p>
 528
 529 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
 530 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
 531 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
 532 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
 533 Debian, check out
 534 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
 535 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
 536 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
 537
 538       </div>
 539       <div class="tags">
 540
 541
 542         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>.
 543
 544
 545       </div>
 546     </div>
 547     <div class="padding"></div>
 548
 549     <div class="entry">
 550       <div class="title">
 551         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</a>
 552       </div>
 553       <div class="date">
 554         29th September 2017
 555       </div>
 556       <div class="body">
 557         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
 558 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
 559 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
 560 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
 561 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
 562 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
 563 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
 564 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
 565 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
 566 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
 567 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
 568 listen.</p>
 569
 570 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
 571 visualizing this information up and running for
 572 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
 573 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
 574 library.  The solution is based on the
 575 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
 576 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
 577 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
 578 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
 579 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
 580 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
 581 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
 582 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
 583
 584 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
 585 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
 586 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
 587 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
 588 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
 589 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
 590 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
 591 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
 592
 593 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
 594 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
 595 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
 596 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
 597 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
 598 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
 599 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
 600 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
 601 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
 602 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
 603 mentioned in
 604 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
 605 issue for the topic</a>.
 606
 607 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
 608
 609       </div>
 610       <div class="tags">
 611
 612
 613         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 614
 615
 616       </div>
 617     </div>
 618     <div class="padding"></div>
 619
 620     <div class="entry">
 621       <div class="title">
 622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</a>
 623       </div>
 624       <div class="date">
 625         24th September 2017
 626       </div>
 627       <div class="body">
 628         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
 629 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
 630 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
 631 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
 632 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
 633 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
 634 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
 635 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
 636 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
 637
 638 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
 639 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
 640 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
 641 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
 642
 643 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
 644 clone of two python scripts:</p>
 645
 646 <ol>
 647
 648 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
 649   testing).</li>
 650
 651 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
 652   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
 653
 654 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
 655   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
 656
 657 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
 658
 659 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 660   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
 661   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
 662
 663 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 664   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
 665
 666 </ol>
 667
 668 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
 669 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
 670 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
 671 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
 672 very cheaply
 673 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
 674 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
 675 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
 676
 677 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
 678 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
 679 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
 680 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
 681 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
 682 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
 683 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
 684 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
 685
 686 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
 687 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
 688 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
 689 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
 690 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
 691 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
 692 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
 693 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
 694 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
 695 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
 696 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
 697 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
 698
 699       </div>
 700       <div class="tags">
 701
 702
 703         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 704
 705
 706       </div>
 707     </div>
 708     <div class="padding"></div>
 709
 710     <div class="entry">
 711       <div class="title">
 712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a>
 713       </div>
 714       <div class="date">
 715          9th August 2017
 716       </div>
 717       <div class="body">
 718         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
 719 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
 720 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
 721 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
 722 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
 723 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
 724 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
 725
 726 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
 727 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
 728 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
 729 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
 730 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
 731 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
 732 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
 733 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
 734 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
 735 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
 736 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
 737 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
 738 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
 739
 740 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
 741 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
 742 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
 743 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
 744 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
 745 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
 746 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
 747 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
 748 collector for a few days now.</p>
 749
 750 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
 751
 752 <ol>
 753
 754 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
 755
 756 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
 757 <a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/</a>,</li>
 758
 759 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
 760
 761 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
 762 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
 763 found a GSM station).</li>
 764
 765 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
 766
 767 </ol>
 768
 769 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
 770 running, I decided to package
 771 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
 772 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
 773 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
 774 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
 775 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
 776
 777 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
 778 commercial tools like
 779 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
 780 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
 781 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
 782 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
 783 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
 784 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
 785 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
 786 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
 787 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
 788 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
 789 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
 790 of government officials...</p>
 791
 792 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
 793 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
 794 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
 795 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
 796 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
 797 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
 798 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
 799 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
 800 one frequency?</p>
 801
 802       </div>
 803       <div class="tags">
 804
 805
 806         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 807
 808
 809       </div>
 810     </div>
 811     <div class="padding"></div>
 812
 813     <div class="entry">
 814       <div class="title">
 815         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available</a>
 816       </div>
 817       <div class="date">
 818         25th July 2017
 819       </div>
 820       <div class="body">
 821         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
 822
 823 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
 824 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
 825 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
 826 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
 827 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
 828 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
 829 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
 830 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
 831 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
 832 as a web page</a>.</p>
 833
 834 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
 835 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
 836 in
 837 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
 838 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
 839 and
 840 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
 841 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
 842 project.  I hope
 843 "<a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html">Håndbok
 844 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
 845
 846       </div>
 847       <div class="tags">
 848
 849
 850         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 851
 852
 853       </div>
 854     </div>
 855     <div class="padding"></div>
 856
 857     <div class="entry">
 858       <div class="title">
 859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_sales_number_for_my_Free_Culture_paper_editions.html">Updated sales number for my Free Culture paper editions</a>
 860       </div>
 861       <div class="date">
 862         12th June 2017
 863       </div>
 864       <div class="body">
 865         <p>It is pleasing to see that the work we put down in publishing new
 866 editions of the classic <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free
 867 Culture book</a> by the founder of the Creative Commons movement,
 868 Lawrence Lessig, is still being appreciated.  I had a look at the
 869 latest sales numbers for the paper edition today.  Not too impressive,
 870 but happy to see some buyers still exist.  All the revenue from the
 871 books is sent to the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative
 872 Commons Corporation</a>, and they receive the largest cut if you buy
 873 directly from Lulu.  Most books are sold via Amazon, with Ingram
 874 second and only a small fraction directly from Lulu.  The ebook
 875 edition is available for free from
 876 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Github</a>.</p>
 877
 878 <table border="0">
 879 <tr><th rowspan="2" valign="bottom">Title / language</th><th colspan="3">Quantity</th></tr>
 880 <tr><th>2016 jan-jun</th><th>2016 jul-dec</th><th>2017 jan-may</th></tr>
 881
 882 <tr>
 883   <td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Culture Libre / French</a></td>
 884   <td align="right">3</td>
 885   <td align="right">6</td>
 886   <td align="right">15</td>
 887 </tr>
 888
 889 <tr>
 890   <td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Fri kultur / Norwegian</a></td>
 891   <td align="right">7</td>
 892   <td align="right">1</td>
 893   <td align="right">0</td>
 894 </tr>
 895
 896 <tr>
 897   <td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">Free Culture / English</a></td>
 898   <td align="right">14</td>
 899   <td align="right">27</td>
 900   <td align="right">16</td>
 901 </tr>
 902
 903 <tr>
 904   <td>Total</td>
 905   <td align="right">24</td>
 906   <td align="right">34</td>
 907   <td align="right">31</td>
 908 </tr>
 909
 910 </table>
 911
 912 <p>A bit sad to see the low sales number on the Norwegian edition, and
 913 a bit surprising the English edition still selling so well.</p>
 914
 915 <p>If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native
 916 language, I would be happy to help make it happen.  Please get in
 917 touch.</p>
 918
 919       </div>
 920       <div class="tags">
 921
 922
 923         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 924
 925
 926       </div>
 927     </div>
 928     <div class="padding"></div>
 929
 930     <div class="entry">
 931       <div class="title">
 932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Release_0_1_1_of_free_software_archive_system_Nikita_announced.html">Release 0.1.1 of free software archive system Nikita announced</a>
 933       </div>
 934       <div class="date">
 935         10th June 2017
 936       </div>
 937       <div class="body">
 938         <p>I am very happy to report that the
 939 <a href="https://github.com/hiOA-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">Nikita Noark 5
 940 core project</a> tagged its second release today.  The free software
 941 solution is an implementation of the Norwegian archive standard Noark
 942 5 used by government offices in Norway.  These were the changes in
 943 version 0.1.1 since version 0.1.0 (from NEWS.md):
 944
 945 <ul>
 946
 947  <li>Continued work on the angularjs GUI, including document upload.</li>
 948  <li>Implemented correspondencepartPerson, correspondencepartUnit and
 949    correspondencepartInternal</li>
 950  <li>Applied for coverity coverage and started submitting code on
 951    regualr basis.</li>
 952  <li>Started fixing bugs reported by coverity</li>
 953  <li>Corrected and completed HATEOAS links to make sure entire API is
 954    available via URLs in _links.</li>
 955  <li>Corrected all relation URLs to use trailing slash.</li>
 956  <li>Add initial support for storing data in ElasticSearch.</li>
 957  <li>Now able to receive and store uploaded files in the archive.</li>
 958  <li>Changed JSON output for object lists to have relations in _links.</li>
 959  <li>Improve JSON output for empty object lists.</li>
 960  <li>Now uses correct MIME type application/vnd.noark5-v4+json.</li>
 961  <li>Added support for docker container images.</li>
 962  <li>Added simple API browser implemented in JavaScript/Angular.</li>
 963  <li>Started on archive client implemented in JavaScript/Angular.</li>
 964  <li>Started on prototype to show the public mail journal.</li>
 965  <li>Improved performance by disabling Sprint FileWatcher.</li>
 966  <li>Added support for 'arkivskaper', 'saksmappe' and 'journalpost'.</li>
 967  <li>Added support for some metadata codelists.</li>
 968  <li>Added support for Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS).</li>
 969  <li>Changed login method from Basic Auth to JSON Web Token (RFC 7519)
 970    style.</li>
 971  <li>Added support for GET-ing ny-* URLs.</li>
 972  <li>Added support for modifying entities using PUT and eTag.</li>
 973  <li>Added support for returning XML output on request.</li>
 974  <li>Removed support for English field and class names, limiting ourself
 975    to the official names.</li>
 976  <li>...</li>
 977
 978 </ul>
 979
 980 <p>If this sound interesting to you, please contact us on IRC (#nikita
 981 on irc.freenode.net) or email
 982 (<a href="https://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/nikita-noark">nikita-noark
 983 mailing list).</p>
 984
 985       </div>
 986       <div class="tags">
 987
 988
 989         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 990
 991
 992       </div>
 993     </div>
 994     <div class="padding"></div>
 995
 996     <div class="entry">
 997       <div class="title">
 998         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_trusted_timestamps_in_a_Noark_5_archive.html">Idea for storing trusted timestamps in a Noark 5 archive</a>
 999       </div>
1000       <div class="date">
1001          7th June 2017
1002       </div>
1003       <div class="body">
1004         <p><em>This is a copy of
1005 <a href="https://lists.nuug.no/pipermail/nikita-noark/2017-June/000297.html">an
1006 email I posted to the nikita-noark mailing list</a>.  Please follow up
1007 there if you would like to discuss this topic.  The background is that
1008 we are making a free software archive system based on the Norwegian
1009 <a href="https://www.arkivverket.no/forvaltning-og-utvikling/regelverk-og-standarder/noark-standarden">Noark
1010 5 standard</a> for government archives.</em></p>
1011
1012 <p>I've been wondering a bit lately how trusted timestamps could be
1013 stored in Noark 5.
1014 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">Trusted
1015 timestamps</a> can be used to verify that some information
1016 (document/file/checksum/metadata) have not been changed since a
1017 specific time in the past.  This is useful to verify the integrity of
1018 the documents in the archive.</p>
1019
1020 <p>Then it occured to me, perhaps the trusted timestamps could be
1021 stored as dokument variants (ie dokumentobjekt referered to from
1022 dokumentbeskrivelse) with the filename set to the hash it is
1023 stamping?</p>
1024
1025 <p>Given a "dokumentbeskrivelse" with an associated "dokumentobjekt",
1026 a new dokumentobjekt is associated with "dokumentbeskrivelse" with the
1027 same attributes as the stamped dokumentobjekt except these
1028 attributes:</p>
1029
1030 <ul>
1031
1032 <li>format -> "RFC3161"
1033 <li>mimeType -> "application/timestamp-reply"
1034 <li>formatDetaljer -> "&lt;source URL for timestamp service&gt;"
1035 <li>filenavn -> "&lt;sjekksum&gt;.tsr"
1036
1037 </ul>
1038
1039 <p>This assume a service following
1040 <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">IETF RFC 3161</a> is
1041 used, which specifiy the given MIME type for replies and the .tsr file
1042 ending for the content of such trusted timestamp.  As far as I can
1043 tell from the Noark 5 specifications, it is OK to have several
1044 variants/renderings of a dokument attached to a given
1045 dokumentbeskrivelse objekt.  It might be stretching it a bit to make
1046 some of these variants represent crypto-signatures useful for
1047 verifying the document integrity instead of representing the dokument
1048 itself.</p>
1049
1050 <p>Using the source of the service in formatDetaljer allow several
1051 timestamping services to be used.  This is useful to spread the risk
1052 of key compromise over several organisations.  It would only be a
1053 problem to trust the timestamps if all of the organisations are
1054 compromised.</p>
1055
1056 <p>The following oneliner on Linux can be used to generate the tsr
1057 file.  $input is the path to the file to checksum, and $sha256 is the
1058 SHA-256 checksum of the file (ie the "<sjekksum>.tsr" value mentioned
1059 above).</p>
1060
1061 <p><blockquote><pre>
1062 openssl ts -query -data "$inputfile" -cert -sha256 -no_nonce \
1063   | curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/timestamp-query" \
1064       --data-binary "@-" http://zeitstempel.dfn.de > $sha256.tsr
1065 </pre></blockquote></p>
1066
1067 <p>To verify the timestamp, you first need to download the public key
1068 of the trusted timestamp service, for example using this command:</p>
1069
1070 <p><blockquote><pre>
1071 wget -O ca-cert.txt \
1072   https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt
1073 </pre></blockquote></p>
1074
1075 <p>Note, the public key should be stored alongside the timestamps in
1076 the archive to make sure it is also available 100 years from now.  It
1077 is probably a good idea to standardise how and were to store such
1078 public keys, to make it easier to find for those trying to verify
1079 documents 100 or 1000 years from now. :)</p>
1080
1081 <p>The verification itself is a simple openssl command:</p>
1082
1083 <p><blockquote><pre>
1084 openssl ts -verify -data $inputfile -in $sha256.tsr \
1085   -CAfile ca-cert.txt -text
1086 </pre></blockquote></p>
1087
1088 <p>Is there any reason this approach would not work?  Is it somehow against
1089 the Noark 5 specification?</p>
1090
1091       </div>
1092       <div class="tags">
1093
1094
1095         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1096
1097
1098       </div>
1099     </div>
1100     <div class="padding"></div>
1101
1102     <div class="entry">
1103       <div class="title">
1104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_archive_system_Nikita_now_able_to_store_documents.html">Free software archive system Nikita now able to store documents</a>
1105       </div>
1106       <div class="date">
1107         19th March 2017
1108       </div>
1109       <div class="body">
1110         <p>The <a href="https://github.com/hiOA-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">Nikita
1111 Noark 5 core project</a> is implementing the Norwegian standard for
1112 keeping an electronic archive of government documents.
1113 <a href="http://www.arkivverket.no/arkivverket/Offentlig-forvaltning/Noark/Noark-5/English-version">The
1114 Noark 5 standard</a> document the requirement for data systems used by
1115 the archives in the Norwegian government, and the Noark 5 web interface
1116 specification document a REST web service for storing, searching and
1117 retrieving documents and metadata in such archive.  I've been involved
1118 in the project since a few weeks before Christmas, when the Norwegian
1119 Unix User Group
1120 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/NOARK5_kjerne_som_fri_programvare_f_r_epostliste_hos_NUUG.shtml">announced
1121 it supported the project</a>.  I believe this is an important project,
1122 and hope it can make it possible for the government archives in the
1123 future to use free software to keep the archives we citizens depend
1124 on.  But as I do not hold such archive myself, personally my first use
1125 case is to store and analyse public mail journal metadata published
1126 from the government.  I find it useful to have a clear use case in
1127 mind when developing, to make sure the system scratches one of my
1128 itches.</p>
1129
1130 <p>If you would like to help make sure there is a free software
1131 alternatives for the archives, please join our IRC channel
1132 (<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nikita"">#nikita on
1133 irc.freenode.net</a>) and
1134 <a href="https://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/nikita-noark">the
1135 project mailing list</a>.</p>
1136
1137 <p>When I got involved, the web service could store metadata about
1138 documents.  But a few weeks ago, a new milestone was reached when it
1139 became possible to store full text documents too.  Yesterday, I
1140 completed an implementation of a command line tool
1141 <tt>archive-pdf</tt> to upload a PDF file to the archive using this
1142 API.  The tool is very simple at the moment, and find existing
1143 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonds">fonds</a>, series and
1144 files while asking the user to select which one to use if more than
1145 one exist.  Once a file is identified, the PDF is associated with the
1146 file and uploaded, using the title extracted from the PDF itself.  The
1147 process is fairly similar to visiting the archive, opening a cabinet,
1148 locating a file and storing a piece of paper in the archive.  Here is
1149 a test run directly after populating the database with test data using
1150 our API tester:</p>
1151
1152 <p><blockquote><pre>
1153 ~/src//noark5-tester$ ./archive-pdf mangelmelding/mangler.pdf
1154 using arkiv: Title of the test fonds created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1155 using arkivdel: Title of the test series created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1156
1157  0 - Title of the test case file created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1158  1 - Title of the test file created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1159 Select which mappe you want (or search term): 0
1160 Uploading mangelmelding/mangler.pdf
1161   PDF title: Mangler i spesifikasjonsdokumentet for NOARK 5 Tjenestegrensesnitt
1162   File 2017/1: Title of the test case file created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
1163 ~/src//noark5-tester$
1164 </pre></blockquote></p>
1165
1166 <p>You can see here how the fonds (arkiv) and serie (arkivdel) only had
1167 one option, while the user need to choose which file (mappe) to use
1168 among the two created by the API tester.  The <tt>archive-pdf</tt>
1169 tool can be found in the git repository for the API tester.</p>
1170
1171 <p>In the project, I have been mostly working on
1172 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/noark5-tester">the API
1173 tester</a> so far, while getting to know the code base.  The API
1174 tester currently use
1175 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS">the HATEOAS links</a>
1176 to traverse the entire exposed service API and verify that the exposed
1177 operations and objects match the specification, as well as trying to
1178 create objects holding metadata and uploading a simple XML file to
1179 store.  The tester has proved very useful for finding flaws in our
1180 implementation, as well as flaws in the reference site and the
1181 specification.</p>
1182
1183 <p>The test document I uploaded is a summary of all the specification
1184 defects we have collected so far while implementing the web service.
1185 There are several unclear and conflicting parts of the specification,
1186 and we have
1187 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/noark5-tester/tree/master/mangelmelding">started
1188 writing down</a> the questions we get from implementing it.  We use a
1189 format inspired by how <a href="http://www.opengroup.org/austin/">The
1190 Austin Group</a> collect defect reports for the POSIX standard with
1191 <a href="http://www.opengroup.org/austin/mantis.html">their
1192 instructions for the MANTIS defect tracker system</a>, in lack of an official way to structure defect reports for Noark 5 (our first submitted defect report was a <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/noark5-tester/blob/master/mangelmelding/sendt/2017-03-15-mangel-prosess.md">request for a procedure for submitting defect reports</a> :).
1193
1194 <p>The Nikita project is implemented using Java and Spring, and is
1195 fairly easy to get up and running using Docker containers for those
1196 that want to test the current code base.  The API tester is
1197 implemented in Python.</p>
1198
1199       </div>
1200       <div class="tags">
1201
1202
1203         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1204
1205
1206       </div>
1207     </div>
1208     <div class="padding"></div>
1209
1210     <div class="entry">
1211       <div class="title">
1212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
1213       </div>
1214       <div class="date">
1215          9th March 2017
1216       </div>
1217       <div class="body">
1218         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
1219 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
1220 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
1221 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
1222 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
1223 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
1224 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
1225 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
1226
1227 <p><blockquote>
1228 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
1229 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
1230 </blockquote></p>
1231
1232 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
1233 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
1234 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
1235 are noticed.</p>
1236
1237 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
1238 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
1239 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
1240 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
1241 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
1242 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
1243
1244 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
1245 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
1246 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
1247 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
1248 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
1249 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
1250
1251 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
1252
1253 <p><blockquote><pre>
1254 [...]
1255 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
1256 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
1257         opts:   rw,vers=3,rsize=65536,wsize=65536,namlen=255,acregmin=3,acregmax=60,acdirmin=30,acdirmax=60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=129.240.3.145,mountvers=3,mountport=4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
1258         age:    7863311
1259         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
1260         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
1261         events: 61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
1262         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
1263         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
1264         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
1265         per-op statistics
1266                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1267              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
1268              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
1269               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
1270               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
1271             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
1272                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
1273                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
1274               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
1275                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
1276              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
1277                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
1278               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
1279                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
1280               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
1281                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
1282              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
1283          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
1284               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
1285               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
1286             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
1287               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1288
1289 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
1290 [...]
1291 </pre></blockquote></p>
1292
1293 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
1294 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
1295 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
1296 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
1297 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
1298 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
1299 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
1300 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
1301 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
1302 mount options.</p>
1303
1304 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
1305 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
1306 But according to
1307 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
1308 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
1309 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
1310 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
1311 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
1312 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
1313
1314 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
1315 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
1316 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
1317 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
1318 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
1319
1320       </div>
1321       <div class="tags">
1322
1323
1324         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/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1325
1326
1327       </div>
1328     </div>
1329     <div class="padding"></div>
1330
1331     <div class="entry">
1332       <div class="title">
1333         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_does_it_feel_to_be_wiretapped__when_you_should_be_doing_the_wiretapping___.html">How does it feel to be wiretapped, when you should be doing the wiretapping...</a>
1334       </div>
1335       <div class="date">
1336          8th March 2017
1337       </div>
1338       <div class="body">
1339         <p>So the new president in the United States of America claim to be
1340 surprised to discover that he was wiretapped during the election
1341 before he was elected president.  He even claim this must be illegal.
1342 Well, doh, if it is one thing the confirmations from Snowden
1343 documented, it is that the entire population in USA is wiretapped, one
1344 way or another.  Of course the president candidates were wiretapped,
1345 alongside the senators, judges and the rest of the people in USA.</p>
1346
1347 <p>Next, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ask the Department of
1348 Justice to go public rejecting the claims that Donald Trump was
1349 wiretapped illegally.  I fail to see the relevance, given that I am
1350 sure the surveillance industry in USA believe they have all the legal
1351 backing they need to conduct mass surveillance on the entire
1352 world.</p>
1353
1354 <p>There is even the director of the FBI stating that he never saw an
1355 order requesting wiretapping of Donald Trump.  That is not very
1356 surprising, given how the FISA court work, with all its activity being
1357 secret.  Perhaps he only heard about it?</p>
1358
1359 <p>What I find most sad in this story is how Norwegian journalists
1360 present it.  In a news reports the other day in the radio from the
1361 Norwegian National broadcasting Company (NRK), I heard the journalist
1362 claim that 'the FBI denies any wiretapping', while the reality is that
1363 'the FBI denies any illegal wiretapping'.  There is a fundamental and
1364 important difference, and it make me sad that the journalists are
1365 unable to grasp it.</p>
1366
1367 <p><strong>Update 2017-03-13:</strong> Look like
1368 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/03/13/rand-paul-is-right-nsa-routinely-monitors-americans-communications-without-warrants/">The
1369 Intercept report that US Senator Rand Paul confirm what I state above</a>.</p>
1370
1371       </div>
1372       <div class="tags">
1373
1374
1375         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1376
1377
1378       </div>
1379     </div>
1380     <div class="padding"></div>
1381
1382     <div class="entry">
1383       <div class="title">
1384         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</a>
1385       </div>
1386       <div class="date">
1387          3rd March 2017
1388       </div>
1389       <div class="body">
1390         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
1391 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
1392 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
1393 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
1394 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
1395 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
1396 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
1397 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
1398 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
1399
1400 <p><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
1401
1402 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
1403 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
1404 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
1405 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
1406 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
1407 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
1408 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
1409 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
1410
1411       </div>
1412       <div class="tags">
1413
1414
1415         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1416
1417
1418       </div>
1419     </div>
1420     <div class="padding"></div>
1421
1422     <div class="entry">
1423       <div class="title">
1424         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
1425       </div>
1426       <div class="date">
1427          1st March 2017
1428       </div>
1429       <div class="body">
1430         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
1431 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
1432 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
1433 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
1434 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
1435 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
1436 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
1437 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
1438 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
1439 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
1440 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1441
1442 <blockquote><pre>
1443 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1444   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1445   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1446      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1447      sleep 1; \
1448   done
1449 300
1450 0+1 oppføringer inn
1451 0+1 oppføringer ut
1452 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
1453 4
1454 8
1455 12
1456 17
1457 21
1458 %
1459 </pre></blockquote>
1460
1461 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
1462 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
1463 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
1464 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1465
1466 <blockquote><pre>
1467 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1468   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1469   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1470      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1471      sleep 1; \
1472   done
1473 1079
1474 0+1 oppføringer inn
1475 0+1 oppføringer ut
1476 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
1477 433
1478 1028
1479 1031
1480 1035
1481 1038
1482 %
1483 </pre></blockquote>
1484
1485 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
1486 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
1487
1488 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
1489 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
1490 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
1491 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
1492 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
1493 post.</p>
1494
1495       </div>
1496       <div class="tags">
1497
1498
1499         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>.
1500
1501
1502       </div>
1503     </div>
1504     <div class="padding"></div>
1505
1506     <div class="entry">
1507       <div class="title">
1508         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detect_OOXML_files_with_undefined_behaviour_.html">Detect OOXML files with undefined behaviour?</a>
1509       </div>
1510       <div class="date">
1511         21st February 2017
1512       </div>
1513       <div class="body">
1514         <p>I just noticed
1515 <a href="http://www.arkivrad.no/aktuelt/riksarkivarens-forskrift-pa-horing">the
1516 new Norwegian proposal for archiving rules in the goverment</a> list
1517 <a href="http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm">ECMA-376</a>
1518 / ISO/IEC 29500 (aka OOXML) as valid formats to put in long term
1519 storage.  Luckily such files will only be accepted based on
1520 pre-approval from the National Archive.  Allowing OOXML files to be
1521 used for long term storage might seem like a good idea as long as we
1522 forget that there are plenty of ways for a "valid" OOXML document to
1523 have content with no defined interpretation in the standard, which
1524 lead to a question and an idea.</p>
1525
1526 <p>Is there any tool to detect if a OOXML document depend on such
1527 undefined behaviour?  It would be useful for the National Archive (and
1528 anyone else interested in verifying that a document is well defined)
1529 to have such tool available when considering to approve the use of
1530 OOXML.  I'm aware of the
1531 <a href="https://github.com/arlm/officeotron/">officeotron OOXML
1532 validator</a>, but do not know how complete it is nor if it will
1533 report use of undefined behaviour.  Are there other similar tools
1534 available?  Please send me an email if you know of any such tool.</p>
1535
1536       </div>
1537       <div class="tags">
1538
1539
1540         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1541
1542
1543       </div>
1544     </div>
1545     <div class="padding"></div>
1546
1547     <div class="entry">
1548       <div class="title">
1549         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ruling_ignored_our_objections_to_the_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no___domstolkontroll_.html">Ruling ignored our objections to the seizure of popcorn-time.no (#domstolkontroll)</a>
1550       </div>
1551       <div class="date">
1552         13th February 2017
1553       </div>
1554       <div class="body">
1555         <p>A few days ago, we received the ruling from
1556 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_day_in_court_challenging_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no_for__domstolkontroll.html">my
1557 day in court</a>.  The case in question is a challenge of the seizure
1558 of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no.  The ruling simply did not mention
1559 most of our arguments, and seemed to take everything ØKOKRIM said at
1560 face value, ignoring our demonstration and explanations.  But it is
1561 hard to tell for sure, as we still have not seen most of the documents
1562 in the case and thus were unprepared and unable to contradict several
1563 of the claims made in court by the opposition.  We are considering an
1564 appeal, but it is partly a question of funding, as it is costing us
1565 quite a bit to pay for our lawyer.  If you want to help, please
1566 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">donate to the
1567 NUUG defense fund</a>.</p>
1568
1569 <p>The details of the case, as far as we know it, is available in
1570 Norwegian from
1571 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/tags/dns-domenebeslag/">the NUUG
1572 blog</a>.  This also include
1573 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/Avslag_etter_rettslig_h_ring_om_DNS_beslaget___vurderer_veien_videre.shtml">the
1574 ruling itself</a>.</p>
1575
1576       </div>
1577       <div class="tags">
1578
1579
1580         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1581
1582
1583       </div>
1584     </div>
1585     <div class="padding"></div>
1586
1587     <div class="entry">
1588       <div class="title">
1589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_day_in_court_challenging_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no_for__domstolkontroll.html">A day in court challenging seizure of popcorn-time.no for #domstolkontroll</a>
1590       </div>
1591       <div class="date">
1592          3rd February 2017
1593       </div>
1594       <div class="body">
1595         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-02-01-popcorn-time-in-court.jpeg"></p>
1596
1597 <p>On Wednesday, I spent the entire day in court in Follo Tingrett
1598 representing <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the member association
1599 NUUG</a>, alongside <a href="https://www.efn.no/">the member
1600 association EFN</a> and <a href="http://www.imc.no">the DNS registrar
1601 IMC</a>, challenging the seizure of the DNS name popcorn-time.no.  It
1602 was interesting to sit in a court of law for the first time in my
1603 life.  Our team can be seen in the picture above: attorney Ola
1604 Tellesbø, EFN board member Tom Fredrik Blenning, IMC CEO Morten Emil
1605 Eriksen and NUUG board member Petter Reinholdtsen.</p>
1606
1607 <p><a href="http://www.domstol.no/no/Enkelt-domstol/follo-tingrett/Nar-gar-rettssaken/Beramming/?cid=AAAA1701301512081262234UJFBVEZZZZZEJBAvtale">The
1608 case at hand</a> is that the Norwegian National Authority for
1609 Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (aka
1610 Økokrim) decided on their own, to seize a DNS domain early last
1611 year, without following
1612 <a href="https://www.norid.no/no/regelverk/navnepolitikk/#link12">the
1613 official policy of the Norwegian DNS authority</a> which require a
1614 court decision.  The web site in question was a site covering Popcorn
1615 Time.  And Popcorn Time is the name of a technology with both legal
1616 and illegal applications.  Popcorn Time is a client combining
1617 searching a Bittorrent directory available on the Internet with
1618 downloading/distribute content via Bittorrent and playing the
1619 downloaded content on screen.  It can be used illegally if it is used
1620 to distribute content against the will of the right holder, but it can
1621 also be used legally to play a lot of content, for example the
1622 millions of movies
1623 <a href="https://archive.org/details/movies">available from the
1624 Internet Archive</a> or the collection
1625 <a href="http://vodo.net/films/">available from Vodo</a>.  We created
1626 <a href="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:86c1802af5a667ca56d3918aecb7d3c0f7173084&dn=PresentasjonFolloTingrett.mov&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fpublic.popcorn-tracker.org%3A6969%2Fannounce">a
1627 video demonstrating legally use of Popcorn Time</a> and played it in
1628 Court.  It can of course be downloaded using Bittorrent.</p>
1629
1630 <p>I did not quite know what to expect from a day in court.  The
1631 government held on to their version of the story and we held on to
1632 ours, and I hope the judge is able to make sense of it all.  We will
1633 know in two weeks time.  Unfortunately I do not have high hopes, as
1634 the Government have the upper hand here with more knowledge about the
1635 case, better training in handling criminal law and in general higher
1636 standing in the courts than fairly unknown DNS registrar and member
1637 associations.  It is expensive to be right also in Norway.  So far the
1638 case have cost more than NOK 70 000,-.  To help fund the case, NUUG
1639 and EFN have asked for donations, and managed to collect around NOK 25
1640 000,- so far.  Given the presentation from the Government, I expect
1641 the government to appeal if the case go our way.  And if the case do
1642 not go our way, I hope we have enough funding to appeal.</p>
1643
1644 <p>From the other side came two people from Økokrim.  On the benches,
1645 appearing to be part of the group from the government were two people
1646 from the Simonsen Vogt Wiik lawyer office, and three others I am not
1647 quite sure who was.  Økokrim had proposed to present two witnesses
1648 from The Motion Picture Association, but this was rejected because
1649 they did not speak Norwegian and it was a bit late to bring in a
1650 translator, but perhaps the two from MPA were present anyway.  All
1651 seven appeared to know each other.  Good to see the case is take
1652 seriously.</p>
1653
1654 <p>If you, like me, believe the courts should be involved before a DNS
1655 domain is hijacked by the government, or you believe the Popcorn Time
1656 technology have a lot of useful and legal applications, I suggest you
1657 too <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">donate to
1658 the NUUG defense fund</a>.  Both Bitcoin and bank transfer are
1659 available. If NUUG get more than we need for the legal action (very
1660 unlikely), the rest will be spend promoting free software, open
1661 standards and unix-like operating systems in Norway, so no matter what
1662 happens the money will be put to good use.</p>
1663
1664 <p>If you want to lean more about the case, I recommend you check out
1665 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/tags/dns-domenebeslag/">the blog
1666 posts from NUUG covering the case</a>.  They cover the legal arguments
1667 on both sides.</p>
1668
1669       </div>
1670       <div class="tags">
1671
1672
1673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1674
1675
1676       </div>
1677     </div>
1678     <div class="padding"></div>
1679
1680     <div class="entry">
1681       <div class="title">
1682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
1683       </div>
1684       <div class="date">
1685          9th January 2017
1686       </div>
1687       <div class="body">
1688         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
1689 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
1690 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
1691 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
1692 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
1693 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
1694 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
1695 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
1696 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
1697 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
1698 this:
1699
1700 <p><pre>
1701 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1702  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
1703  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
1704  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
1705  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
1706  5  he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48)  3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.857 ms
1707  6  ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39)  0.662 ms  0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23)  0.622 ms
1708  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
1709  8  * * *
1710  9  * * *
1711 [...]
1712 </pre></p>
1713
1714 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
1715 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
1716 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
1717 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
1718 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
1719 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
1720 traceroute request.</p>
1721
1722 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
1723 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
1724 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
1725 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
1726 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
1727
1728 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
1729 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
1730 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
1731 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
1732 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
1733 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
1734 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
1735 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
1736 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
1737
1738 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
1739 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
1740 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
1741 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
1742 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
1743 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
1744 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
1745 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
1746 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
1747 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
1748 render the page (in HAR format using
1749 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
1750 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
1751 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
1752 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
1753 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
1754
1755 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
1756 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
1757
1758 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
1759 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
1760 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
1761 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
1762 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
1763 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
1764 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
1765 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
1766 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
1767 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
1768 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
1769 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
1770 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
1771 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
1772
1773 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
1774 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1775
1776 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
1777 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
1778 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
1779 question.
1780 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
1781 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
1782 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
1783 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
1784 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
1785 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
1786 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
1787
1788 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
1789 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1790
1791 <p>In the process, I came across the
1792 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
1793 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
1794 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
1795 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
1796 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
1797 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
1798 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
1799 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
1800 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
1801 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
1802 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
1803 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
1804 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
1805 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
1806
1807 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
1808 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
1809
1810 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
1811 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
1812 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
1813 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
1814
1815 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
1816 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
1817 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
1818 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
1819 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
1820 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
1821 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
1822
1823 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
1824 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
1825 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
1826 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
1827 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
1828 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
1829 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
1830
1831 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
1832 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
1833 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
1834 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
1835
1836 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1837 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1838 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1839
1840       </div>
1841       <div class="tags">
1842
1843
1844         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/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</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>.
1845
1846
1847       </div>
1848     </div>
1849     <div class="padding"></div>
1850
1851     <div class="entry">
1852       <div class="title">
1853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Introducing_ical_archiver_to_split_out_old_iCalendar_entries.html">Introducing ical-archiver to split out old iCalendar entries</a>
1854       </div>
1855       <div class="date">
1856          4th January 2017
1857       </div>
1858       <div class="body">
1859         <p>Do you have a large <a href="https://icalendar.org/">iCalendar</a>
1860 file with lots of old entries, and would like to archive them to save
1861 space and resources?  At least those of us using KOrganizer know that
1862 turning on and off an event set become slower and slower the more
1863 entries are in the set.  While working on migrating our calendars to a
1864 <a href="http://radicale.org/">Radicale CalDAV server</a> on our
1865 <a href="https://freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox server</a/>, my
1866 loved one wondered if I could find a way to split up the calendar file
1867 she had in KOrganizer, and I set out to write a tool.  I spent a few
1868 days writing and polishing the system, and it is now ready for general
1869 consumption.  The
1870 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/ical-archiver">code for
1871 ical-archiver</a> is publicly available from a git repository on
1872 github.  The system is written in Python and depend on
1873 <a href="http://eventable.github.io/vobject/">the vobject Python
1874 module</a>.</p>
1875
1876 <p>To use it, locate the iCalendar file you want to operate on and
1877 give it as an argument to the ical-archiver script.  This will
1878 generate a set of new files, one file per component type per year for
1879 all components expiring more than two years in the past.  The vevent,
1880 vtodo and vjournal entries are handled by the script.  The remaining
1881 entries are stored in a 'remaining' file.</p>
1882
1883 <p>This is what a test run can look like:
1884
1885 <p><pre>
1886 % ical-archiver t/2004-2016.ics
1887 Found 3612 vevents
1888 Found 6 vtodos
1889 Found 2 vjournals
1890 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2004.ics
1891 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2005.ics
1892 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2006.ics
1893 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2007.ics
1894 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2008.ics
1895 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2009.ics
1896 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2010.ics
1897 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2011.ics
1898 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2012.ics
1899 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2013.ics
1900 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2014.ics
1901 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vjournal-2007.ics
1902 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vjournal-2011.ics
1903 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vtodo-2012.ics
1904 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-remaining.ics
1905 %
1906 </pre></p>
1907
1908 <p>As you can see, the original file is untouched and new files are
1909 written with names derived from the original file.  If you are happy
1910 with their content, the *-remaining.ics file can replace the original
1911 the the others can be archived or imported as historical calendar
1912 collections.</p>
1913
1914 <p>The script should probably be improved a bit.  The error handling
1915 when discovering broken entries is not good, and I am not sure yet if
1916 it make sense to split different entry types into separate files or
1917 not.  The program is thus likely to change.  If you find it
1918 interesting, please get in touch. :)</p>
1919
1920 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1921 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1922 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1923
1924       </div>
1925       <div class="tags">
1926
1927
1928         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1929
1930
1931       </div>
1932     </div>
1933     <div class="padding"></div>
1934
1935     <div class="entry">
1936       <div class="title">
1937         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
1938       </div>
1939       <div class="date">
1940         23rd December 2016
1941       </div>
1942       <div class="body">
1943         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
1944 readers probably know, I have been working on the
1945 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
1946 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
1947 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
1948 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
1949 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
1950 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
1951 metadata format.  And today,
1952 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
1953 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
1954 ie using fnmatch():</p>
1955
1956 <p><pre>
1957 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
1958   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
1959 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
1960 Name: pymissile
1961 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
1962 Package: pymissile
1963 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
1964 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
1965 Name: libnxt
1966 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
1967 Package: libnxt
1968 ---
1969 Identifier: t2n [generic]
1970 Name: t2n
1971 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
1972 Package: t2n
1973 ---
1974 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
1975 Name: python-nxt
1976 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
1977 Package: python-nxt
1978 ---
1979 Identifier: nbc [generic]
1980 Name: nbc
1981 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
1982 Package: nbc
1983 %
1984 </pre></p>
1985
1986 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
1987 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
1988
1989 <p><pre>
1990 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
1991 pymissile
1992 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
1993 libnxt
1994 nbc
1995 python-nxt
1996 t2n
1997 %
1998 </pre></p>
1999
2000 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
2001 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
2002
2003 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
2004 make the most of the hardware they have, please
2005 help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
2006 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
2007 documented in the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such
2008 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
2009 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
2010 mostly related to USB dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware
2011 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
2012 part of my involvement in
2013 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
2014 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
2015 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
2016 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
2017 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
2018 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
2019 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
2020 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
2021 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
2022
2023 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2024 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2025 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2026
2027       </div>
2028       <div class="tags">
2029
2030
2031         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>.
2032
2033
2034       </div>
2035     </div>
2036     <div class="padding"></div>
2037
2038     <div class="entry">
2039       <div class="title">
2040         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
2041       </div>
2042       <div class="date">
2043         20th December 2016
2044       </div>
2045       <div class="body">
2046         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2047 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
2048 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
2049 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
2050 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
2051 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
2052 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
2053 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
2054 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
2055 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
2056
2057 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
2058
2059 <p><pre>
2060 % isenkram-lookup
2061 bluez
2062 cheese
2063 ethtool
2064 fprintd
2065 fprintd-demo
2066 gkrellm-thinkbat
2067 hdapsd
2068 libpam-fprintd
2069 pidgin-blinklight
2070 thinkfan
2071 tlp
2072 tp-smapi-dkms
2073 tp-smapi-source
2074 tpb
2075 %
2076 </pre></p>
2077
2078 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
2079 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
2080 I have all the firmware my machine need:
2081
2082 <p><pre>
2083 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2084 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
2085 %
2086 </pre></p>
2087
2088 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
2089 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
2090 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
2091 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
2092 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
2093 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
2094 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
2095 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
2096
2097 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
2098 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
2099 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
2100
2101 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
2102 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
2103 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
2104 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
2105 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
2106 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
2107 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
2108 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
2109 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
2110 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
2111 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
2112 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
2113 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
2114 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
2115 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
2116 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
2117 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
2118 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
2119 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
2120 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
2121 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
2122 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
2123 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
2124 zd1211-firmware</p>
2125
2126 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
2127 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
2128 maintainer to
2129 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
2130 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
2131 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
2132 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
2133
2134 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
2135 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
2136 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
2137 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
2138 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
2139
2140       </div>
2141       <div class="tags">
2142
2143
2144         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>.
2145
2146
2147       </div>
2148     </div>
2149     <div class="padding"></div>
2150
2151     <div class="entry">
2152       <div class="title">
2153         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
2154       </div>
2155       <div class="date">
2156         11th December 2016
2157       </div>
2158       <div class="body">
2159         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
2160
2161 <p>In my early years, I played
2162 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
2163 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
2164 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
2165 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
2166 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
2167 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
2168 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
2169 small.</p>
2170
2171 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
2172 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
2173 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
2174 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
2175 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
2176 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
2177 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
2178 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
2179 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
2180
2181 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
2182 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
2183 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
2184 advantages of the
2185 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
2186 where information about each planet is easily available with common
2187 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
2188 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
2189 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
2190 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
2191 after less then a week.</p>
2192
2193 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
2194 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
2195 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
2196
2197 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2198 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2199 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2200
2201       </div>
2202       <div class="tags">
2203
2204
2205         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2206
2207
2208       </div>
2209     </div>
2210     <div class="padding"></div>
2211
2212     <div class="entry">
2213       <div class="title">
2214         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
2215       </div>
2216       <div class="date">
2217         25th November 2016
2218       </div>
2219       <div class="body">
2220         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
2221 installation system, observing how using
2222 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
2223 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
2224 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
2225 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
2226 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
2227 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
2228 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
2229 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
2230 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
2231 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
2232 up the process make perfect sense.
2233
2234 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
2235 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
2236 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
2237 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
2238 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
2239 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
2240 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
2241 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
2242 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
2243 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
2244
2245 <blockquote><pre>
2246 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
2247 </pre></blockquote>
2248
2249 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
2250 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
2251 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
2252 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
2253 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
2254 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
2255 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
2256 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
2257 tested its impact.</p>
2258
2259
2260       </div>
2261       <div class="tags">
2262
2263
2264         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>.
2265
2266
2267       </div>
2268     </div>
2269     <div class="padding"></div>
2270
2271     <div class="entry">
2272       <div class="title">
2273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
2274       </div>
2275       <div class="date">
2276         13th November 2016
2277       </div>
2278       <div class="body">
2279         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
2280 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
2281 multi-threaded program, finally
2282 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
2283 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
2284 months since
2285 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
2286 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
2287 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
2288 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
2289 JavaScript libraries.</p>
2290
2291 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
2292
2293 <p><blockquote>
2294 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
2295 </blockquote></p>
2296
2297 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
2298 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
2299 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
2300 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
2301 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
2302
2303 <p><blockquote>
2304 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
2305 </blockquote></p>
2306
2307 <p>See the project home page and the
2308 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
2309 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
2310 working.</p>
2311
2312       </div>
2313       <div class="tags">
2314
2315
2316         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>.
2317
2318
2319       </div>
2320     </div>
2321     <div class="padding"></div>
2322
2323     <div class="entry">
2324       <div class="title">
2325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_talk_with_your_loved_ones_in_private.html">How to talk with your loved ones in private</a>
2326       </div>
2327       <div class="date">
2328          7th November 2016
2329       </div>
2330       <div class="body">
2331         <p>A few days ago I ran a very biased and informal survey to get an
2332 idea about what options are being used to communicate with end to end
2333 encryption with friends and family.  I explicitly asked people not to
2334 list options only used in a work setting.  The background is the
2335 uneasy feeling I get when using Signal, a feeling shared by others as
2336 a blog post from Sander Venima about
2337 <a href="https://sandervenema.ch/2016/11/why-i-wont-recommend-signal-anymore/">why
2338 he do not recommend Signal anymore</a> (with
2339 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410">feedback from
2340 the Signal author available from ycombinator</a>).  I wanted an
2341 overview of the options being used, and hope to include those options
2342 in a less biased survey later on.  So far I have not taken the time to
2343 look into the individual proposed systems.  They range from text
2344 sharing web pages, via file sharing and email to instant messaging,
2345 VOIP and video conferencing.  For those considering which system to
2346 use, it is also useful to have a look at
2347 <a href="https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard">the EFF Secure
2348 messaging scorecard</a> which is slightly out of date but still
2349 provide valuable information.</p>
2350
2351 <p>So, on to the list.  There were some used by many, some used by a
2352 few, some rarely used ones and a few mentioned but without anyone
2353 claiming to use them.  Notice the grouping is in reality quite random
2354 given the biased self selected set of participants.  First the ones
2355 used by many:</p>
2356
2357 <ul>
2358
2359 <li><a href="https://whispersystems.org/">Signal</a></li>
2360 <li>Email w/<a href="http://openpgp.org/">OpenPGP</a> (Enigmail, GPGSuite,etc)</li>
2361 <li><a href="https://www.whatsapp.com/">Whatsapp</a></li>
2362 <li>IRC w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
2363 <li>XMPP w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
2364
2365 </ul>
2366
2367 <p>Then the ones used by a few.</p>
2368
2369 <ul>
2370
2371 <li><a href="https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page">Mumble</a></li>
2372 <li>iMessage (included in iOS from Apple)</li>
2373 <li><a href="https://telegram.org/">Telegram</a></li>
2374 <li><a href="https://jitsi.org/">Jitsi</a></li>
2375 <li><a href="https://keybase.io/download">Keybase file</a></li>
2376
2377 </ul>
2378
2379 <p>Then the ones used by even fewer people</p>
2380
2381 <ul>
2382
2383 <li><a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a></li>
2384 <li><a href="https://bitmessage.org/">Bitmessage</a></li>
2385 <li><a href="https://wire.com/">Wire</a></li>
2386 <li>VoIP w/<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP">ZRTP</a> or controlled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Protocol">SRTP</a> (e.g using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSipSimple">CSipSimple</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linphone">Linphone</a>)</li>
2387 <li><a href="https://matrix.org/">Matrix</a></li>
2388 <li><a href="https://kontalk.org/">Kontalk</a></li>
2389 <li><a href="https://0bin.net/">0bin</a> (encrypted pastebin)</li>
2390 <li><a href="https://appear.in">Appear.in</a></li>
2391 <li><a href="https://riot.im/">riot</a></li>
2392 <li><a href="https://www.wickr.com/">Wickr Me</a></li>
2393
2394 </ul>
2395
2396 <p>And finally the ones mentioned by not marked as used by
2397 anyone. This might be a mistake, perhaps the person adding the entry
2398 forgot to flag it as used?</p>
2399
2400 <ul>
2401
2402 <li>Email w/Certificates <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME">S/MIME</a></li>
2403 <li><a href="https://www.crypho.com/">Crypho</a></li>
2404 <li><a href="https://cryptpad.fr/">CryptPad</a></li>
2405 <li><a href="https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet">ricochet</a></li>
2406
2407 </ul>
2408
2409 <p>Given the network effect it seem obvious to me that we as a society
2410 have been divided and conquered by those interested in keeping
2411 encrypted and secure communication away from the masses.  The
2412 finishing remarks <a href="https://vimeo.com/97505679">from Aral Balkan
2413 in his talk "Free is a lie"</a> about the usability of free software
2414 really come into effect when you want to communicate in private with
2415 your friends and family.  We can not expect them to allow the
2416 usability of communication tool to block their ability to talk to
2417 their loved ones.</p>
2418
2419 <p>Note for example the option IRC w/OTR.  Most IRC clients do not
2420 have OTR support, so in most cases OTR would not be an option, even if
2421 you wanted to.  In my personal experience, about 1 in 20 I talk to
2422 have a IRC client with OTR.  For private communication to really be
2423 available, most people to talk to must have the option in their
2424 currently used client.  I can not simply ask my family to install an
2425 IRC client.  I need to guide them through a technical multi-step
2426 process of adding extensions to the client to get them going.  This is
2427 a non-starter for most.</p>
2428
2429 <p>I would like to be able to do video phone calls, audio phone calls,
2430 exchange instant messages and share files with my loved ones, without
2431 being forced to share with people I do not know.  I do not want to
2432 share the content of the conversations, and I do not want to share who
2433 I communicate with or the fact that I communicate with someone.
2434 Without all these factors in place, my private life is being more or
2435 less invaded.</p>
2436
2437       </div>
2438       <div class="tags">
2439
2440
2441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2442
2443
2444       </div>
2445     </div>
2446     <div class="padding"></div>
2447
2448     <div class="entry">
2449       <div class="title">
2450         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
2451       </div>
2452       <div class="date">
2453          4th November 2016
2454       </div>
2455       <div class="body">
2456         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
2457 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
2458 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
2459 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
2460 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
2461 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
2462 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
2463 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
2464 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
2465 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
2466 and had
2467 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
2468 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
2469 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
2470 loved ones. :)</p>
2471
2472 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
2473 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
2474 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
2475 building
2476 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
2477 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
2478 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
2479 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
2480 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
2481 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
2482 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
2483 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
2484
2485 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
2486
2487 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
2488 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
2489 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
2490 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
2491 the battery status run low:</p>
2492
2493 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
2494    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
2495 </video></p>
2496
2497 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
2498 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
2499
2500 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
2501 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
2502 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
2503 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
2504 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
2505 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
2506 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
2507 should.</p>
2508
2509       </div>
2510       <div class="tags">
2511
2512
2513         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>.
2514
2515
2516       </div>
2517     </div>
2518     <div class="padding"></div>
2519
2520     <div class="entry">
2521       <div class="title">
2522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
2523       </div>
2524       <div class="date">
2525         10th October 2016
2526       </div>
2527       <div class="body">
2528         <p>In July
2529 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
2530 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
2531 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
2532 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
2533
2534 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
2535 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
2536 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
2537 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
2538 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
2539 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
2540 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
2541 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
2542 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
2543 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
2544 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
2545 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
2546 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
2547 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
2548 time.</p>
2549
2550 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
2551 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
2552 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
2553 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
2554 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
2555 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
2556 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
2557
2558 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
2559 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
2560 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
2561 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
2562 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
2563 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
2564 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
2565 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
2566 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
2567 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
2568
2569 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
2570
2571 <ol>
2572
2573 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
2574 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
2575 know, so you need to install it.
2576
2577 <pre>
2578 apt install git tor chromium
2579 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
2580 </pre></li>
2581
2582 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
2583 block below.</li>
2584
2585 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
2586 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
2587
2588 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
2589 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
2590 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
2591 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
2592 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
2593
2594 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
2595 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
2596 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
2597 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
2598 a associated contact database.</li>
2599
2600 </ol>
2601
2602 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
2603 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
2604 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
2605 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
2606 example
2607 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
2608 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
2609 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
2610 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
2611 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
2612 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
2613 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
2614 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
2615 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
2616 working on Debian Stable.</p>
2617
2618 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
2619 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
2620 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
2621
2622 <pre>
2623 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
2624 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
2625 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
2626 --- a/js/background.js
2627 +++ b/js/background.js
2628 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
2629          });
2630      });
2631
2632 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
2633 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
2634      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
2635 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
2636 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
2637      var messageReceiver;
2638      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
2639          if (messageReceiver) {
2640 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
2641 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
2642 --- a/js/expire.js
2643 +++ b/js/expire.js
2644 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
2645  ;(function() {
2646      'use strict';
2647 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
2648 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
2649
2650      window.extension = window.extension || {};
2651
2652 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
2653 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
2654 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
2655 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
2656 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
2657              return {
2658                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
2659                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
2660 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
2661 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
2662 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
2663              };
2664          },
2665          clearQR: function() {
2666 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
2667 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
2668 --- a/options.html
2669 +++ b/options.html
2670 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
2671          &lt;div class='nav'>
2672            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
2673            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
2674 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
2675 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
2676 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
2677 +
2678 +         &lt;/div>
2679            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
2680            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
2681            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
2682 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
2683 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
2684 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
2685 +#!/bin/sh
2686 +set -e
2687 +cd $(dirname $0)
2688 +mkdir -p userdata
2689 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
2690 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
2691 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
2692 +fi
2693 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
2694 +exec chromium \
2695 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
2696 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
2697 EOF
2698 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
2699 </pre>
2700
2701 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2702 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2703 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2704
2705       </div>
2706       <div class="tags">
2707
2708
2709         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2710
2711
2712       </div>
2713     </div>
2714     <div class="padding"></div>
2715
2716     <div class="entry">
2717       <div class="title">
2718         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
2719       </div>
2720       <div class="date">
2721          7th October 2016
2722       </div>
2723       <div class="body">
2724         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2725 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
2726 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
2727 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
2728 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
2729 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
2730 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
2731 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
2732 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
2733 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
2734 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
2735 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
2736 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
2737
2738 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
2739 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
2740 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
2741 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
2742 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
2743 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
2744
2745 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
2746 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
2747 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
2748 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
2749 identifiers.</p>
2750
2751 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
2752 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
2753 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
2754 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
2755 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
2756 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
2757 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
2758 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
2759 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
2760 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
2761 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
2762 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
2763 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
2764 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
2765
2766 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
2767 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
2768 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
2769 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
2770 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
2771 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
2772 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
2773
2774 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
2775 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
2776 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
2777 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
2778 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
2779 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
2780 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
2781 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
2782 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
2783 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
2784 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
2785 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
2786 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
2787 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
2788 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
2789 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
2790 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
2791
2792 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
2793 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
2794 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
2795 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
2796 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
2797 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
2798 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
2799
2800 <p><pre>
2801 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
2802     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
2803 </pre></p>
2804
2805 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
2806 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
2807 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
2808 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
2809 to detect this?</p>
2810
2811 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
2812 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
2813 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
2814 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
2815 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
2816 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
2817 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
2818 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
2819 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
2820 directly if no such class exist.</p>
2821
2822 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2823 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2824 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2825
2826 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
2827 please join us on our IRC channel
2828 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
2829 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
2830 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
2831 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
2832
2833 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2834 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2835 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2836
2837       </div>
2838       <div class="tags">
2839
2840
2841         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>.
2842
2843
2844       </div>
2845     </div>
2846     <div class="padding"></div>
2847
2848     <div class="entry">
2849       <div class="title">
2850         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
2851       </div>
2852       <div class="date">
2853         30th August 2016
2854       </div>
2855       <div class="body">
2856         <p>In April we
2857 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
2858 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
2859 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
2860 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
2861 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
2862 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
2863 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
2864 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
2865 contributing using
2866 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2867 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
2868 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2869 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
2870 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2871 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
2872 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
2873
2874 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
2875 electronic form.</p>
2876
2877       </div>
2878       <div class="tags">
2879
2880
2881         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2882
2883
2884       </div>
2885     </div>
2886     <div class="padding"></div>
2887
2888     <div class="entry">
2889       <div class="title">
2890         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
2891       </div>
2892       <div class="date">
2893         11th August 2016
2894       </div>
2895       <div class="body">
2896         <p>This summer, I read a great article
2897 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
2898 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
2899 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
2900 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
2901 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
2902 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
2903 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
2904 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
2905 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
2906 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
2907 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
2908 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
2909
2910 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
2911 get the system into Debian.  I
2912 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
2913 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
2914 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
2915 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
2916 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
2917 profiling information included in the source package.
2918 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
2919
2920 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
2921 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
2922
2923 <p><blockquote><pre>
2924 coz run --- program-to-run
2925 </pre></blockquote></p>
2926
2927 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
2928 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
2929 most, use a web browser and either point it to
2930 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
2931 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
2932 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
2933 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
2934 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
2935 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
2936 targeted experiments.</p>
2937
2938 <p>A video published by ACM
2939 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
2940 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
2941 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
2942 titled
2943 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
2944 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
2945
2946 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
2947 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
2948 because it uses a
2949 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
2950 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
2951 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
2952 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
2953
2954 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
2955 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
2956 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
2957 C++ libraries.</p>
2958
2959       </div>
2960       <div class="tags">
2961
2962
2963         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2964
2965
2966       </div>
2967     </div>
2968     <div class="padding"></div>
2969
2970     <div class="entry">
2971       <div class="title">
2972         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sales_number_for_the_Free_Culture_translation__first_half_of_2016.html">Sales number for the Free Culture translation, first half of 2016</a>
2973       </div>
2974       <div class="date">
2975          5th August 2016
2976       </div>
2977       <div class="body">
2978         <p>As my regular readers probably remember, the last year I published
2979 a French and Norwegian translation of the classic
2980 <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book</a> by the
2981 founder of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig.  A bit less
2982 known is the fact that due to the way I created the translations,
2983 using docbook and po4a, I also recreated the English original.  And
2984 because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I published it
2985 too.  The revenue from the books are sent to the Creative Commons
2986 Corporation.  In other words, I do not earn any money from this
2987 project, I just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available
2988 for a wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative
2989 Commons is needed.</p>
2990
2991 <p>Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at
2992 Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping.  Much to
2993 my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the
2994 French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been
2995 available in English since it was first published.  In total, 24 paper
2996 books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:</p>
2997
2998 <table border="0">
2999 <tr><th>Title / language</th><th>Quantity</th></tr>
3000 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Culture Libre / French</a></td><td align="right">3</td></tr>
3001 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Fri kultur / Norwegian</a></td><td align="right">7</td></tr>
3002 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">Free Culture / English</a></td><td align="right">14</td></tr>
3003 </table>
3004
3005 <p>The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book
3006 stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble.  Most revenue, around $10 per
3007 book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold
3008 directly by Lulu.com.  The other channels give less revenue.  The
3009 summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold via the Amazon channel, 10
3010 via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly by Lulu.  And Lulu.com tells
3011 me that the revenue sent so far this year is USD $101.42.  No idea
3012 what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do not know if that is a
3013 good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or not.  But it make me
3014 happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope they enjoy reading it
3015 as much as I did.</p>
3016
3017 <p>The ebook edition is available for free from
3018 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Github</a>.</p>
3019
3020 <p>If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native
3021 language, I would be happy to help make it happen.  Please get in
3022 touch.</p>
3023
3024       </div>
3025       <div class="tags">
3026
3027
3028         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3029
3030
3031       </div>
3032     </div>
3033     <div class="padding"></div>
3034
3035     <div class="entry">
3036       <div class="title">
3037         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Techno_TV_broadcasting_live_across_Norway_and_the_Internet___debconf16___nuug__on__frikanalen.html">Techno TV broadcasting live across Norway and the Internet (#debconf16, #nuug) on @frikanalen</a>
3038       </div>
3039       <div class="date">
3040          1st August 2016
3041       </div>
3042       <div class="body">
3043         <p>Did you know there is a TV channel broadcasting talks from DebConf
3044 16 across an entire country?  Or that there is a TV channel
3045 broadcasting talks by or about
3046 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625529/">Linus Torvalds</a>,
3047 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599/">Tor</a>,
3048 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/624019/">OpenID</A>,
3049 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625624/">Common Lisp</a>,
3050 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625446/">Civic Tech</a>,
3051 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625090/">EFF founder John Barlow</a>,
3052 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625432/">how to make 3D
3053 printer electronics</a> and many more fascinating topics?  It works
3054 using only free software (all of it
3055 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from Github</a>), and
3056 is administrated using a web browser and a web API.</p>
3057
3058 <p>The TV channel is the Norwegian open channel
3059 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, and I am involved
3060 via <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG member association</a> in
3061 running and developing the software for the channel.  The channel is
3062 organised as a member organisation where its members can upload and
3063 broadcast what they want (think of it as Youtube for national
3064 broadcasting television).  Individuals can broadcast too.  The time
3065 slots are handled on a first come, first serve basis.  Because the
3066 channel have almost no viewers and very few active members, we can
3067 experiment with TV technology without too much flack when we make
3068 mistakes.  And thanks to the few active members, most of the slots on
3069 the schedule are free.  I see this as an opportunity to spread
3070 knowledge about technology and free software, and have a script I run
3071 regularly to fill up all the open slots the next few days with
3072 technology related video.  The end result is a channel I like to
3073 describe as Techno TV - filled with interesting talks and
3074 presentations.</p>
3075
3076 <p>It is available on channel 50 on the Norwegian national digital TV
3077 network (RiksTV).  It is also available as a multicast stream on
3078 Uninett.  And finally, it is available as
3079 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/">a WebM unicast stream</a> from
3080 Frikanalen and NUUG.  Check it out. :)</p>
3081
3082       </div>
3083       <div class="tags">
3084
3085
3086         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3087
3088
3089       </div>
3090     </div>
3091     <div class="padding"></div>
3092
3093     <div class="entry">
3094       <div class="title">
3095         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
3096       </div>
3097       <div class="date">
3098          7th July 2016
3099       </div>
3100       <div class="body">
3101         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
3102 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
3103 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
3104 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
3105 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
3106 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
3107 microphone The initial idea had been to just
3108 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
3109 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
3110 until a few days ago.</p>
3111
3112 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
3113 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
3114 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
3115 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
3116 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
3117 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
3118 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
3119
3120 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
3121 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
3122 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
3123 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
3124 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
3125 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
3126 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
3127 him.</p>
3128
3129 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
3130 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
3131 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
3132 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
3133 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
3134 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
3135 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
3136 devices it would work for.</p>
3137
3138 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
3139 followed some instructions
3140 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
3141 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
3142 machine with Debian testing:</p>
3143
3144 <p><pre>
3145 adb reboot-bootloader
3146 fastboot oem rebootRUU
3147 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
3148 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
3149 fastboot reboot
3150 </pre></p>
3151
3152 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
3153 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
3154 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
3155 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
3156 too.</p>
3157
3158 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
3159 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
3160 like this:</p>
3161
3162 <p><pre>
3163 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
3164 </pre>
3165
3166 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
3167 this:</p>
3168
3169 <p><pre>
3170 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
3171 </pre></p>
3172
3173 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
3174 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
3175 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
3176 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
3177 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
3178
3179       </div>
3180       <div class="tags">
3181
3182
3183         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3184
3185
3186       </div>
3187     </div>
3188     <div class="padding"></div>
3189
3190     <div class="entry">
3191       <div class="title">
3192         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
3193       </div>
3194       <div class="date">
3195          3rd July 2016
3196       </div>
3197       <div class="body">
3198         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
3199 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
3200 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
3201 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
3202 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
3203 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
3204 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
3205 Github source, compared it to the source in
3206 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
3207 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
3208 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
3209 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
3210 the recipe how I did it.</p>
3211
3212 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
3213
3214 <pre>
3215 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
3216 </pre>
3217
3218 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
3219 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
3220
3221 <pre>
3222 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
3223 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
3224 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
3225 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
3226 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
3227          });
3228      });
3229
3230 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
3231 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
3232 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
3233 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
3234      var messageReceiver;
3235      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
3236          if (messageReceiver) {
3237 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
3238 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
3239 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
3240 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
3241  ;(function() {
3242      'use strict';
3243 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
3244 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
3245
3246      window.extension = window.extension || {};
3247
3248 EOF
3249 </pre>
3250
3251 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
3252 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
3253 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
3254 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
3255
3256 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
3257 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
3258
3259 <pre>
3260 #!/bin/sh
3261 cd $(dirname $0)
3262 mkdir -p userdata
3263 exec chromium \
3264   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
3265   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
3266 </pre>
3267
3268 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
3269 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
3270 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
3271 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
3272 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
3273
3274 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
3275 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
3276 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
3277 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
3278 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
3279 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
3280 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
3281 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
3282 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
3283 Signal from my laptop.
3284
3285 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
3286 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
3287 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
3288 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
3289 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
3290 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
3291 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
3292 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
3293 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
3294 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
3295 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
3296 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
3297
3298 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
3299 on this topic in
3300 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
3301 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
3302 phone</a>.</p>
3303
3304       </div>
3305       <div class="tags">
3306
3307
3308         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3309
3310
3311       </div>
3312     </div>
3313     <div class="padding"></div>
3314
3315     <div class="entry">
3316       <div class="title">
3317         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
3318       </div>
3319       <div class="date">
3320          6th June 2016
3321       </div>
3322       <div class="body">
3323         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
3324 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
3325 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
3326 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
3327 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
3328 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
3329 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
3330 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
3331 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
3332
3333 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
3334 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
3335 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
3336 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
3337 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
3338 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
3339 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
3340
3341 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
3342 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
3343 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
3344 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
3345 toten and parole.</p>
3346
3347 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
3348 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
3349 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
3350 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
3351 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
3352 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
3353 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
3354 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
3355 formats.</p>
3356
3357       </div>
3358       <div class="tags">
3359
3360
3361         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>.
3362
3363
3364       </div>
3365     </div>
3366     <div class="padding"></div>
3367
3368     <div class="entry">
3369       <div class="title">
3370         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
3371       </div>
3372       <div class="date">
3373          5th June 2016
3374       </div>
3375       <div class="body">
3376         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
3377 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
3378 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
3379 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
3380 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
3381 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
3382 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
3383 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
3384 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
3385 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
3386 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
3387 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
3388 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
3389 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
3390 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
3391 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
3392 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
3393 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
3394 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
3395 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
3396
3397 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
3398 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
3399 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
3400 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
3401 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
3402 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
3403 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
3404 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
3405 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
3406 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
3407 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
3408 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
3409 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
3410 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
3411
3412 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
3413 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
3414 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
3415 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
3416 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
3417 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
3418 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
3419 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
3420
3421 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
3422 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
3423 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
3424 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
3425 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
3426 information is collected from
3427 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
3428 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
3429 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
3430 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
3431 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
3432 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
3433 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
3434 type (preferably
3435 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
3436 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
3437 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
3438 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
3439
3440 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
3441 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
3442 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
3443
3444 <p><blockquote><pre>
3445 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
3446 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
3447   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
3448     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
3449     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
3450     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
3451   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
3452 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
3453 </pre></blockquote></p>
3454
3455 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
3456 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
3457 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
3458 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
3459
3460 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
3461 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
3462 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
3463
3464 <p><blockquote><pre>
3465 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
3466 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
3467 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
3468 %
3469 </pre></blockquote></p>
3470
3471 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
3472 MimeType= line.</p>
3473
3474 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
3475 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
3476 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
3477 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
3478 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
3479 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
3480 fixed. :)</p>
3481
3482       </div>
3483       <div class="tags">
3484
3485
3486         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>.
3487
3488
3489       </div>
3490     </div>
3491     <div class="padding"></div>
3492
3493     <div class="entry">
3494       <div class="title">
3495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html">Tor - from its creators mouth 11 years ago</a>
3496       </div>
3497       <div class="date">
3498         28th May 2016
3499       </div>
3500       <div class="body">
3501         <p>A little more than 11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and
3502 the current President of <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">the Tor
3503 project</a>, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the
3504 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group</a> (NUUG).  A
3505 video of the talk was recorded, and today, thanks to the great help
3506 from David Noble, I finally was able to publish the video of the talk
3507 on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station where NUUG
3508 currently publishes its talks.  You can
3509 <a href="http://frikanalen.no/se">watch the live stream using a web
3510 browser</a> with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video
3511 on demand page for the talk
3512 "<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599">Tor: Anonymous
3513 communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.</a>".</p>
3514
3515 <p>Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with
3516 HTML video and Ogg Theora support:</p>
3517
3518 <p><video width="70%" poster="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/large_thumb/20050421-tor-frikanalen.jpg" controls>
3519   <source src="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/theora/20050421-tor-frikanalen.ogv" type="video/ogg"/>
3520 </video></p>
3521
3522 <p>I guess the gist of the talk can be summarised quite simply: If you
3523 want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)</p>
3524
3525       </div>
3526       <div class="tags">
3527
3528
3529         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3530
3531
3532       </div>
3533     </div>
3534     <div class="padding"></div>
3535
3536     <div class="entry">
3537       <div class="title">
3538         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
3539       </div>
3540       <div class="date">
3541         25th May 2016
3542       </div>
3543       <div class="body">
3544         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
3545 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
3546 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
3547 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
3548 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
3549 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
3550 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
3551 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
3552 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
3553 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
3554 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
3555 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
3556
3557 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
3558 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
3559 is going away and is generally being replaced by
3560 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
3561 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
3562 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
3563 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
3564 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
3565 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
3566 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
3567 and see if it is recognised.</p>
3568
3569 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
3570 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
3571 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
3572
3573 <p><blockquote><pre>
3574 % isenkram-lookup
3575 bluez
3576 cheese
3577 fprintd
3578 fprintd-demo
3579 gkrellm-thinkbat
3580 hdapsd
3581 libpam-fprintd
3582 pidgin-blinklight
3583 thinkfan
3584 tleds
3585 tp-smapi-dkms
3586 tp-smapi-source
3587 tpb
3588 %p
3589 </pre></blockquote></p>
3590
3591 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
3592 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
3593 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
3594 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
3595 See
3596 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
3597 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
3598
3599       </div>
3600       <div class="tags">
3601
3602
3603         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3604
3605
3606       </div>
3607     </div>
3608     <div class="padding"></div>
3609
3610     <div class="entry">
3611       <div class="title">
3612         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
3613       </div>
3614       <div class="date">
3615         23rd May 2016
3616       </div>
3617       <div class="body">
3618         <p>Yesterday I updated the
3619 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
3620 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
3621 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
3622 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
3623 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
3624 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
3625 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
3626 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
3627 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
3628 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
3629
3630 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
3631 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
3632 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
3633 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
3634 capacity.</p>
3635
3636 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
3637
3638 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
3639 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
3640 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
3641 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
3642
3643 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
3644
3645 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
3646 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
3647 shrinking. :(</p>
3648
3649 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
3650 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
3651 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
3652 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
3653 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
3654 machine.</p>
3655
3656 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
3657 check out the
3658 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
3659 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
3660 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
3661 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3662 Patches are very welcome.</p>
3663
3664 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3665 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3666 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3667
3668       </div>
3669       <div class="tags">
3670
3671
3672         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>.
3673
3674
3675       </div>
3676     </div>
3677     <div class="padding"></div>
3678
3679     <div class="entry">
3680       <div class="title">
3681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html">French edition of Lawrence Lessigs book Cultura Libre on Amazon and Barnes & Noble</a>
3682       </div>
3683       <div class="date">
3684         21st May 2016
3685       </div>
3686       <div class="body">
3687         <p>A few weeks ago the French paperback edition of Lawrence Lessigs
3688 2004 book Cultura Libre was published.  Today I noticed that the book
3689 is now available from book stores.  You can now buy it from
3690 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Libre-French-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/8269018260">Amazon</a>
3691 ($19.99),
3692 <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-libre-lawrence-lessig/1123776705">Barnes
3693 & Noble</a> ($?) and as always from
3694 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Lulu.com</a>
3695 ($19.99).  The revenue is donated to the Creative Commons project.  If
3696 you buy from Lulu.com, they currently get $10.59, while if you buy
3697 from one of the book stores most of the revenue go to the book store
3698 and the Creative Commons project get much (not sure how much
3699 less).</p>
3700
3701 <p>I was a bit surprised to discover that there is a kindle edition
3702 sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC on Amazon.  Not quite sure how
3703 that edition was created, but if you want to download a electronic
3704 edition (PDF, EPUB, Mobi) generated from the same files used to create
3705 the paperback edition, they are
3706 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">available
3707 from github</a>.</p>
3708
3709       </div>
3710       <div class="tags">
3711
3712
3713         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3714
3715
3716       </div>
3717     </div>
3718     <div class="padding"></div>
3719
3720     <div class="entry">
3721       <div class="title">
3722         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html">I want the courts to be involved before the police can hijack a news site DNS domain (#domstolkontroll)</a>
3723       </div>
3724       <div class="date">
3725         19th May 2016
3726       </div>
3727       <div class="body">
3728         <p>I just donated to the
3729 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">NUUG defence
3730 "fond"</a> to fund the effort in Norway to get the seizure of the news
3731 site popcorn-time.no tested in court.  I hope everyone that agree with
3732 me will do the same.</p>
3733
3734 <p>Would you be worried if you knew the police in your country could
3735 hijack DNS domains of news sites covering free software system without
3736 talking to a judge first?  I am.  What if the free software system
3737 combined search engine lookups, bittorrent downloads and video playout
3738 and was called Popcorn Time?  Would that affect your view?  It still
3739 make me worried.</p>
3740
3741 <p>In March 2016, the Norwegian police seized (as in forced NORID to
3742 change the IP address pointed to by it to one controlled by the
3743 police) the DNS domain popcorn-time.no, without any supervision from
3744 the courts.  I did not know about the web site back then, and assumed
3745 the courts had been involved, and was very surprised when I discovered
3746 that the police had hijacked the DNS domain without asking a judge for
3747 permission first.  I was even more surprised when I had a look at
3748 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://popcorn-time.no">the web
3749 site content on the Internet Archive</A>, and only found news coverage
3750 about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right
3751 holders permissions.</p>
3752
3753 <p>The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for
3754 example <a href="http://www.hegnar.no/Nyheter/Naeringsliv/2016/03/Popcorn-time.no-beslaglagt-av-OEkokrim">Hegnar Online</a> and
3755 <a href="http://itavisen.no/2016/03/08/okokrim-har-beslaglagt-popcorn-time-no/">ITavisen<a/>
3756 and
3757 <a href="http://www.nrk.no/kultur/okokrim-gar-til-aksjon-mot-popcorn-time-1.12842452">NRK</a>),
3758 at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based
3759 on
3760 <a href="http://blogg.torvund.net/2016/03/09/okokrims-beslag-i-domenet-popcorn-time-no/">protests
3761 from the law professor Olav Torvund</a> and
3762 <a href="http://www.klassekampen.no/article/20160311/ARTICLE/160319995">lawyer
3763 Jon Wessel-Aas</a>.  It even got some
3764 <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-authorities-sued-over-popcorn-time-domain-seizure-160418/">coverage
3765 on TorrentFreak</a>.</p>
3766
3767 <p>I
3768 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html">
3769 wrote about the case a month ago</a>, when the
3770 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> (NUUG),
3771 where I am an active member, decided to ask the courts to test this seizure.
3772 The request was denied, but NUUG and its co-requestor EFN have not
3773 given up, and now they are rallying for support to get the seizure
3774 legally challenged.  They accept both bank and Bitcoin transfer for
3775 those that want to support the request.</p>
3776
3777 <p>If you as me believe news sites about free software should not be
3778 censored, even if the free software have both legal and illegal
3779 applications, and that DNS hijacking should be tested by the courts, I
3780 suggest you <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">show
3781 your support by donating to NUUG</a>.</a>
3782
3783       </div>
3784       <div class="tags">
3785
3786
3787         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3788
3789
3790       </div>
3791     </div>
3792     <div class="padding"></div>
3793
3794     <div class="entry">
3795       <div class="title">
3796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
3797       </div>
3798       <div class="date">
3799         12th May 2016
3800       </div>
3801       <div class="body">
3802         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
3803 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
3804 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
3805 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
3806 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
3807 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3808 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
3809 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
3810 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
3811 great if you could help out with
3812 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
3813 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
3814
3815       </div>
3816       <div class="tags">
3817
3818
3819         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>.
3820
3821
3822       </div>
3823     </div>
3824     <div class="padding"></div>
3825
3826     <div class="entry">
3827       <div class="title">
3828         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
3829       </div>
3830       <div class="date">
3831          8th May 2016
3832       </div>
3833       <div class="body">
3834         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
3835 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
3836
3837 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
3838 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
3839 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
3840 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
3841 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
3842 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
3843 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
3844 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
3845 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
3846 players.</p>
3847
3848 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
3849 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
3850 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
3851 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
3852 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
3853 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
3854 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
3855 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
3856 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
3857 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
3858 support most file formats.</p>
3859
3860 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
3861 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
3862 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
3863 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
3864 listed first in the table.</p>
3865
3866 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
3867 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
3868 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
3869 support?</p>
3870
3871       </div>
3872       <div class="tags">
3873
3874
3875         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>.
3876
3877
3878       </div>
3879     </div>
3880     <div class="padding"></div>
3881
3882     <div class="entry">
3883       <div class="title">
3884         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
3885       </div>
3886       <div class="date">
3887          4th May 2016
3888       </div>
3889       <div class="body">
3890         A friend of mine made me aware of
3891 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
3892 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
3893 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
3894
3895 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
3896 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
3897 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
3898 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
3899 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
3900 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
3901 production started.</p>
3902
3903 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
3904 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
3905 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
3906
3907       </div>
3908       <div class="tags">
3909
3910
3911         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>.
3912
3913
3914       </div>
3915     </div>
3916     <div class="padding"></div>
3917
3918     <div class="entry">
3919       <div class="title">
3920         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html">NUUG contests Norwegian police DNS seizure of popcorn-time.no</a>
3921       </div>
3922       <div class="date">
3923         18th April 2016
3924       </div>
3925       <div class="body">
3926         <p>It is days like today I am really happy to be a member of
3927 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User group</a>, a
3928 member association for those of us believing in free software, open
3929 standards and unix-like operating systems.  NUUG announced today it
3930 will
3931 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__NUUG_og_EFN_begj_rer_rettslig_pr_ving_for_DNS_domenebeslag_av_popcorn_time_no.shtml">try
3932 to bring the seizure of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no as
3933 unlawful</a>, to stand up for the principle that writing about a
3934 controversial topic is not infringing copyrights, and censuring web
3935 pages by hijacking DNS domain should be decided by the courts, not the
3936 police.  The DNS domain was seized by the Norwegian National Authority
3937 for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime
3938 a month ago.  I hope this bring more paying members to NUUG to give
3939 the association the financial muscle needed to bring this case as far
3940 as it must go to stop this kind of DNS hijacking.</p>
3941
3942       </div>
3943       <div class="tags">
3944
3945
3946         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3947
3948
3949       </div>
3950     </div>
3951     <div class="padding"></div>
3952
3953     <div class="entry">
3954       <div class="title">
3955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_F__Stone___an_inspiration_for_us_all.html">I.F. Stone - an inspiration for us all</a>
3956       </div>
3957       <div class="date">
3958         13th April 2016
3959       </div>
3960       <div class="body">
3961         <p>I first got to know I.F. Stone when I came across an article by Jon
3962 Schwarz on The Intercept
3963 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/new-documentary-legacy-f-stone/">about
3964 his extraordinary contribution to investigative journalism in
3965 USA</a>. The article is about a new documentary in two parts
3966 (<a href="https://vimeo.com/123974841">part one is 12 minutes</a> and
3967 <a href="https://vimeo.com/123974842">part two is 30 minutes</a>), and
3968 I found both truly fascinating.  It is amazing what he was able to
3969 find by digging up public sources and government papers.  He
3970 documented lots of government abuse and cover ups, and I find
3971 <a href="http://www.ifstone.org/weekly.php">his weekly news letters</a>
3972 inspiring to read even today.</p>
3973
3974 <p><blockquote>
3975 All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
3976 <br>- I. F. Stone
3977 </blockquote></p>
3978
3979 <p>His starting point was that reporters should not assume governments
3980 and corporations are telling the truth, but verify all their claims as
3981 much as possible.  I wonder how many Norwegian reporters can be said
3982 to follow the principles of I. F. Stone.  They are definitely in short
3983 supply.  If you, like me half a year ago, have never heard of him,
3984 check him out.</p>
3985
3986       </div>
3987       <div class="tags">
3988
3989
3990         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
3991
3992
3993       </div>
3994     </div>
3995     <div class="padding"></div>
3996
3997     <div class="entry">
3998       <div class="title">
3999         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_French_paperback_edition_of_the_book_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig_is_now_available.html">A French paperback edition of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig is now available</a>
4000       </div>
4001       <div class="date">
4002         12th April 2016
4003       </div>
4004       <div class="body">
4005         <p>I'm happy to report that
4006 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">the
4007 French paperback edition</a> of
4008 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
4009 project to translate</a> the <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free
4010 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig is now available for sale on
4011 Lulu.com.  Once I have formally verified my proof reading copy, which
4012 should be in the mail, the paperback edition should be available in
4013 book stores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble too.</p>
4014
4015 <p>This French edition, Culture Libre, is the work of the
4016 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> developer Benoît
4017 Guillon, who created the PO file from the initial translation
4018 available from
4019 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">the Wikilivres
4020 wiki pages</a> and completed and corrected the translation to match
4021 the original docbook edition my project is using, as well as
4022 coordinated the proof reading of the final result.  I believe the end
4023 result look great, but I am biased and do not read French.  In
4024 addition to the paperback edition, the book is available in PDF, EPUB
4025 and Mobi format from the github project page linked to above.</p>
4026
4027 <p>When enabling book store distribution on Lulu.com, I had to nearly
4028 triple the price to allow the book stores some profit.  I also had to
4029 accept that I will get some revenue when a book is sold via Lulu.com.
4030 But because of the non-commercial clause in the book license
4031 (CC-BY-NC), this might be a problem.  To bypass the problem I
4032 discussed how to handle the revenue with the author, and we agreed
4033 that the revenue for these editions go to the
4034 <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons non-profit
4035 Corporation</a> who handle donations to the Creative Commons project.
4036 So far they have earned around USD 70 on sales of the
4037 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>
4038 and
4039 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
4040 Bokmål</a> editions, according to Lulu.com.  They will get the revenue
4041 for the French edition too.  Their revenue is higher if you buy the
4042 book directly from Lulu.com instead of via a book store, so I
4043 recommend you buy directly from Lulu.com.</p>
4044
4045 <p>Perhaps you would like to get the book published in your language?
4046 The translation is done using a web based translator service, so the
4047 technical bar to enter is fairly low.  Get in touch if you would like
4048 to make this happen.</p>
4049
4050       </div>
4051       <div class="tags">
4052
4053
4054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
4055
4056
4057       </div>
4058     </div>
4059     <div class="padding"></div>
4060
4061     <div class="entry">
4062       <div class="title">
4063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
4064       </div>
4065       <div class="date">
4066         10th April 2016
4067       </div>
4068       <div class="body">
4069         <p>During this weekends
4070 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
4071 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
4072 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
4073 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
4074 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
4075 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
4076 contributing using
4077 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
4078 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
4079 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
4080 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
4081 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
4082 contributors</a>.</p>
4083
4084 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
4085 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
4086 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
4087 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
4088 available for many more languages.</p>
4089
4090       </div>
4091       <div class="tags">
4092
4093
4094         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4095
4096
4097       </div>
4098     </div>
4099     <div class="padding"></div>
4100
4101     <div class="entry">
4102       <div class="title">
4103         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
4104       </div>
4105       <div class="date">
4106          7th April 2016
4107       </div>
4108       <div class="body">
4109         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
4110 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
4111 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
4112 But I might be wrong.</p>
4113
4114 <p>According to
4115 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
4116 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
4117 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
4118 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
4119 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
4120 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
4121 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
4122 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
4123 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
4124 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
4125
4126 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
4127 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
4128 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
4129 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
4130 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
4131 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
4132 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
4133 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4134 team status page</a>, and
4135 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
4136 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
4137
4138 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
4139 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
4140 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
4141 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
4142 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
4143 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
4144 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
4145 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
4146 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
4147 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
4148 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
4149 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
4150
4151       </div>
4152       <div class="tags">
4153
4154
4155         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>.
4156
4157
4158       </div>
4159     </div>
4160     <div class="padding"></div>
4161
4162     <div class="entry">
4163       <div class="title">
4164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/syslog_trusted_timestamp___chain_of_trusted_timestamps_for_your_syslog.html">syslog-trusted-timestamp - chain of trusted timestamps for your syslog</a>
4165       </div>
4166       <div class="date">
4167          2nd April 2016
4168       </div>
4169       <div class="body">
4170         <p>Two years ago, I had
4171 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">a
4172 look at trusted timestamping options available</a>, and among
4173 other things noted a still open
4174 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/742553">bug in the tsget script</a>
4175 included in openssl that made it harder than necessary to use openssl
4176 as a trusted timestamping client.  A few days ago I was told
4177 <a href="https:/www.difi.no/">the Norwegian government office DIFI</a> is
4178 close to releasing their own trusted timestamp service, and in the
4179 process I was happy to learn about a replacement for the tsget script
4180 using only curl:</p>
4181
4182 <p><pre>
4183 openssl ts -query -data "/etc/shells" -cert -sha256 -no_nonce \
4184   | curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/timestamp-query" \
4185          --data-binary "@-" http://zeitstempel.dfn.de > etc-shells.tsr
4186 openssl ts -reply -text -in etc-shells.tsr
4187 </pre></p>
4188
4189 <p>This produces a binary timestamp file (etc-shells.tsr) which can be
4190 used to verify that the content of the file /etc/shell with the
4191 calculated sha256 hash existed at the point in time when the request
4192 was made.  The last command extract the content of the etc-shells.tsr
4193 in human readable form.  The idea behind such timestamp is to be able
4194 to prove using cryptography that the content of a file have not
4195 changed since the file was stamped.</p>
4196
4197 <p>To verify that the file on disk match the public key signature in
4198 the timestamp file, run the following commands.  It make sure you have
4199 the required certificate for the trusted timestamp service available
4200 and use it to compare the file content with the timestamp.  In
4201 production, one should of course use a better method to verify the
4202 service certificate.</p>
4203
4204 <p><pre>
4205 wget -O ca-cert.txt https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt
4206 openssl ts -verify -data /etc/shells -in etc-shells.tsr -CAfile ca-cert.txt -text
4207 </pre></p>
4208
4209 <p>Wikipedia have a lot more information about
4210 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
4211 Timestamping</a> and
4212 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_timestamping">linked
4213 timestamping</a>, and there are several trusted timestamping services
4214 around, both as commercial services and as free and public services.
4215 Among the latter is
4216 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">the
4217 zeitstempel.dfn.de service</a> mentioned above and
4218 <a href="https://freetsa.org/">freetsa.org service</a> linked to from the
4219 wikipedia web site.  I believe the DIFI service should show up on
4220 https://tsa.difi.no, but it is not available to the public at the
4221 moment.  I hope this will change when it is into production.  The
4222 <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC 3161</a> trusted
4223 timestamping protocol standard is even implemented in LibreOffice,
4224 Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat, making it possible to verify when
4225 a document was created.</p>
4226
4227 <p>I would find it useful to be able to use such trusted timestamp
4228 service to make it possible to verify that my stored syslog files have
4229 not been tampered with.  This is not a new idea.  I found one example
4230 implemented on the Endian network appliances where
4231 <a href="http://help.endian.com/entries/21518508-Enabling-Timestamping-on-log-files-">the
4232 configuration of such feature was described in 2012</a>.</p>
4233
4234 <p>But I could not find any free implementation of such feature when I
4235 searched, so I decided to try to
4236 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/syslog-trusted-timestamp">build
4237 a prototype named syslog-trusted-timestamp</a>.  My idea is to
4238 generate a timestamp of the old log files after they are rotated, and
4239 store the timestamp in the new log file just after rotation.  This
4240 will form a chain that would make it possible to see if any old log
4241 files are tampered with.  But syslog is bad at handling kilobytes of
4242 binary data, so I decided to base64 encode the timestamp and add an ID
4243 and line sequence numbers to the base64 data to make it possible to
4244 reassemble the timestamp file again.  To use it, simply run it like
4245 this:
4246
4247 <p><pre>
4248 syslog-trusted-timestamp /path/to/list-of-log-files
4249 </pre></p>
4250
4251 <p>This will send a timestamp from one or more timestamp services (not
4252 yet decided nor implemented) for each listed file to the syslog using
4253 logger(1).  To verify the timestamp, the same program is used with the
4254 --verify option:</p>
4255
4256 <p><pre>
4257 syslog-trusted-timestamp --verify /path/to/log-file /path/to/log-with-timestamp
4258 </pre></p>
4259
4260 <p>The verification step is not yet well designed.  The current
4261 implementation depend on the file path being unique and unchanging,
4262 and this is not a solid assumption.  It also uses process number as
4263 timestamp ID, and this is bound to create ID collisions.  I hope to
4264 have time to come up with a better way to handle timestamp IDs and
4265 verification later.</p>
4266
4267 <p>Please check out
4268 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/syslog-trusted-timestamp">the
4269 prototype for syslog-trusted-timestamp on github</a> and send
4270 suggestions and improvement, or let me know if there already exist a
4271 similar system for timestamping logs already to allow me to join
4272 forces with others with the same interest.</p>
4273
4274 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4275 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4276 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4277
4278       </div>
4279       <div class="tags">
4280
4281
4282         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4283
4284
4285       </div>
4286     </div>
4287     <div class="padding"></div>
4288
4289     <div class="entry">
4290       <div class="title">
4291         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
4292       </div>
4293       <div class="date">
4294         23rd March 2016
4295       </div>
4296       <div class="body">
4297         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
4298 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
4299 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
4300 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
4301 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
4302 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
4303 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
4304 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
4305
4306 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
4307 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
4308 and lifetime prediction by running:
4309
4310 <p><pre>
4311 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
4312 </pre></p>
4313
4314 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
4315
4316 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
4317 entry yet):</p>
4318
4319 <p><pre>
4320 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
4321 </pre></p>
4322
4323 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
4324 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
4325 few years of data.</p>
4326
4327 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
4328 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
4329 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
4330 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
4331 know.  The issue is reported as
4332 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
4333 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
4334 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
4335 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
4336 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
4337
4338 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
4339 check out the
4340 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
4341 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
4342 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
4343 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
4344 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
4345
4346       </div>
4347       <div class="tags">
4348
4349
4350         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>.
4351
4352
4353       </div>
4354     </div>
4355     <div class="padding"></div>
4356
4357     <div class="entry">
4358       <div class="title">
4359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html">UsingQR - "Electronic" paper invoices using JSON and QR codes</a>
4360       </div>
4361       <div class="date">
4362         19th March 2016
4363       </div>
4364       <div class="body">
4365         <p>Back in 2013 I proposed
4366 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">a
4367 way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by
4368 adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice</a>.  I
4369 suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format
4370 for name and address, but any format would work.  I did not do
4371 anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make
4372 something like it.  It would make it possible to efficiently send
4373 machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.</p>
4374
4375 <p>This was the background when I came across a proposal and
4376 specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier
4377 <a href="http://www.visma.com/">Visma</a> in Sweden called
4378 <a href="http://usingqr.com/">UsingQR</a>.  Their PDF invoices contain
4379 a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format.
4380 This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR
4381 specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to
4382 get a more bogus entry).  I've reformatted the JSON to make it easier
4383 to read.  Normally this is all on one long line:</p>
4384
4385 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-19-qr-invoice.png" align="right"><pre>
4386 {
4387  "vh":500.00,
4388  "vm":0,
4389  "vl":0,
4390  "uqr":1,
4391  "tp":1,
4392  "nme":"Din Leverandør",
4393  "cc":"NO",
4394  "cid":"997912345 MVA",
4395  "iref":"12300001",
4396  "idt":"20151022",
4397  "ddt":"20151105",
4398  "due":2500.0000,
4399  "cur":"NOK",
4400  "pt":"BBAN",
4401  "acc":"17202612345",
4402  "bc":"BIENNOK1",
4403  "adr":"0313 OSLO"
4404 }
4405 </pre></p>
4406
4407 </p>The interpretation of the fields can be found in the
4408 <a href="http://usingqr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/UsingQR_specification1.pdf">format
4409 specification</a> (revision 2 from june 2014).  The format seem to
4410 have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment
4411 of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in
4412 Norway.</p>
4413
4414 <p>Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about
4415 the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the
4416 specification.  Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in
4417 November to clarify.  Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at)
4418 visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark
4419 protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based
4420 usage limitations for the format.  I urged her to make sure this was
4421 explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but
4422 unfortunately this has not happened yet.  So I guess if there is
4423 submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright
4424 infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at
4425 risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that
4426 the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so.  At least
4427 with patents, there is always
4428 <a href="http://www.paperspecs.com/paper-news/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/">a
4429 chance of getting sued...</a></p>
4430
4431 <p>I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an
4432 independent standard organization to give others more confidence that
4433 they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms
4434 with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this.  Their plan was
4435 to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and
4436 evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular.  I hope
4437 they conclude that using an open standard organisation like
4438 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> is the correct place to
4439 maintain such specification.</p>
4440
4441 <p><strong>Update 2016-03-20</strong>: Via Twitter I became aware of
4442 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11319492">some comments
4443 about this blog post</a> that had several useful links and references to
4444 similar systems.  In the Czech republic, the Czech Banking Association
4445 standard #26, with short name SPAYD, uses QR codes with payment
4446 information.  More information is available from the Wikipedia page on
4447 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor">Short
4448 Payment Descriptor</a>.  And in Germany, there is a system named
4449 <a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/">BezahlCode</a>,
4450 (<a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/wp-content/uploads/BezahlCode_TechDok.pdf">specification
4451 v1.8 2013-12-05 available as PDF</a>), which uses QR codes with
4452 URL-like formatting using "bank:" as the URI schema/protocol to
4453 provide the payment information.  There is also the
4454 <a href="http://www.ferd-net.de/front_content.php?idcat=231">ZUGFeRD</a>
4455 file format that perhaps could be transfered using QR codes, but I am
4456 not sure if it is done already.  Last, in Bolivia there are reports
4457 that tax information since november 2014 need to be printed in QR
4458 format on invoices.  I have not been able to track down a
4459 specification for this format, because of my limited language skill
4460 sets.</p>
4461
4462       </div>
4463       <div class="tags">
4464
4465
4466         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
4467
4468
4469       </div>
4470     </div>
4471     <div class="padding"></div>
4472
4473     <div class="entry">
4474       <div class="title">
4475         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
4476       </div>
4477       <div class="date">
4478         15th March 2016
4479       </div>
4480       <div class="body">
4481         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
4482 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
4483 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
4484 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
4485 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
4486 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
4487 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
4488 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
4489 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
4490 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
4491 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
4492
4493 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
4494 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
4495 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
4496 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
4497 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
4498 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
4499 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
4500 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
4501 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
4502 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
4503 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
4504
4505 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
4506
4507 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
4508 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
4509 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
4510 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
4511 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
4512 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
4513
4514 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
4515 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
4516 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
4517 and graphing.</p>
4518
4519 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
4520 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
4521 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
4522 on
4523 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
4524 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
4525
4526       </div>
4527       <div class="tags">
4528
4529
4530         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>.
4531
4532
4533       </div>
4534     </div>
4535     <div class="padding"></div>
4536
4537     <div class="entry">
4538       <div class="title">
4539         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
4540       </div>
4541       <div class="date">
4542         19th February 2016
4543       </div>
4544       <div class="body">
4545         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
4546 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
4547 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
4548 the code in the package in question, preferably in
4549 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
4550 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
4551
4552 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
4553 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
4554 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
4555 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
4556 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
4557 out what was wrong with
4558 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
4559 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
4560 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
4561 semi-automatically.</p>
4562
4563 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
4564 file based on the code in the source package,
4565 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
4566 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
4567 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
4568 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
4569 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
4570 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
4571 option in
4572 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
4573 blog posts from 2014</a>.
4574
4575 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
4576
4577 <p><pre>
4578 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
4579 </pre></p>
4580
4581 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
4582 this might not be the best option.</p>
4583
4584 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
4585 this approach in
4586 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
4587 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
4588 dpkg-copyright' option:
4589
4590 <p><pre>
4591 cme update dpkg-copyright
4592 </pre></p>
4593
4594 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
4595 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
4596
4597 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
4598 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
4599 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
4600 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
4601 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
4602 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
4603 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
4604 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
4605 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
4606 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
4607
4608 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
4609 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
4610 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
4611 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
4612
4613 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
4614 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
4615 planet.debian.org.</p>
4616
4617 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4618 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4619 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4620
4621 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
4622 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
4623
4624 <p><pre>
4625 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
4626   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
4627 </pre></p>
4628
4629 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
4630 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
4631 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
4632 with my packages in the future.</p>
4633
4634 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
4635 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
4636 command line.</p>
4637
4638       </div>
4639       <div class="tags">
4640
4641
4642         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>.
4643
4644
4645       </div>
4646     </div>
4647     <div class="padding"></div>
4648
4649     <div class="entry">
4650       <div class="title">
4651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
4652       </div>
4653       <div class="date">
4654          4th February 2016
4655       </div>
4656       <div class="body">
4657         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
4658 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
4659 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
4660 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
4661 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
4662 about. :)</p>
4663
4664 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
4665 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
4666 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
4667 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
4668 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
4669 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
4670
4671 <blockquote><pre>
4672 % apt install appstream
4673 [...]
4674 % apt update
4675 [...]
4676 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
4677   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
4678 firmware-qlogic
4679 %
4680 </pre></blockquote>
4681
4682 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
4683 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
4684 a way appstream can use.</p>
4685
4686 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
4687 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
4688 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
4689 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
4690 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
4691 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
4692
4693 <blockquote><pre>
4694 % apt install appstream
4695 [...]
4696 % apt update
4697 [...]
4698 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
4699   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
4700 bkchem
4701 phototonic
4702 inkscape
4703 shutter
4704 tetzle
4705 geeqie
4706 xia
4707 pinta
4708 gthumb
4709 karbon
4710 comix
4711 mirage
4712 viewnior
4713 postr
4714 ristretto
4715 kolourpaint4
4716 eog
4717 eom
4718 gimagereader
4719 midori
4720 %
4721 </pre></blockquote>
4722
4723 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
4724 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
4725
4726       </div>
4727       <div class="tags">
4728
4729
4730         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>.
4731
4732
4733       </div>
4734     </div>
4735     <div class="padding"></div>
4736
4737     <div class="entry">
4738       <div class="title">
4739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
4740       </div>
4741       <div class="date">
4742         24th January 2016
4743       </div>
4744       <div class="body">
4745         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
4746 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
4747 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
4748 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
4749 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
4750 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
4751 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
4752 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
4753 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
4754 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
4755 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
4756 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
4757 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
4758 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
4759 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
4760 entities.</p>
4761
4762 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
4763
4764 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
4765 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
4766 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
4767 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
4768 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
4769 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
4770 tool to do so is called
4771 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
4772 discovered it when I read
4773 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
4774 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
4775 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
4776 The python program was in Debian, but
4777 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
4778 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
4779 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
4780 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
4781 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
4782 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
4783 are now included
4784 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
4785
4786 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
4787 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
4788 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
4789 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
4790 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
4791 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
4792 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
4793 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
4794 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
4795 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
4796 about yourself with the services.</p>
4797
4798 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
4799 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
4800 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
4801 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
4802 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
4803 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
4804 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
4805 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
4806 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
4807 things.  A similar technique have been
4808 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
4809 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
4810 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
4811 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
4812 public.</p>
4813
4814 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
4815 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
4816 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
4817 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
4818
4819 <p>(I have uploaded
4820 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
4821 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
4822 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
4823
4824       </div>
4825       <div class="tags">
4826
4827
4828         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4829
4830
4831       </div>
4832     </div>
4833     <div class="padding"></div>
4834
4835     <div class="entry">
4836       <div class="title">
4837         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
4838       </div>
4839       <div class="date">
4840         15th January 2016
4841       </div>
4842       <div class="body">
4843         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
4844 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
4845 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
4846 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
4847 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
4848 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
4849 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
4850 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
4851 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
4852 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
4853 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
4854 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
4855 was not the first to propose this, as the
4856 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
4857 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
4858 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
4859 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
4860
4861 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
4862 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
4863 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
4864 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
4865 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
4866
4867 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
4868 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
4869 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
4870 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
4871 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
4872 done in /etc/.</p>
4873
4874 <blockquote><pre>
4875 apt install apt-transport-tor
4876 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
4877 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
4878 </pre></blockquote>
4879
4880 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
4881 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
4882 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
4883 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
4884
4885 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
4886 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
4887 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
4888 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
4889 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
4890 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
4891
4892 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
4893 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
4894 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
4895 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
4896 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
4897
4898 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
4899 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
4900 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
4901 system.</p>
4902
4903       </div>
4904       <div class="tags">
4905
4906
4907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4908
4909
4910       </div>
4911     </div>
4912     <div class="padding"></div>
4913
4914     <div class="entry">
4915       <div class="title">
4916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
4917       </div>
4918       <div class="date">
4919         23rd December 2015
4920       </div>
4921       <div class="body">
4922         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
4923 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
4924 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
4925 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
4926 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
4927 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
4928
4929 <p>A few days I came across
4930 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
4931 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
4932 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
4933 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
4934 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
4935 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
4936 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
4937 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
4938 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
4939 discovered the developer
4940 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
4941 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
4942 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
4943 archive.</p>
4944
4945 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
4946 it into Debian, where it currently
4947 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
4948 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
4949
4950 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
4951 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
4952 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
4953 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
4954 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
4955 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
4956 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
4957 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
4958 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
4959 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
4960 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
4961 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
4962
4963 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
4964 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
4965 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
4966 package show up in unstable.</p>
4967
4968       </div>
4969       <div class="tags">
4970
4971
4972         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4973
4974
4975       </div>
4976     </div>
4977     <div class="padding"></div>
4978
4979     <div class="entry">
4980       <div class="title">
4981         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
4982       </div>
4983       <div class="date">
4984         20th December 2015
4985       </div>
4986       <div class="body">
4987         <p>Around three years ago, I created
4988 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
4989 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
4990 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
4991 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
4992 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
4993 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
4994 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
4995 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
4996 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
4997 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
4998 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
4999 with.</p>
5000
5001 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
5002 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
5003 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
5004 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
5005 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
5006 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
5007 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
5008 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
5009 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
5010 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
5011 Debian version of appstream.</p>
5012
5013 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
5014 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
5015 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
5016 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
5017 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
5018 how do add the required
5019 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
5020 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
5021 this content:</p>
5022
5023 <blockquote><pre>
5024 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
5025 &lt;component&gt;
5026   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
5027   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
5028   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
5029   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
5030   &lt;description&gt;
5031     &lt;p&gt;
5032       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
5033       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
5034       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
5035       launcher.
5036     &lt;/p&gt;
5037   &lt;/description&gt;
5038   &lt;provides&gt;
5039     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
5040   &lt;/provides&gt;
5041 &lt;/component&gt;
5042 </pre></blockquote>
5043
5044 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
5045 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
5046 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
5047 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
5048 0202.</p>
5049
5050 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
5051 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
5052 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
5053 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
5054 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
5055 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
5056 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
5057 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
5058
5059 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
5060 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
5061 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
5062 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
5063 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
5064
5065 <blockquote><pre>
5066 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
5067 </pre></blockquote>
5068
5069 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
5070 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
5071 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
5072 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
5073 question.</p>
5074
5075 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
5076 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
5077
5078 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
5079 try running this command on the command line:</p>
5080
5081 <blockquote><pre>
5082 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
5083 </pre></blockquote>
5084
5085 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
5086 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
5087 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
5088
5089       </div>
5090       <div class="tags">
5091
5092
5093         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>.
5094
5095
5096       </div>
5097     </div>
5098     <div class="padding"></div>
5099
5100     <div class="entry">
5101       <div class="title">
5102         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
5103       </div>
5104       <div class="date">
5105         30th November 2015
5106       </div>
5107       <div class="body">
5108         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
5109 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
5110 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
5111 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
5112 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
5113
5114 <blockquote>
5115
5116 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
5117
5118 <blockquote>
5119 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
5120
5121 The first step is to choose a
5122 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
5123 code.<br/>
5124
5125 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
5126 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
5127
5128 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
5129 work<br/>
5130
5131 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
5132 </blockquote>
5133
5134 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
5135 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
5136 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
5137 0x57</a></small></p>
5138
5139 <p>As the Debian Website
5140 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
5141 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
5142 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
5143 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
5144 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
5145 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
5146 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
5147 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
5148 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
5149 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
5150 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
5151 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
5152 Freedom">FaiF</a>
5153 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
5154 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
5155 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
5156 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
5157 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
5158 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
5159 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
5160 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
5161 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
5162 In March the SFC supported a
5163 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
5164 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
5165 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
5166 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
5167 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
5168 conferences
5169 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
5170 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
5171 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
5172 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
5173 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
5174 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
5175 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
5176 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
5177 Software.</p>
5178
5179 <p>If you support Free Software,
5180 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
5181 what the SFC do, agree with their
5182 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
5183 principles</a>, are happy about their
5184 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
5185 work on a project that is an SFC
5186 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
5187 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
5188 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
5189 Allan Webber</a>,
5190 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
5191 Smith</a>,
5192 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
5193 Bacon</a>, myself and
5194 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
5195 becoming a
5196 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
5197 next week your donation will be
5198 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
5199 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
5200 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
5201 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
5202 social media accounts.</p>
5203
5204 </blockquote>
5205
5206 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
5207 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
5208 supporter too?</p>
5209
5210       </div>
5211       <div class="tags">
5212
5213
5214         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5215
5216
5217       </div>
5218     </div>
5219     <div class="padding"></div>
5220
5221     <div class="entry">
5222       <div class="title">
5223         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
5224       </div>
5225       <div class="date">
5226         17th November 2015
5227       </div>
5228       <div class="body">
5229         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
5230 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
5231 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
5232 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
5233 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
5234 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
5235 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
5236 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
5237 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
5238 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
5239
5240 <pre>
5241 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
5242       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
5243 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
5244 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
5245 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
5246 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
5247 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
5248 </pre>
5249
5250 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
5251 my old key.</p>
5252
5253 <p>If you signed my old key
5254 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
5255 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
5256 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
5257 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
5258
5259       </div>
5260       <div class="tags">
5261
5262
5263         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>.
5264
5265
5266       </div>
5267     </div>
5268     <div class="padding"></div>
5269
5270     <div class="entry">
5271       <div class="title">
5272         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Pentagon_deciding_the_Norwegian_negotiating_position_on_Internet_governance_.html">Is Pentagon deciding the Norwegian negotiating position on Internet governance?</a>
5273       </div>
5274       <div class="date">
5275          3rd November 2015
5276       </div>
5277       <div class="body">
5278         <p>In Norway, all government offices are required by law to keep a
5279 list of every document or letter arriving and leaving their offices.
5280 Internal notes should also be documented.  The document list (called a mail
5281 journal - "postjournal" in Norwegian) is public information and thanks
5282 to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) the mail
5283 journal is available for everyone.  Most offices even publish the mail
5284 journal on their web pages, as PDFs or tables in web pages.  The state-level offices even have a shared web based search service (called
5285 <a href="https://www.oep.no/">Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -
5286 OEP</a>) to make it possible to search the entries in the list.  Not
5287 all journal entries show up on OEP, and the search service is hard to
5288 use, but OEP does make it easier to find at least some interesting
5289 journal entries .</p>
5290
5291 <p>In 2012 I came across a document in the mail journal for the
5292 Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications on OEP that
5293 piqued my interest.  The title of the document was
5294 "<a href="https://www.oep.no/search/resultSingle.html?journalPostId=4192362">Internet
5295 Governance and how it affects national security</a>" (Norwegian:
5296 "Internet Governance og påvirkning på nasjonal sikkerhet").  The
5297 document date was 2012-05-22, and it was said to be sent from the
5298 "Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations".  I asked for a
5299 copy, but my request was rejected with a reference to a legal clause said to authorize them to reject it
5300 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20,
5301 letter c</a>) and an explanation that the document was exempt because
5302 of foreign policy interests as it contained information related to the
5303 Norwegian negotiating position, negotiating strategies or similar.  I
5304 was told the information in the document related to the ongoing
5305 negotiation in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).  The
5306 explanation made sense to me in early January 2013, as a ITU
5307 conference in Dubay discussing Internet Governance
5308 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union#World_Conference_on_International_Telecommunications_2012_.28WCIT-12.29">World
5309 Conference on International Telecommunications - WCIT-12</a>) had just
5310 ended,
5311 <a href="http://www.digi.no/kommentarer/2012/12/18/tvil-om-usas-rolle-pa-teletoppmote">reportedly
5312 in chaos</a> when USA walked out of the negotiations and 25 countries
5313 including Norway refused to sign the new treaty.  It seemed
5314 reasonable to believe talks were still going on a few weeks later.
5315 Norway was represented at the ITU meeting by two authorities, the
5316 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/">Norwegian Communications Authority</a>
5317 and the <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dep/sd/">Ministry of
5318 Transport and Communications</a>.  This might be the reason the letter
5319 was sent to the ministry.  As I was unable to find the document in the
5320 mail journal of any Norwegian UN mission, I asked the ministry who had
5321 sent the document to the ministry, and was told that it was the Deputy
5322 Permanent Representative with the Permanent Mission of Norway in
5323 Geneva.</p>
5324
5325 <p>Three years later, I was still curious about the content of that
5326 document, and again asked for a copy, believing the negotiation was
5327 over now.  This time
5328 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/kopi_av_dokumenter_i_sak_2012914">I
5329 asked both the Ministry of Transport and Communications as the
5330 receiver</a> and
5331 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/brev_om_internet_governance_og_p">asked
5332 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva as the sender</a> for a
5333 copy, to see if they both agreed that it should be withheld from the
5334 public.  The ministry upheld its rejection quoting the same law
5335 reference as before, while the permanent mission rejected it quoting a
5336 different clause
5337 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20
5338 letter b</a>), claiming that they were required to keep the
5339 content of the document from the public because it contained
5340 information given to Norway with the expressed or implied expectation
5341 that the information should not be made public.  I asked the permanent
5342 mission for an explanation, and was told that the document contained
5343 an account from a meeting held in the Pentagon for a limited group of NATO
5344 nations where the organiser of the meeting did not intend the content
5345 of the meeting to be publicly known.  They explained that giving me a
5346 copy might cause Norway to not get access to similar information in
5347 the future and thus hurt the future foreign interests of Norway.  They
5348 also explained that the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was not
5349 the author of the document, they only got a copy of it, and because of
5350 this had not listed it in their mail journal.</p>
5351
5352 <p>Armed with this
5353 knowledge I asked the Ministry to reconsider and asked who was the
5354 author of the document, now realising that it was not same as the
5355 "sender" according to Ministry of Transport and Communications.  The
5356 ministry upheld its rejection but told me the name of the author of
5357 the document.  According to
5358 <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/unga69_rapport1/id2001204/">a
5359 government report</a> the author was with the Permanent Mission of
5360 Norway in New York a bit more than a year later (2014-09-22), so I
5361 guessed that might be the office responsible for writing and sending
5362 the report initially and
5363 <a href="https://www.mimesbronn.no/request/mote_2012_i_pentagon_om_itu">asked
5364 them for a copy</a> but I was obviously wrong as I was told that the
5365 document was unknown to them and that the author did not work there
5366 when the document was written.  Next, I asked the Permanent Mission of
5367 Norway in Geneva and the Foreign Ministry to reconsider and at least
5368 tell me who sent the document to Deputy Permanent Representative with
5369 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva.  The Foreign Ministry also
5370 upheld its rejection, but told me that the person sending the document
5371 to Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was the defence attaché with
5372 the Norwegian Embassy in Washington.  I do not know if this is the
5373 same person as the author of the document.</p>
5374
5375 <p>If I understand the situation correctly, someone capable of
5376 inviting selected NATO nations to a meeting in Pentagon organised a
5377 meeting where someone representing the Norwegian defence attaché in
5378 Washington attended, and the account from this meeting is interpreted
5379 by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to expose Norways
5380 negotiating position, negotiating strategies and similar regarding the
5381 ITU negotiations on Internet Governance.  It is truly amazing what can
5382 be derived from mere meta-data.</p>
5383
5384 <p>I wonder which NATO countries besides Norway attended this meeting?
5385 And what exactly was said and done at the meeting?  Anyone know?</p>
5386
5387       </div>
5388       <div class="tags">
5389
5390
5391         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</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>.
5392
5393
5394       </div>
5395     </div>
5396     <div class="padding"></div>
5397
5398     <div class="entry">
5399       <div class="title">
5400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_book___Fri_kultur__by__lessig__a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of__Free_Culture__from_2004.html">New book, "Fri kultur" by @lessig, a Norwegian Bokmål translation of "Free Culture" from 2004</a>
5401       </div>
5402       <div class="date">
5403         31st October 2015
5404       </div>
5405       <div class="body">
5406         <p>People keep asking me where to get the various forms of the book I
5407 published last week, the Norwegian Bokmål edition of Lawrence Lessigs
5408 book <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>.  It was
5409 published on paper via lulu.com, and is also available in PDF, ePub
5410 and MOBI format.  I currently sell the paper edition for self cost
5411 from lulu.com, but might extend the distribution to book stores like
5412 Amazon and Barnes & Noble later.  This will double the price and force
5413 me to make a profit from selling the book.  Anyway, here are links to
5414 get the book in different formats:</p>
5415
5416 <ul>
5417
5418   <li><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22406445.html">Buy
5419     paper edition from lulu.com</a></li>
5420
5421   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf">Download
5422     PDF, size 7.9 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
5423
5424   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub">Download
5425     ePub, size 11 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
5426
5427   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.mobi">Download
5428     MOBI, size 3.8 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
5429
5430 </ul>
5431
5432 <p>Note that the MOBI version have problems with the table of content,
5433 at least with the viewers I have been able to test.  And the ePub file
5434 have several problems according to
5435 <a href="https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck">epubcheck</a>, but seem
5436 to display fine in the viewers I have tested.  All the files needed to
5437 create the book in various forms are available from
5438 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">the
5439 github project page</a>.</p>
5440
5441 <p>The project got press coverage from the Norwegian IT news site
5442 digi.no.  Check out the article
5443 "<a href="http://www.digi.no/juss_og_samfunn/2015/10/29/vil-apne-politikernes-oyne-for-creative-commons">Vil
5444 åpne politikernes øyne for Creative Commons</a>".</li>
5445
5446 <p>I've <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">blogged
5447 about the project</a> as it moved along.  The blogs document the translation
5448 progress and insights I had along the way.</p>
5449
5450       </div>
5451       <div class="tags">
5452
5453
5454         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5455
5456
5457       </div>
5458     </div>
5459     <div class="padding"></div>
5460
5461     <div class="entry">
5462       <div class="title">
5463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Free_Culture__by__lessig___The_background_story_for_Creative_Commons___new_edition_available.html">"Free Culture" by @lessig - The background story for Creative Commons - new edition available</a>
5464       </div>
5465       <div class="date">
5466         23rd October 2015
5467       </div>
5468       <div class="body">
5469         <p><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">Click
5470 here to buy the book</a>.</p>
5471
5472 <p>In 2004, as the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons
5473 movement</a> gained momentum, its creator Lawrence Lessig wrote the
5474 book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)">Free
5475 Culture</a> to explain the problems with increasing copyright
5476 regulation and suggest some solutions.  I read the book back then and
5477 was very moved by it.  Reading the book inspired me and changed the
5478 way I looked on copyright law, and I would love it if more people
5479 would read it too.</p>
5480
5481 <p>Because of this, I decided in the summer of 2012 to translate it to
5482 Norwegian Bokmål and publish it for those of my friends and family
5483 that prefer to read books in Norwegian.  I translated the book using
5484 docbook and a gettext PO file, and a byproduct of this process is a
5485 new edition of the English original.  I've been in touch with the
5486 author during by work, and he said it was fine with him if I also
5487 published an English version.  So I decided to do so.  Today, I made
5488 this edition
5489 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">available
5490 for sale on Lulu.com</a>, for those interested in a paper book.  This
5491 is the cover:
5492
5493 <p align="center"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-10-23-free-culture-english-published-cover.png"/></a></p>
5494
5495 <p>The Norwegian Bokmål version will be available for purchase in a
5496 few days.  I also plan to publish a French version in a few weeks or
5497 months, depending on the amount of people with knowledge of French to
5498 join the translation project.  So far there is only one active
5499 person, but the French book is almost completely translated but
5500 need some proof reading.</p>
5501
5502 <p>The book is also available in PDF, ePub and MOBI formats from
5503 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
5504 github project page</a>.  Note the ePub and MOBI versions have some
5505 formatting problems I believe is due to bugs in the docbook tool
5506 dbtoepub (Debian BTS issues
5507 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795842">#795842</a>
5508 and
5509 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=796871">#796871</a>),
5510 but I have not taken the time to investigate.  I recommend the PDF and
5511 ePub version for now, as they seem to show up fine in the viewers I
5512 have available.</p>
5513
5514 <p>After the translation to Norwegian Bokmål was complete, I was able
5515 to secure some sponsoring from
5516 <a href="http://www.nuugfoundation.no/">the NUUG Foundation</a> to
5517 print the book.  This is the reason their logo is located on the back
5518 cover. I am very grateful for their contribution, and will use it to
5519 give a copy of the Norwegian edition to members of the Norwegian
5520 Parliament and other decision makers here in Norway.</p>
5521
5522       </div>
5523       <div class="tags">
5524
5525
5526         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5527
5528
5529       </div>
5530     </div>
5531     <div class="padding"></div>
5532
5533     <div class="entry">
5534       <div class="title">
5535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lawrence_Lessig_interviewed_Edward_Snowden_a_year_ago.html">Lawrence Lessig interviewed Edward Snowden a year ago</a>
5536       </div>
5537       <div class="date">
5538         19th October 2015
5539       </div>
5540       <div class="body">
5541         <p>Last year, <a href="https://lessig2016.us/">US president candidate
5542 in the Democratic Party</a> Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden.  The
5543 one hour interview was
5544 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Sr96TFQQE">published by
5545 Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube</a>, and the meeting took
5546 place 2014-10-20.</p>
5547
5548 <p>The questions are very good, and there is lots of useful
5549 information to be learned and very interesting issues to think about
5550 being raised.  Please check it out.</p>
5551
5552 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o_Sr96TFQQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
5553
5554 <p>I find it especially interesting to hear again that Snowden did try
5555 to bring up his reservations through the official channels without any
5556 luck.  It is in sharp contrast to the answers made 2013-11-06 by the
5557 Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg to the Norwegian Parliament,
5558 <a href="https://tale.holderdeord.no/speeches/s131106/68">claiming
5559 Snowden is no Whistle-Blower</a> because he should have taken up his
5560 concerns internally and using official channels.  It make me sad
5561 that this is the political leadership we have here in Norway.</p>
5562
5563       </div>
5564       <div class="tags">
5565
5566
5567         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5568
5569
5570       </div>
5571     </div>
5572     <div class="padding"></div>
5573
5574     <div class="entry">
5575       <div class="title">
5576         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aaron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html">The Story of Aaron Swartz - Let us all weep!</a>
5577       </div>
5578       <div class="date">
5579          8th October 2015
5580       </div>
5581       <div class="body">
5582         <p>The movie "<a href="http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy">The
5583 Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz</a>" is both inspiring
5584 and depressing at the same time.  The work of Aaron Swartz has
5585 inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he
5586 was able to initiate or complete.  I wish I am able to do as much good
5587 in my life as he did in his.  Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is
5588 inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on
5589 improving the society and this world.  And it is depressing in
5590 documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is
5591 corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for
5592 downloading too many scientific articles.  Aaron is dead.  Let us all
5593 weep.</p>
5594
5595 <p>The movie is also available on
5596 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58">Youtube</a>.  I
5597 wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to
5598 my parents.</p>
5599
5600       </div>
5601       <div class="tags">
5602
5603
5604         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5605
5606
5607       </div>
5608     </div>
5609     <div class="padding"></div>
5610
5611     <div class="entry">
5612       <div class="title">
5613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html">French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</a>
5614       </div>
5615       <div class="date">
5616          1st October 2015
5617       </div>
5618       <div class="body">
5619         <p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
5620 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
5621 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
5622 reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
5623 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
5624 developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
5625 to try to create a French version of the book.  He started with the
5626 French translation available from the
5627 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
5628 pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
5629 the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
5630 to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition.  We meet
5631 on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
5632 channel</a> to discuss the work.  If you want to help create a French
5633 edition, check out
5634 <a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
5635 repository</a> and join us on IRC.  If the French edition look good,
5636 we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com.  A French version of
5637 the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
5638
5639       </div>
5640       <div class="tags">
5641
5642
5643         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5644
5645
5646       </div>
5647     </div>
5648     <div class="padding"></div>
5649
5650     <div class="entry">
5651       <div class="title">
5652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
5653       </div>
5654       <div class="date">
5655         24th September 2015
5656       </div>
5657       <div class="body">
5658         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
5659 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
5660 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
5661 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
5662 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
5663 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
5664 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
5665
5666 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
5667
5668 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
5669 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
5670 by someone else.  I found
5671 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
5672 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
5673 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
5674 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
5675 from him.  Via
5676 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
5677 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
5678 discovered
5679 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
5680 available in Debian.</p>
5681
5682 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
5683 battery stats ever since. Now my
5684 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
5685 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
5686 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
5687 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
5688
5689 <pre>
5690 #!/bin/sh
5691 # Inspired by
5692 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
5693 # See also
5694 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
5695 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
5696
5697 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
5698     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
5699
5700 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
5701     (
5702         printf "timestamp,"
5703         for f in $files; do
5704             printf "%s," $f
5705         done
5706         echo
5707     ) > "$logfile"
5708 fi
5709
5710 log_battery() {
5711     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
5712     # when several log processes run in parallel.
5713     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
5714         for f in $files; do \
5715             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
5716         done)
5717     echo "$msg"
5718 }
5719
5720 cd /sys/class/power_supply
5721
5722 for bat in BAT*; do
5723     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
5724 done
5725 </pre>
5726
5727 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
5728 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
5729 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
5730 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
5731 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
5732 The code for the Debian package
5733 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
5734 available on github</a>.</p>
5735
5736 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
5737
5738 <pre>
5739 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
5740 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
5741 [...]
5742 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
5743 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
5744 </pre>
5745
5746 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
5747 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
5748 battery.</p>
5749
5750 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
5751 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
5752 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
5753 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
5754 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
5755 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
5756 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
5757 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
5758 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
5759 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
5760 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
5761 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
5762 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
5763 Linux too.</p>
5764
5765 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
5766 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
5767 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
5768 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
5769 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
5770 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
5771 load).</p>
5772
5773 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
5774 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
5775 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
5776 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
5777 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
5778 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
5779 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
5780 those.</p>
5781
5782 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
5783 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
5784 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
5785 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
5786 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
5787 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
5788 specific.</p>
5789
5790       </div>
5791       <div class="tags">
5792
5793
5794         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>.
5795
5796
5797       </div>
5798     </div>
5799     <div class="padding"></div>
5800
5801     <div class="entry">
5802       <div class="title">
5803         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
5804       </div>
5805       <div class="date">
5806          3rd September 2015
5807       </div>
5808       <div class="body">
5809         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
5810 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
5811 the
5812 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
5813 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
5814 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
5815 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
5816
5817 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
5818 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
5819 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
5820 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
5821 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
5822 version.  Not only did he create a
5823 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
5824 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
5825 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
5826 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
5827 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
5828 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
5829 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
5830 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
5831 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
5832 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
5833
5834 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
5835 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
5836 current english version look like this:</p>
5837
5838 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
5839
5840 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
5841 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
5842 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
5843 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
5844 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
5845
5846 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
5847 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
5848 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
5849 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
5850 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
5851 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
5852
5853       </div>
5854       <div class="tags">
5855
5856
5857         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5858
5859
5860       </div>
5861     </div>
5862     <div class="padding"></div>
5863
5864     <div class="entry">
5865       <div class="title">
5866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
5867       </div>
5868       <div class="date">
5869         19th August 2015
5870       </div>
5871       <div class="body">
5872         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
5873 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
5874 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
5875 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
5876 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
5877 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
5878 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
5879 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
5880 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
5881 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
5882 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
5883 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
5884 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
5885 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
5886 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
5887 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
5888 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
5889
5890 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
5891 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
5892 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
5893 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
5894 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
5895 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
5896
5897       </div>
5898       <div class="tags">
5899
5900
5901         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5902
5903
5904       </div>
5905     </div>
5906     <div class="padding"></div>
5907
5908     <div class="entry">
5909       <div class="title">
5910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
5911       </div>
5912       <div class="date">
5913          9th August 2015
5914       </div>
5915       <div class="body">
5916         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
5917 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
5918 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
5919 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
5920 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
5921 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
5922 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
5923 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
5924 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
5925
5926 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
5927 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
5928 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
5929 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
5930 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
5931
5932 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
5933 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
5934 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
5935 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
5936 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
5937 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
5938
5939 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
5940 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
5941 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
5942 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
5943 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
5944 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
5945 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
5946 bring the prize down further.</p>
5947
5948 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
5949 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
5950 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
5951 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
5952 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
5953 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
5954 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
5955 to the task.</p>
5956
5957 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
5958 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
5959 status can as usual be found on
5960 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
5961 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
5962 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
5963 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
5964 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
5965 formatting.</p>
5966
5967 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
5968 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
5969 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
5970 result in a few months.</p>
5971
5972       </div>
5973       <div class="tags">
5974
5975
5976         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5977
5978
5979       </div>
5980     </div>
5981     <div class="padding"></div>
5982
5983     <div class="entry">
5984       <div class="title">
5985         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
5986       </div>
5987       <div class="date">
5988         16th July 2015
5989       </div>
5990       <div class="body">
5991         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
5992 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
5993 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
5994 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
5995 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
5996 chapter.  Based on the
5997 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
5998 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
5999 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
6000 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
6001 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
6002 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
6003 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
6004 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
6005
6006 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
6007 and add this text there:</p>
6008
6009 <pre>
6010 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
6011 </pre>
6012
6013 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
6014 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
6015 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
6016
6017 <pre>
6018 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6019 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6020   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
6021     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
6022 \usepackage{endnotes}
6023 \let\footnote=\endnote
6024 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
6025 \begin{document}
6026     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
6027   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
6028 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6029 </pre>
6030
6031 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
6032 this:</p>
6033
6034 <pre>
6035 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
6036 </pre>
6037
6038 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
6039 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
6040 book project</a> is located.</p>
6041
6042       </div>
6043       <div class="tags">
6044
6045
6046         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
6047
6048
6049       </div>
6050     </div>
6051     <div class="padding"></div>
6052
6053     <div class="entry">
6054       <div class="title">
6055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
6056       </div>
6057       <div class="date">
6058          7th July 2015
6059       </div>
6060       <div class="body">
6061         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
6062 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
6063 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
6064 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
6065 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
6066 does not.</p>
6067
6068 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
6069 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
6070 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
6071 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
6072
6073 <p><blockquote>
6074
6075 <p>According to
6076 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
6077 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
6078 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
6079 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
6080 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
6081 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
6082
6083 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
6084 PDF named
6085 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
6086 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
6087 fees:</p>
6088
6089 <ul>
6090  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
6091   <ul>
6092    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
6093      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
6094      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
6095      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
6096
6097    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
6098      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
6099   </ul></li>
6100
6101  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
6102   <ul>
6103    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
6104      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
6105      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
6106
6107    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
6108      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
6109   </ul></li>
6110 </ul>
6111
6112 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
6113 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
6114 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
6115 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
6116 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
6117 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
6118
6119 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
6120 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
6121 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
6122 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
6123 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
6124 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
6125 access to personalized services?</p>
6126
6127 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
6128 Internet.</p>
6129 </blockquote></p>
6130
6131 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
6132 with the MPEG LA:</p>
6133
6134 <p><blockquote>
6135 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
6136 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
6137
6138 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
6139 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
6140 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
6141 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
6142 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
6143 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
6144 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
6145
6146 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
6147 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
6148 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
6149 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
6150 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
6151 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
6152 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
6153 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
6154 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
6155 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
6156 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
6157 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
6158
6159 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
6160 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
6161 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
6162 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
6163 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
6164 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
6165 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
6166
6167 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
6168 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
6169 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
6170 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
6171
6172 <p>For your reference, I have attached
6173 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
6174 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
6175 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
6176 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
6177 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
6178 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
6179 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
6180 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
6181 be used for execution.</p>
6182
6183 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
6184 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
6185 free to contact me directly.</p>
6186 </blockquote></p>
6187
6188 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
6189 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
6190 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
6191 But I still had a few questions:</p>
6192
6193 <p><blockquote>
6194 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
6195 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
6196 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
6197 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
6198 typically look similar to this:
6199
6200 <p><blockquote>
6201   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
6202   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
6203   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
6204   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
6205   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
6206   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
6207   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
6208   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
6209 </blockquote></p>
6210
6211 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
6212 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
6213 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
6214 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
6215 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
6216 </blockquote></p>
6217
6218 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
6219 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
6220
6221 <p><blockquote>
6222
6223 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
6224 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
6225 reads:</p>
6226
6227 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
6228 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
6229 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
6230 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
6231 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
6232 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
6233 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
6234 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
6235
6236 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
6237 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
6238 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
6239 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
6240 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
6241 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
6242 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
6243 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
6244
6245 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
6246 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
6247 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
6248 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
6249 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
6250 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
6251 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
6252 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
6253 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
6254
6255 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
6256 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
6257 Norway.</p>
6258
6259 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
6260 assistance, just let me know.</p>
6261 </blockquote></p>
6262
6263 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
6264 asked for more information:</p>
6265
6266 <p><blockquote>
6267
6268 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
6269 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
6270 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
6271 list available from &lt;URL:
6272 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
6273 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
6274 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
6275 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
6276 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
6277
6278 </blockquote></p>
6279
6280 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
6281 in that list:</p>
6282
6283 <p><blockquote>
6284
6285 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
6286 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
6287 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
6288 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
6289 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
6290 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
6291 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
6292 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
6293 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
6294
6295 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
6296 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
6297 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
6298 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
6299 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
6300 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
6301 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
6302 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
6303 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
6304 Portfolio Patents.</p>
6305 </blockquote></p>
6306
6307 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
6308 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
6309 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
6310 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
6311 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
6312 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
6313 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
6314 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
6315 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
6316
6317       </div>
6318       <div class="tags">
6319
6320
6321         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6322
6323
6324       </div>
6325     </div>
6326     <div class="padding"></div>
6327
6328     <div class="entry">
6329       <div class="title">
6330         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
6331       </div>
6332       <div class="date">
6333          5th July 2015
6334       </div>
6335       <div class="body">
6336         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
6337 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
6338 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
6339 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
6340 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
6341 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
6342 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
6343 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
6344 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
6345 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
6346 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
6347
6348 <p>One tip I got was to use the
6349 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
6350 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
6351 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
6352 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
6353 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
6354 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
6355
6356 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
6357 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
6358 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
6359 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
6360 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
6361 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
6362 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
6363 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
6364 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
6365 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
6366 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
6367 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
6368 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
6369 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
6370 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
6371
6372 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
6373 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
6374 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
6375 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
6376
6377 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
6378 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
6379
6380 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
6381 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
6382 different
6383 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
6384 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
6385
6386       </div>
6387       <div class="tags">
6388
6389
6390         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>.
6391
6392
6393       </div>
6394     </div>
6395     <div class="padding"></div>
6396
6397     <div class="entry">
6398       <div class="title">
6399         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
6400       </div>
6401       <div class="date">
6402          3rd July 2015
6403       </div>
6404       <div class="body">
6405         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
6406 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
6407 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
6408 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
6409 flickering.</p>
6410
6411 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
6412 still as
6413 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
6414 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
6415 good help from
6416 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
6417 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
6418 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
6419 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
6420 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
6421 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
6422 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
6423 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
6424 deteriorated since X41.</p>
6425
6426 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
6427 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
6428 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
6429 have suggestions.</p>
6430
6431 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
6432 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
6433 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
6434
6435       </div>
6436       <div class="tags">
6437
6438
6439         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>.
6440
6441
6442       </div>
6443     </div>
6444     <div class="padding"></div>
6445
6446     <div class="entry">
6447       <div class="title">
6448         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
6449       </div>
6450       <div class="date">
6451          2nd July 2015
6452       </div>
6453       <div class="body">
6454         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
6455 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
6456 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
6457 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
6458 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
6459 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
6460 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
6461 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
6462 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
6463 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
6464 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
6465 Youtube too</a>.</p>
6466
6467 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
6468 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
6469 pages</a> to view them.</p>
6470
6471 <ul>
6472
6473   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
6474       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
6475
6476   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
6477
6478   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
6479       (Olav Helland)</li>
6480
6481   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
6482       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
6483
6484   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
6485
6486   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
6487
6488   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
6489       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
6490
6491   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
6492
6493   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
6494
6495   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
6496
6497   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
6498
6499   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
6500       Sevens)</li>
6501
6502   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
6503       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
6504
6505   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
6506       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
6507
6508   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
6509       Dyvik)</li>
6510
6511   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
6512
6513 </ul>
6514
6515 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
6516 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
6517 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
6518 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
6519 which sent me on a detour to
6520 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
6521 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
6522 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
6523
6524       </div>
6525       <div class="tags">
6526
6527
6528         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6529
6530
6531       </div>
6532     </div>
6533     <div class="padding"></div>
6534
6535     <div class="entry">
6536       <div class="title">
6537         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
6538       </div>
6539       <div class="date">
6540         15th June 2015
6541       </div>
6542       <div class="body">
6543         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
6544 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
6545 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
6546 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
6547 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
6548 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
6549 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
6550 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
6551 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
6552
6553 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
6554 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
6555 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
6556 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
6557
6558 <pre>
6559 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
6560
6561 real    0m2.841s
6562 user    0m0.184s
6563 sys     0m0.036s
6564 %
6565 </pre>
6566
6567 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
6568 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
6569 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
6570 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
6571 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
6572
6573 <pre>
6574 digraph ownership {
6575 rankdir = LR;
6576 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
6577 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
6578 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
6579 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
6580 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
6581 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
6582 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
6583 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
6584 }
6585 </pre>
6586
6587 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
6588 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
6589 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
6590
6591 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
6592
6593 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
6594 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
6595 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
6596 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
6597 of the ownership links.</p>
6598
6599 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
6600 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
6601
6602 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
6603 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
6604 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
6605 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
6606 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
6607 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
6608 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
6609
6610       </div>
6611       <div class="tags">
6612
6613
6614         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
6615
6616
6617       </div>
6618     </div>
6619     <div class="padding"></div>
6620
6621     <div class="entry">
6622       <div class="title">
6623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
6624       </div>
6625       <div class="date">
6626         11th June 2015
6627       </div>
6628       <div class="body">
6629         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
6630 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
6631 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
6632 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
6633 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
6634 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
6635 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
6636 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
6637 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
6638 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
6639 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
6640 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
6641 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
6642
6643 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
6644 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
6645 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
6646 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
6647 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
6648 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
6649 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
6650 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
6651 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
6652 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
6653
6654 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
6655 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
6656 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
6657 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
6658 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
6659 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
6660 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
6661 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
6662 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
6663
6664 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
6665 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
6666 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
6667 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
6668 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
6669 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
6670 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
6671 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
6672 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
6673 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
6674 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
6675
6676       </div>
6677       <div class="tags">
6678
6679
6680         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6681
6682
6683       </div>
6684     </div>
6685     <div class="padding"></div>
6686
6687     <div class="entry">
6688       <div class="title">
6689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
6690       </div>
6691       <div class="date">
6692         10th May 2015
6693       </div>
6694       <div class="body">
6695         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
6696 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
6697 criminal or not, are
6698 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
6699 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
6700 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
6701 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
6702 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
6703 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
6704 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
6705 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
6706 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
6707 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
6708 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
6709 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
6710 the police.</p>
6711
6712 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
6713 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
6714 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
6715 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
6716 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
6717 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
6718 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
6719 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
6720 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
6721 is good to know that
6722 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
6723 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
6724 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
6725 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
6726 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
6727 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
6728 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
6729 business getting access to that information.</p>
6730
6731 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
6732 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
6733 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
6734 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
6735 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
6736 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
6737 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
6738
6739 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
6740 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
6741 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
6742 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
6743
6744 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
6745 really could make such decision, I wrote
6746 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
6747 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
6748 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
6749
6750       </div>
6751       <div class="tags">
6752
6753
6754         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6755
6756
6757       </div>
6758     </div>
6759     <div class="padding"></div>
6760
6761     <div class="entry">
6762       <div class="title">
6763         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
6764       </div>
6765       <div class="date">
6766          1st May 2015
6767       </div>
6768       <div class="body">
6769         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
6770 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
6771 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
6772 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
6773 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
6774 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
6775 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
6776
6777 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
6778 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
6779 the 2012 numbers are from
6780 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
6781 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
6782 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
6783 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
6784 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
6785
6786 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
6787 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
6788 enough.  See for example a
6789 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
6790 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
6791 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
6792 to get the storage requirements.</p>
6793
6794 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
6795 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
6796 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
6797 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
6798 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
6799
6800 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
6801 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
6802 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
6803 and large organisations:</p>
6804
6805 <table border="1">
6806 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
6807 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
6808 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
6809 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
6810 </table>
6811
6812 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
6813 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
6814 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
6815 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
6816 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
6817 collecting the data?</p>
6818
6819       </div>
6820       <div class="tags">
6821
6822
6823         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6824
6825
6826       </div>
6827     </div>
6828     <div class="padding"></div>
6829
6830     <div class="entry">
6831       <div class="title">
6832         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
6833       </div>
6834       <div class="date">
6835         26th April 2015
6836       </div>
6837       <div class="body">
6838         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
6839 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
6840 announcement today</a>:</p>
6841
6842 <pre>
6843 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
6844 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
6845 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
6846 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
6847
6848 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
6849 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
6850 later today ;)
6851
6852 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
6853 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
6854 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
6855 be possible and encouraged!
6856
6857 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
6858 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
6859
6860 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
6861 operating system for schools, universities and other
6862 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
6863 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
6864 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
6865 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
6866 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
6867 days.
6868
6869 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
6870 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
6871 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
6872 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
6873
6874 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
6875 installation instructions are available, including detailed
6876 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
6877 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
6878 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
6879 least 5 characters!
6880
6881 == Where to download ==
6882
6883 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
6884 can be downloaded at the following locations:
6885
6886     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
6887     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
6888
6889 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
6890
6891 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
6892 available, with more software included (saving additional download
6893 time):
6894
6895     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
6896     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
6897
6898 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
6899
6900 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
6901 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
6902 options.
6903
6904 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
6905
6906 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
6907 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
6908
6909 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
6910 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
6911 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
6912 online version of the translated manual.
6913
6914 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
6915 release notes and the installation manual:
6916 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
6917 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
6918
6919
6920 == Errata / known problems ==
6921
6922     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
6923     DHCP (#780461).
6924
6925     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
6926
6927 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
6928 hostname immediately.
6929
6930 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
6931 more current and complete list.
6932
6933 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
6934
6935 === Software updates ===
6936
6937 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
6938
6939  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
6940    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
6941    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
6942
6943  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
6944    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
6945    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
6946    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
6947      the others see the manual.
6948  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
6949  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
6950  * GOsa 2.7.4
6951  * LTSP 5.5.4
6952  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
6953  * new boot framework: systemd
6954  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
6955  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
6956  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
6957  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
6958  * golearn 0.9
6959  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
6960  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
6961  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
6962  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
6963    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
6964
6965 === Installation changes ===
6966
6967     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
6968     for the hardware present.
6969
6970 === Fixed bugs ===
6971
6972 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
6973 from a user perspective:
6974
6975  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
6976    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
6977    information is corrected (710362)
6978
6979  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
6980
6981 === Sugar desktop removed ===
6982
6983 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
6984 available in Debian Edu jessie.
6985
6986
6987 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
6988
6989 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
6990 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6991 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
6992 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6993 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6994 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6995 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
6996 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
6997 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
6998 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
6999 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
7000 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
7001 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
7002 environment.
7003
7004 == About Debian ==
7005
7006 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
7007 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
7008 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
7009 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
7010 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
7011 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
7012 operating system.
7013
7014 == Thanks ==
7015
7016 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
7017 You rock.
7018 </pre>
7019
7020       </div>
7021       <div class="tags">
7022
7023
7024         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7025
7026
7027       </div>
7028     </div>
7029     <div class="padding"></div>
7030
7031     <div class="entry">
7032       <div class="title">
7033         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
7034       </div>
7035       <div class="date">
7036         15th April 2015
7037       </div>
7038       <div class="body">
7039         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
7040 computer system for schools I've involved in,
7041 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
7042 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
7043 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
7044 Agarwal.</p>
7045
7046 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7047
7048 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
7049 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
7050 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
7051 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
7052 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
7053 few software start-ups as well.</p>
7054
7055 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7056 project?</strong></p>
7057
7058 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
7059 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
7060 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
7061 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
7062 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
7063 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
7064 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
7065
7066 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7067 Edu?</strong></p>
7068
7069 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
7070 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
7071 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
7072 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
7073 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
7074 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
7075 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
7076 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
7077
7078 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
7079 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
7080 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
7081 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
7082 for the developer per-se.</p>
7083
7084 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7085 Edu?</strong></p>
7086
7087 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
7088 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
7089 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
7090
7091 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
7092 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
7093 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
7094 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
7095 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
7096 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
7097 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
7098
7099 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
7100 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
7101 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
7102
7103 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
7104 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
7105 interactive manner. While sites such as the
7106 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
7107 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
7108 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
7109 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
7110 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
7111 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
7112 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
7113 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
7114 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
7115 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
7116 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
7117
7118 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
7119 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
7120 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
7121 also be used.</p>
7122
7123 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
7124 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
7125 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
7126 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
7127 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
7128 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
7129 the user's input.</p>
7130
7131 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
7132 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
7133 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
7134 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
7135 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
7136 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
7137 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
7138 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
7139
7140 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
7141 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
7142 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
7143 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
7144 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
7145 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
7146 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
7147 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
7148
7149 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7150
7151 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
7152 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
7153 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
7154 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
7155 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
7156
7157 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7158 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7159
7160 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
7161 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
7162 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
7163 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
7164 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
7165 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
7166
7167 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
7168 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
7169 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
7170 well.</p>
7171
7172 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
7173 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
7174 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
7175 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
7176
7177 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
7178 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
7179 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
7180 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
7181 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
7182 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
7183 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
7184 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
7185 releases.</p>
7186
7187 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
7188 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
7189 is aimed at.
7190
7191 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
7192 around 2 years, and
7193 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
7194 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
7195 there was :</p>
7196
7197 <ol>
7198
7199   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
7200    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
7201    portion/syllabus given.</li>
7202
7203   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
7204    is in the syllabus.</li>
7205
7206   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
7207    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
7208    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
7209    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
7210    as recognizable as say a
7211    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
7212    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
7213    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
7214    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
7215    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
7216    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
7217
7218 </ol>
7219
7220       </div>
7221       <div class="tags">
7222
7223
7224         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7225
7226
7227       </div>
7228     </div>
7229     <div class="padding"></div>
7230
7231     <div class="entry">
7232       <div class="title">
7233         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
7234       </div>
7235       <div class="date">
7236          7th April 2015
7237       </div>
7238       <div class="body">
7239         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
7240 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
7241 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
7242
7243 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
7244 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
7245 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
7246 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
7247 part of my involvement with the
7248 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
7249 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
7250 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
7251 Hackathon with our friends
7252 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
7253 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
7254 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
7255 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
7256
7257 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
7258 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
7259
7260       </div>
7261       <div class="tags">
7262
7263
7264         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
7265
7266
7267       </div>
7268     </div>
7269     <div class="padding"></div>
7270
7271     <div class="entry">
7272       <div class="title">
7273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
7274       </div>
7275       <div class="date">
7276          4th April 2015
7277       </div>
7278       <div class="body">
7279         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
7280 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7281 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7282 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
7283 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
7284 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
7285 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
7286 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
7287 project pages.  You can also check out the
7288 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
7289 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7290 and HTML version available in the
7291 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
7292 directory</a>.</p>
7293
7294 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
7295 you find any.</p>
7296
7297       </div>
7298       <div class="tags">
7299
7300
7301         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7302
7303
7304       </div>
7305     </div>
7306     <div class="padding"></div>
7307
7308     <div class="entry">
7309       <div class="title">
7310         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
7311       </div>
7312       <div class="date">
7313          9th March 2015
7314       </div>
7315       <div class="body">
7316         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
7317 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
7318 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
7319 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
7320 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
7321 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
7322 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
7323 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
7324 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
7325 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
7326 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
7327 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
7328 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
7329 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
7330
7331 <p>The list of NUUG videos
7332 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
7333 include things like a
7334 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
7335 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
7336 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
7337 re-implementation</a>, the
7338 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
7339 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
7340 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
7341 video</A> and many others.</p>
7342
7343 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
7344 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
7345 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
7346 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
7347 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
7348 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
7349 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
7350 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
7351 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
7352 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
7353
7354 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
7355 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
7356 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
7357 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
7358 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
7359 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
7360 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
7361 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
7362 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
7363 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
7364
7365       </div>
7366       <div class="tags">
7367
7368
7369         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7370
7371
7372       </div>
7373     </div>
7374     <div class="padding"></div>
7375
7376     <div class="entry">
7377       <div class="title">
7378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
7379       </div>
7380       <div class="date">
7381         28th February 2015
7382       </div>
7383       <div class="body">
7384         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
7385 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
7386 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
7387 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
7388 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
7389 made for
7390 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
7391 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
7392 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
7393 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
7394 a friend have
7395 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
7396 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
7397 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
7398 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
7399 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
7400 it happen ourselves.
7401 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
7402 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
7403 is.</p>
7404
7405 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
7406 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
7407
7408       </div>
7409       <div class="tags">
7410
7411
7412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7413
7414
7415       </div>
7416     </div>
7417     <div class="padding"></div>
7418
7419     <div class="entry">
7420       <div class="title">
7421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
7422       </div>
7423       <div class="date">
7424         25th February 2015
7425       </div>
7426       <div class="body">
7427         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
7428 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
7429 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
7430 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
7431 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
7432 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
7433 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
7434 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
7435 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
7436 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
7437 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
7438 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
7439 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
7440 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
7441 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
7442 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
7443 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
7444
7445 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
7446 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
7447 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
7448 with VLC.</p>
7449
7450 <ul>
7451   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
7452   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
7453 </ul>
7454
7455 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
7456 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
7457 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
7458 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
7459 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
7460 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
7461 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
7462
7463 <blockquote><pre>
7464 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
7465  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
7466  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
7467 </pre></blockquote>
7468
7469 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
7470 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
7471 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
7472 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
7473
7474       </div>
7475       <div class="tags">
7476
7477
7478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7479
7480
7481       </div>
7482     </div>
7483     <div class="padding"></div>
7484
7485     <div class="entry">
7486       <div class="title">
7487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
7488       </div>
7489       <div class="date">
7490         10th February 2015
7491       </div>
7492       <div class="body">
7493         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
7494 that
7495 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
7496 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
7497 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
7498 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
7499 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
7500 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
7501 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
7502 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
7503 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
7504 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
7505 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
7506 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
7507 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
7508 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
7509 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
7510
7511 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
7512 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
7513 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
7514 controversy about these scanners.</p>
7515
7516 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
7517 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
7518 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
7519
7520       </div>
7521       <div class="tags">
7522
7523
7524         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
7525
7526
7527       </div>
7528     </div>
7529     <div class="padding"></div>
7530
7531     <div class="entry">
7532       <div class="title">
7533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
7534       </div>
7535       <div class="date">
7536          8th February 2015
7537       </div>
7538       <div class="body">
7539         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
7540 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
7541 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
7542 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
7543 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
7544 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
7545 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
7546 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
7547 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
7548 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
7549 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
7550 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
7551
7552 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
7553 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
7554 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
7555 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
7556
7557 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
7558 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
7559 distribute the TV content.  The
7560 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
7561 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
7562 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
7563 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
7564 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
7565 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
7566 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
7567 following activity, we now have the schedule
7568 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
7569 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
7570 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
7571 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
7572
7573 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
7574 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
7575 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
7576 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
7577 streams are working as they should.</p>
7578
7579       </div>
7580       <div class="tags">
7581
7582
7583         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7584
7585
7586       </div>
7587     </div>
7588     <div class="padding"></div>
7589
7590     <div class="entry">
7591       <div class="title">
7592         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
7593       </div>
7594       <div class="date">
7595         12th January 2015
7596       </div>
7597       <div class="body">
7598         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
7599 Foundation</a> announced a new video
7600 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
7601 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
7602 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
7603 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
7604 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
7605 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
7606
7607 <p>But today I was told that
7608 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
7609 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
7610 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
7611 available in
7612 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
7613 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
7614 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
7615
7616 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
7617 Libreplanet
7618 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
7619 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
7620
7621       </div>
7622       <div class="tags">
7623
7624
7625         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7626
7627
7628       </div>
7629     </div>
7630     <div class="padding"></div>
7631
7632     <div class="entry">
7633       <div class="title">
7634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
7635       </div>
7636       <div class="date">
7637         30th December 2014
7638       </div>
7639       <div class="body">
7640         <p>I am very happy that we in the
7641 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
7642 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
7643 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
7644 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
7645 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
7646 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
7647 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
7648 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
7649 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
7650 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
7651
7652 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
7653 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
7654 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
7655 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
7656 reports in public.</p>
7657
7658       </div>
7659       <div class="tags">
7660
7661
7662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7663
7664
7665       </div>
7666     </div>
7667     <div class="padding"></div>
7668
7669     <div class="entry">
7670       <div class="title">
7671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
7672       </div>
7673       <div class="date">
7674         19th December 2014
7675       </div>
7676       <div class="body">
7677         <p>So, Sony caved in
7678 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
7679 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
7680 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
7681 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
7682 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
7683 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
7684 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
7685 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
7686 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
7687 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
7688 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
7689 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
7690 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
7691
7692 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
7693 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
7694 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
7695 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
7696
7697 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
7698 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
7699 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
7700 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
7701 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
7702 income. :)</p>
7703
7704       </div>
7705       <div class="tags">
7706
7707
7708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7709
7710
7711       </div>
7712     </div>
7713     <div class="padding"></div>
7714
7715     <div class="entry">
7716       <div class="title">
7717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
7718       </div>
7719       <div class="date">
7720         22nd November 2014
7721       </div>
7722       <div class="body">
7723         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
7724 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
7725 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
7726 courtesy of
7727 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
7728 Schubert</a> and
7729 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
7730 McVittie</a>.
7731
7732 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
7733 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
7734 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
7735 you upgrade:</p>
7736
7737 <p><blockquote><pre>
7738 Package: systemd-sysv
7739 Pin: release o=Debian
7740 Pin-Priority: -1
7741 </pre></blockquote><p>
7742
7743 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
7744 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
7745 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
7746 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
7747 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
7748
7749 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
7750 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
7751 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
7752 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
7753 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
7754 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
7755
7756 <p><blockquote><pre>
7757 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
7758 </pre></blockquote><p>
7759
7760 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
7761
7762 <p><blockquote><pre>
7763 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
7764 </pre></blockquote><p>
7765
7766 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
7767 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
7768
7769 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
7770 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
7771 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
7772 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
7773 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
7774 Jessie is released.</p>
7775
7776 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
7777 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
7778 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
7779 line.</p>
7780
7781       </div>
7782       <div class="tags">
7783
7784
7785         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>.
7786
7787
7788       </div>
7789     </div>
7790     <div class="padding"></div>
7791
7792     <div class="entry">
7793       <div class="title">
7794         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
7795       </div>
7796       <div class="date">
7797         10th November 2014
7798       </div>
7799       <div class="body">
7800         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
7801 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
7802 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
7803
7804 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
7805 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
7806 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
7807 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
7808 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
7809 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
7810 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
7811 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
7812 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
7813 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
7814 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
7815 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
7816 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
7817 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
7818 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
7819
7820 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
7821 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
7822 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
7823 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
7824 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
7825 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
7826 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
7827 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
7828 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
7829 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
7830 were fairly easy, and
7831 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
7832 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
7833 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
7834 useful approach.</p>
7835
7836 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
7837 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
7838 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
7839 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
7840 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
7841 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
7842 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
7843 this:</p>
7844
7845 <p><blockquote><pre>
7846 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
7847   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
7848 </pre></blockquote></p>
7849
7850 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
7851 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
7852
7853 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
7854 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
7855 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
7856 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
7857 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
7858 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
7859 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
7860 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
7861 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
7862 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
7863 system.</p>
7864
7865 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
7866 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
7867 SMTorP. :)</p>
7868
7869       </div>
7870       <div class="tags">
7871
7872
7873         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7874
7875
7876       </div>
7877     </div>
7878     <div class="padding"></div>
7879
7880     <div class="entry">
7881       <div class="title">
7882         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
7883       </div>
7884       <div class="date">
7885         27th October 2014
7886       </div>
7887       <div class="body">
7888         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
7889 sent out
7890 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
7891 announcement</a>:</p>
7892
7893 <pre>
7894 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
7895 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
7896
7897 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
7898 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
7899 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
7900 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
7901 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
7902 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
7903 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
7904
7905 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
7906 installation instructions are available, including detailed
7907 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
7908 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
7909 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
7910 of at least 5 characters!
7911
7912  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
7913
7914 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
7915 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
7916 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
7917 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
7918 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
7919
7920 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
7921 mostly in Germany and Norway.
7922
7923 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
7924 ===============================
7925
7926 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
7927 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
7928 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
7929 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
7930 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
7931 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
7932 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
7933 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
7934 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
7935 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
7936 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
7937 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
7938 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
7939 environment.
7940
7941  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
7942  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
7943
7944 Full release notes and manual
7945 =============================
7946
7947 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
7948 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
7949 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
7950 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
7951 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
7952
7953  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
7954  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
7955
7956 Where to get it
7957 ---------------
7958
7959 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
7960
7961  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
7962  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
7963  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
7964
7965 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
7966
7967 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
7968 ===============================================================================
7969
7970
7971 Installation changes
7972 --------------------
7973
7974  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
7975
7976 Software updates
7977 ----------------
7978
7979 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
7980
7981  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
7982  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
7983    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
7984    choose one of the others see manual.)
7985  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
7986  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
7987  * GOsa 2.7.4
7988  * LTSP 5.5.4
7989  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
7990  * new boot framework: systemd
7991  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
7992  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
7993  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
7994  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
7995  * golearn 0.9
7996  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
7997  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
7998  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
7999    installation.
8000  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
8001    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
8002
8003  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
8004  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
8005
8006 Fixed bugs
8007 ----------
8008
8009  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
8010    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
8011    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
8012  * and many others.
8013
8014 Documentation and translation updates
8015 -------------------------------------
8016
8017  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
8018    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
8019    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
8020
8021 Other changes
8022 -------------
8023
8024  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
8025    server takes more time.
8026  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
8027    doesn't work.
8028
8029 Regressions / known problems
8030 ----------------------------
8031
8032  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
8033    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
8034    and Debian bug #762103).
8035  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
8036    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
8037  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
8038    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
8039    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
8040
8041 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
8042
8043  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
8044
8045 How to report bugs
8046 ------------------
8047
8048 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
8049
8050 About Debian
8051 ============
8052
8053 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
8054 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
8055 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
8056 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
8057 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
8058 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
8059 operating system.
8060
8061 Contact Information
8062 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
8063 mail to press@debian.org.
8064
8065  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
8066 </pre>
8067
8068       </div>
8069       <div class="tags">
8070
8071
8072         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8073
8074
8075       </div>
8076     </div>
8077     <div class="padding"></div>
8078
8079     <div class="entry">
8080       <div class="title">
8081         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
8082       </div>
8083       <div class="date">
8084         23rd October 2014
8085       </div>
8086       <div class="body">
8087         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
8088 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
8089 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
8090 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
8091 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
8092 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
8093 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
8094 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
8095 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
8096 live.</p>
8097
8098 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
8099 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
8100 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
8101 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
8102 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
8103 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
8104 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
8105 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
8106
8107       </div>
8108       <div class="tags">
8109
8110
8111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8112
8113
8114       </div>
8115     </div>
8116     <div class="padding"></div>
8117
8118     <div class="entry">
8119       <div class="title">
8120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
8121       </div>
8122       <div class="date">
8123         22nd October 2014
8124       </div>
8125       <div class="body">
8126         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
8127 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
8128 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
8129 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
8130 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
8131 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
8132 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
8133 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
8134 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
8135 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
8136 lists I recently took over:</p>
8137
8138 <p><blockquote><pre>
8139 % time listadmin xiph
8140 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
8141 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
8142
8143 real    0m1.709s
8144 user    0m0.232s
8145 sys     0m0.012s
8146 %
8147 </pre></blockquote></p>
8148
8149 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
8150 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
8151 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
8152 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
8153 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
8154 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
8155 program.</p>
8156
8157 <p>If you install
8158 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
8159 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
8160 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
8161
8162 <p><blockquote><pre>
8163 username username@example.org
8164 spamlevel 23
8165 default discard
8166 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
8167
8168 password secret
8169 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
8170 mailman-list@lists.example.com
8171
8172 password hidden
8173 other-list@otherserver.example.org
8174 </pre></blockquote></p>
8175
8176 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
8177 learn the details.</p>
8178
8179 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
8180 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
8181 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
8182 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
8183
8184 <p><blockquote><pre>
8185 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
8186 </pre></blockquote></p>
8187
8188 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
8189 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
8190 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
8191 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
8192 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
8193 email.</p>
8194
8195 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
8196 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
8197 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
8198 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
8199 software.</p>
8200
8201 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8202 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8203 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8204
8205 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
8206 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
8207 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
8208 sure why.</p>
8209
8210       </div>
8211       <div class="tags">
8212
8213
8214         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
8215
8216
8217       </div>
8218     </div>
8219     <div class="padding"></div>
8220
8221     <div class="entry">
8222       <div class="title">
8223         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
8224       </div>
8225       <div class="date">
8226         17th October 2014
8227       </div>
8228       <div class="body">
8229         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
8230 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
8231 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
8232 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
8233 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
8234 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
8235 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
8236
8237 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
8238 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
8239 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
8240 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
8241 of this story.)</p>
8242
8243 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
8244 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
8245 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
8246 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
8247 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
8248 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
8249 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
8250 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
8251 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
8252 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
8253
8254 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
8255 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
8256 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
8257 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
8258
8259 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
8260 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
8261
8262 <p><blockquote><pre>
8263 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
8264 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
8265 </pre></blockquote></p>
8266
8267 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
8268 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
8269 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
8270 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
8271 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
8272 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
8273 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
8274 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
8275
8276 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
8277 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
8278
8279 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
8280 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
8281 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
8282 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
8283 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
8284
8285 <p><blockquote><pre>
8286 Task: isenkram-packages
8287 Section: hardware
8288 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8289  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
8290  proposed.
8291 Test-new-install: show show
8292 Relevance: 8
8293 Packages: for-current-hardware
8294
8295 Task: isenkram-firmware
8296 Section: hardware
8297 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8298  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
8299  packages are proposed.
8300 Test-new-install: mark show
8301 Relevance: 8
8302 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
8303 </pre></blockquote></p>
8304
8305 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
8306 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
8307 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
8308 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
8309 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
8310
8311 <p><blockquote><pre>
8312 #!/bin/sh
8313 #
8314 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
8315 export PATH
8316 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
8317 </pre></blockquote></p>
8318
8319 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
8320 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
8321
8322 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
8323 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
8324 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
8325 install.</p>
8326
8327 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
8328 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
8329 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
8330
8331       </div>
8332       <div class="tags">
8333
8334
8335         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
8336
8337
8338       </div>
8339     </div>
8340     <div class="padding"></div>
8341
8342     <div class="entry">
8343       <div class="title">
8344         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
8345       </div>
8346       <div class="date">
8347          4th October 2014
8348       </div>
8349       <div class="body">
8350         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
8351 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
8352 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
8353 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
8354
8355 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
8356
8357 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
8358 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
8359 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
8360
8361       </div>
8362       <div class="tags">
8363
8364
8365         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>.
8366
8367
8368       </div>
8369     </div>
8370     <div class="padding"></div>
8371
8372     <div class="entry">
8373       <div class="title">
8374         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
8375       </div>
8376       <div class="date">
8377          4th October 2014
8378       </div>
8379       <div class="body">
8380         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
8381 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
8382 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
8383 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
8384 Dibb.</p>
8385
8386 <p>I just wrapped up
8387 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
8388 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
8389 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
8390 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
8391 0.17.</p>
8392
8393 <ul>
8394
8395  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
8396  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
8397    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
8398  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
8399  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
8400  <li>Fix include orders</li>
8401  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
8402  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
8403  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
8404    the palette size is the same.</li>
8405  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
8406  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
8407  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
8408  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
8409    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
8410
8411 </ul>
8412
8413 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
8414 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
8415 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
8416
8417       </div>
8418       <div class="tags">
8419
8420
8421         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/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8422
8423
8424       </div>
8425     </div>
8426     <div class="padding"></div>
8427
8428     <div class="entry">
8429       <div class="title">
8430         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
8431       </div>
8432       <div class="date">
8433         26th September 2014
8434       </div>
8435       <div class="body">
8436         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8437 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
8438 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
8439 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
8440 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
8441 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
8442 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
8443 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
8444 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
8445 future.  The
8446 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
8447 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
8448 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
8449 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
8450 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
8451
8452 <p>First, download the test ISO via
8453 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
8454 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
8455 or rsync (use
8456 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
8457 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
8458 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
8459 install with some tweaking.</p>
8460
8461 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
8462 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
8463
8464 <p><blockquote><pre>
8465 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
8466 </pre></blockquote></p>
8467
8468 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
8469 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
8470 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
8471 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
8472
8473 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
8474 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
8475 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
8476 your need.</p>
8477
8478 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
8479 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
8480 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
8481 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
8482 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
8483 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
8484 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
8485 days.</p>
8486
8487 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
8488 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
8489 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
8490 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
8491 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
8492 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
8493 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
8494 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
8495 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
8496
8497 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
8498 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
8499 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
8500
8501       </div>
8502       <div class="tags">
8503
8504
8505         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>.
8506
8507
8508       </div>
8509     </div>
8510     <div class="padding"></div>
8511
8512     <div class="entry">
8513       <div class="title">
8514         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
8515       </div>
8516       <div class="date">
8517         25th September 2014
8518       </div>
8519       <div class="body">
8520         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
8521 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
8522 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
8523 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
8524 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
8525 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
8526 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
8527 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
8528 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
8529 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
8530 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
8531 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
8532 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
8533
8534 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
8535 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
8536 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
8537 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
8538 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
8539 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
8540 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
8541 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
8542 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
8543 list</a>. :)</p>
8544
8545       </div>
8546       <div class="tags">
8547
8548
8549         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/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8550
8551
8552       </div>
8553     </div>
8554     <div class="padding"></div>
8555
8556     <div class="entry">
8557       <div class="title">
8558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
8559       </div>
8560       <div class="date">
8561         16th September 2014
8562       </div>
8563       <div class="body">
8564         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
8565 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
8566 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
8567 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
8568 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
8569 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
8570 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
8571 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
8572 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
8573 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
8574 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
8575 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
8576 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
8577 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
8578
8579 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
8580 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
8581 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
8582 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
8583 depend on the small and clever package
8584 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
8585 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
8586 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
8587 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
8588 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
8589 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
8590 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
8591 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
8592 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
8593 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
8594 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
8595
8596 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
8597 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
8598 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
8599 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
8600 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
8601 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
8602 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
8603 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
8604 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
8605 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
8606 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
8607 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
8608 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
8609 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
8610 dialog.</p>
8611
8612 <p><table>
8613
8614 <tr>
8615 <th>Machine/setup</th>
8616 <th>Original tasksel</th>
8617 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
8618 <th>Reduction</th>
8619 </tr>
8620
8621 <tr>
8622 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
8623 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
8624 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
8625 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
8626 </tr>
8627
8628 <tr>
8629 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
8630 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
8631 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
8632 <td>23 min 40%</td>
8633 </tr>
8634
8635 <tr>
8636 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
8637 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
8638 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
8639 <td>11 min 50%</td>
8640 </tr>
8641
8642 <tr>
8643 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
8644 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
8645 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
8646 <td>2 min 33%</td>
8647 </tr>
8648
8649 <tr>
8650 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
8651 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
8652 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
8653 <td>4 min 21%</td>
8654 </tr>
8655
8656 </table></p>
8657
8658 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
8659 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
8660 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
8661 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
8662 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
8663 installed.</p>
8664
8665 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
8666 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
8667 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
8668 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
8669 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
8670 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
8671 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
8672 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
8673 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
8674 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
8675 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
8676 for the entire installation.</p>
8677
8678 <p>I've implemented this in the
8679 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
8680 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
8681 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
8682 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
8683 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
8684
8685 <p><blockquote><pre>
8686 #!/bin/sh
8687 set -e
8688 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
8689 info() {
8690     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
8691 }
8692 error() {
8693     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
8694 }
8695 override_install() {
8696     apt-install eatmydata || true
8697     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
8698         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
8699             file=/usr/bin/$bin
8700             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
8701             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
8702                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
8703                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
8704                     > /target$file.edu
8705                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
8706                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
8707                     --rename --quiet --add $file
8708                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
8709             else
8710                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
8711             fi
8712         done
8713     else
8714         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
8715     fi
8716 }
8717
8718 override_install
8719 </pre></blockquote></p>
8720
8721 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
8722 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
8723
8724 <p><blockquote><pre>
8725 #! /bin/sh -e
8726 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
8727 error() {
8728     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
8729 }
8730 remove_install_override() {
8731     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
8732         file=/usr/bin/$bin
8733         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
8734             rm /target$file
8735             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
8736                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
8737             rm /target$file.edu
8738         else
8739             error "Missing divert for $file."
8740         fi
8741     done
8742     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
8743 }
8744
8745 remove_install_override
8746 </pre></blockquote></p>
8747
8748 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
8749 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
8750 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
8751
8752 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
8753 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
8754 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
8755 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
8756 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
8757 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
8758 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
8759 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
8760 everyone.</p>
8761
8762 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
8763 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
8764 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
8765 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
8766
8767 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
8768 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
8769 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
8770 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
8771 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
8772
8773 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
8774 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
8775 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
8776 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
8777 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
8778
8779       </div>
8780       <div class="tags">
8781
8782
8783         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>.
8784
8785
8786       </div>
8787     </div>
8788     <div class="padding"></div>
8789
8790     <div class="entry">
8791       <div class="title">
8792         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
8793       </div>
8794       <div class="date">
8795         10th September 2014
8796       </div>
8797       <div class="body">
8798         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
8799 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
8800 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
8801 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
8802 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
8803 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
8804 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
8805 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
8806 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
8807 those problems are gone now.</p>
8808
8809 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
8810 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
8811 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
8812 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
8813 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
8814
8815 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
8816 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
8817 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
8818
8819 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
8820 line:</p>
8821
8822 <p><blockquote><pre>
8823 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
8824 </pre></blockquote></p>
8825
8826 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
8827 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
8828 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
8829 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
8830
8831 <p><blockquote><pre>
8832 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
8833 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
8834 %
8835 </pre></blockquote></p>
8836
8837 <p>Now if only
8838 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
8839 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
8840 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
8841 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
8842 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
8843 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
8844 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
8845 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
8846 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
8847
8848       </div>
8849       <div class="tags">
8850
8851
8852         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>.
8853
8854
8855       </div>
8856     </div>
8857     <div class="padding"></div>
8858
8859     <div class="entry">
8860       <div class="title">
8861         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
8862       </div>
8863       <div class="date">
8864         25th August 2014
8865       </div>
8866       <div class="body">
8867         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
8868 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
8869 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
8870 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
8871 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
8872 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
8873 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
8874 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
8875 am not sure.
8876 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
8877 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
8878 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
8879 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
8880 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
8881 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
8882 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
8883 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
8884 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
8885 licenses are.</p>
8886
8887 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
8888 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
8889 end user</a>
8890 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
8891 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
8892
8893 <p><blockquote>
8894 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
8895 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
8896
8897 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
8898 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
8899 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
8900 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
8901 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
8902 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
8903 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
8904 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
8905 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
8906 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
8907 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
8908 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
8909 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
8910 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
8911 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
8912 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
8913 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
8914 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
8915
8916 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
8917 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
8918
8919 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
8920 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
8921 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
8922 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
8923 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
8924 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
8925 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
8926 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
8927 </blockquote></p>
8928
8929 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
8930 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
8931
8932 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
8933 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
8934
8935 <p><blockquote>
8936
8937 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
8938 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
8939 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
8940 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
8941 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
8942 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
8943 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
8944 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
8945 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
8946 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
8947 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
8948 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
8949
8950 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
8951 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
8952 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
8953 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
8954 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
8955 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
8956 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
8957 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
8958 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
8959 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
8960 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
8961 additional details.</p>
8962
8963 </blockquote></p>
8964
8965 <p>Some free software like
8966 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
8967 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
8968 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
8969 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
8970
8971       </div>
8972       <div class="tags">
8973
8974
8975         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8976
8977
8978       </div>
8979     </div>
8980     <div class="padding"></div>
8981
8982     <div class="entry">
8983       <div class="title">
8984         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
8985       </div>
8986       <div class="date">
8987         31st July 2014
8988       </div>
8989       <div class="body">
8990         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
8991 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8992 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
8993 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
8994 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
8995 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
8996
8997 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8998
8999 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
9000 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
9001 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
9002 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
9003 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
9004 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
9005 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
9006 works with Windows . :-(</p>
9007
9008 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
9009 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
9010 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
9011 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
9012 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
9013 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
9014
9015 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9016 project?</strong></p>
9017
9018 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
9019 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
9020 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
9021 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
9022 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
9023 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
9024 with this job.</p>
9025
9026 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9027 Edu?</strong></p>
9028
9029 <p>The independence.</p>
9030
9031 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
9032 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
9033 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
9034
9035 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
9036 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
9037 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
9038 working reliable. </p>
9039
9040 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
9041 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
9042 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
9043 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
9044 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
9045 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
9046 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
9047 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
9048
9049 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9050 Edu?</strong></p>
9051
9052 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
9053 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
9054 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
9055
9056 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9057
9058 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
9059 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
9060
9061 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9062 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9063
9064 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
9065 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
9066 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
9067 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
9068 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
9069 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
9070 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
9071
9072       </div>
9073       <div class="tags">
9074
9075
9076         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9077
9078
9079       </div>
9080     </div>
9081     <div class="padding"></div>
9082
9083     <div class="entry">
9084       <div class="title">
9085         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
9086       </div>
9087       <div class="date">
9088         23rd July 2014
9089       </div>
9090       <div class="body">
9091         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
9092 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
9093 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
9094 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
9095 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
9096 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
9097 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
9098 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
9099 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
9100 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
9101 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
9102 the translation show this very well:</p>
9103
9104 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
9105
9106 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
9107 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
9108 project pages and the
9109 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
9110 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
9111 and HTML version available in the
9112 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
9113 directory</a>.</p>
9114
9115 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
9116 you find any.</p>
9117
9118       </div>
9119       <div class="tags">
9120
9121
9122         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9123
9124
9125       </div>
9126     </div>
9127     <div class="padding"></div>
9128
9129     <div class="entry">
9130       <div class="title">
9131         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
9132       </div>
9133       <div class="date">
9134         17th June 2014
9135       </div>
9136       <div class="body">
9137         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9138 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
9139 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
9140 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
9141 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
9142
9143 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
9144 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
9145 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
9146 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
9147 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
9148 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
9149 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
9150 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
9151 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
9152 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
9153 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
9154 goals.</p>
9155
9156 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
9157 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
9158 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
9159 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
9160 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
9161 chapters together into one large web page (aka
9162 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
9163 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
9164 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
9165 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
9166 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
9167 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
9168 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
9169 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
9170 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
9171 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
9172 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
9173 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
9174 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
9175 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
9176 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
9177 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
9178 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
9179 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
9180
9181 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
9182 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
9183 track the English original.  For this we use the
9184 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
9185 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
9186 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
9187 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
9188 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
9189 files), which the translations update with the native language
9190 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
9191 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
9192 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
9193 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
9194 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
9195 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
9196 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
9197 of the documentation.</p>
9198
9199 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
9200 recommend using
9201 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
9202 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
9203 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
9204 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
9205 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
9206 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
9207 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
9208 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
9209
9210 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
9211 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
9212 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
9213 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
9214 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
9215 translated images by storing translated versions in
9216 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
9217 package maintainers know more.</p>
9218
9219 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
9220 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
9221 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
9222 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
9223 PDF version</a> or the
9224 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
9225 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
9226 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
9227
9228 <p>To learn more, check out
9229 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
9230 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
9231 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
9232 manual on the wiki</a> and
9233 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
9234 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
9235
9236       </div>
9237       <div class="tags">
9238
9239
9240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9241
9242
9243       </div>
9244     </div>
9245     <div class="padding"></div>
9246
9247     <div class="entry">
9248       <div class="title">
9249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
9250       </div>
9251       <div class="date">
9252         29th May 2014
9253       </div>
9254       <div class="body">
9255         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
9256 in my car, connected to
9257 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
9258 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
9259 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
9260 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
9261 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
9262 such car computer.</p>
9263
9264 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
9265
9266 <ul>
9267
9268  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
9269
9270  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
9271    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
9272    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
9273    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
9274    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
9275
9276  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
9277    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
9278    route.</li>
9279
9280  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
9281
9282  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
9283    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
9284    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
9285    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
9286    connection do not work.</li>
9287
9288  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
9289    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
9290
9291  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
9292    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
9293
9294  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
9295    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
9296
9297 </ul>
9298
9299 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
9300 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
9301
9302       </div>
9303       <div class="tags">
9304
9305
9306         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9307
9308
9309       </div>
9310     </div>
9311     <div class="padding"></div>
9312
9313     <div class="entry">
9314       <div class="title">
9315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
9316       </div>
9317       <div class="date">
9318         29th April 2014
9319       </div>
9320       <div class="body">
9321         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
9322 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
9323 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
9324 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
9325 newer AVM2 format - see
9326 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
9327 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
9328 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
9329 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
9330 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
9331 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
9332 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
9333 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
9334 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
9335 sites do not work yet.</p>
9336
9337 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
9338 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
9339 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
9340 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
9341 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
9342 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
9343 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
9344 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
9345 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
9346 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
9347 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
9348
9349 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
9350 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
9351 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
9352 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
9353 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
9354 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
9355 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
9356
9357 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
9358 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
9359 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
9360 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
9361 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
9362
9363       </div>
9364       <div class="tags">
9365
9366
9367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9368
9369
9370       </div>
9371     </div>
9372     <div class="padding"></div>
9373
9374     <div class="entry">
9375       <div class="title">
9376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
9377       </div>
9378       <div class="date">
9379         23rd April 2014
9380       </div>
9381       <div class="body">
9382         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
9383 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
9384 So I implemented one, using
9385 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
9386 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
9387 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
9388 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
9389 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
9390 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
9391
9392 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
9393 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
9394 packages to install.  The first part is in
9395 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
9396 this:</p>
9397
9398 <p><blockquote><pre>
9399 Task: isenkram
9400 Section: hardware
9401 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
9402  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
9403  proposed.
9404 Test-new-install: mark show
9405 Relevance: 8
9406 Packages: for-current-hardware
9407 </pre></blockquote></p>
9408
9409 <p>The second part is in
9410 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
9411 this:</p>
9412
9413 <p><blockquote><pre>
9414 #!/bin/sh
9415 #
9416 (
9417     isenkram-lookup
9418     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
9419 ) | sort -u
9420 </pre></blockquote></p>
9421
9422 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
9423 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
9424 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
9425 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
9426 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
9427 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
9428
9429 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
9430 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
9431 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
9432 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
9433 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
9434 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
9435 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
9436 the python-apt code (bug
9437 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
9438 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
9439 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
9440 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
9441 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
9442 unstable today.</p>
9443
9444 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
9445 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
9446 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
9447 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
9448 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
9449 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
9450 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
9451 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
9452 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
9453
9454 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
9455 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
9456 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
9457 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
9458 package.  See also
9459 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
9460 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
9461 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
9462 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
9463
9464       </div>
9465       <div class="tags">
9466
9467
9468         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>.
9469
9470
9471       </div>
9472     </div>
9473     <div class="padding"></div>
9474
9475     <div class="entry">
9476       <div class="title">
9477         <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>
9478       </div>
9479       <div class="date">
9480         15th April 2014
9481       </div>
9482       <div class="body">
9483         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
9484 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
9485 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
9486 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
9487 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
9488 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
9489
9490 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
9491 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
9492 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
9493 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
9494 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
9495 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
9496 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
9497
9498 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
9499 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
9500 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
9501 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
9502 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
9503 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
9504 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
9505 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
9506 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
9507 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
9508 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
9509 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
9510
9511 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
9512 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
9513 become root:</p>
9514
9515 <p><pre>
9516 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
9517   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
9518   u-boot-tools
9519 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
9520   freedom-maker
9521 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
9522 </pre></p>
9523
9524 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
9525 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
9526 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
9527 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
9528 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
9529 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
9530 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
9531 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
9532
9533 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
9534 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
9535 the preseed values:</p>
9536
9537 <p><pre>
9538 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
9539 </pre></p>
9540
9541 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
9542 it still work.</p>
9543
9544 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
9545 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
9546 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
9547 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
9548 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
9549 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
9550 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
9551
9552 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
9553 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
9554 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
9555 irc.debian.org)</a> and
9556 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
9557 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
9558
9559       </div>
9560       <div class="tags">
9561
9562
9563         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>.
9564
9565
9566       </div>
9567     </div>
9568     <div class="padding"></div>
9569
9570     <div class="entry">
9571       <div class="title">
9572         <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>
9573       </div>
9574       <div class="date">
9575          9th April 2014
9576       </div>
9577       <div class="body">
9578         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
9579 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
9580 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
9581 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
9582 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
9583 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
9584 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
9585 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
9586 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
9587 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
9588 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
9589 have looked at a system called
9590 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
9591 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
9592
9593 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
9594 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
9595 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
9596 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
9597 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
9598 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
9599 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
9600 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
9601 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
9602 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
9603 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
9604 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
9605 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
9606
9607 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
9608 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
9609 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
9610 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
9611 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
9612 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
9613 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
9614 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
9615 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
9616 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
9617 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
9618 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
9619 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
9620 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
9621 account.</p>
9622
9623 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
9624 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
9625 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
9626 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
9627 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
9628 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
9629 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
9630
9631 <p><blockquote><pre>
9632 [s3c]
9633 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
9634 backend-login: API-login
9635 backend-password: API-password
9636 fs-passphrase: local-password
9637 </pre></blockquote></p>
9638
9639 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
9640 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
9641 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
9642 details and password to create it:</p>
9643
9644 <p><blockquote><pre>
9645 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
9646 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9647   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
9648 Enter backend login:
9649 Enter backend password:
9650 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
9651 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
9652 Enter encryption password:
9653 Confirm encryption password:
9654 Generating random encryption key...
9655 Creating metadata tables...
9656 Dumping metadata...
9657 ..objects..
9658 ..blocks..
9659 ..inodes..
9660 ..inode_blocks..
9661 ..symlink_targets..
9662 ..names..
9663 ..contents..
9664 ..ext_attributes..
9665 Compressing and uploading metadata...
9666 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
9667 # </pre></blockquote></p>
9668
9669 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
9670
9671 <p><blockquote><pre>
9672 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9673   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
9674 Using 4 upload threads.
9675 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
9676 Reading metadata...
9677 ..objects..
9678 ..blocks..
9679 ..inodes..
9680 ..inode_blocks..
9681 ..symlink_targets..
9682 ..names..
9683 ..contents..
9684 ..ext_attributes..
9685 Mounting filesystem...
9686 # df -h /s3ql
9687 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
9688 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
9689 #
9690 </pre></blockquote></p>
9691
9692 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
9693 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
9694 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
9695 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
9696 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
9697 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
9698
9699 <p><blockquote><pre>
9700 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
9701 #
9702 </pre></blockquote></p>
9703
9704 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
9705 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
9706 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
9707 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
9708 file system:</p>
9709
9710 <p><blockquote><pre>
9711 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
9712 Using cached metadata.
9713 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
9714 Checking DB integrity...
9715 Creating temporary extra indices...
9716 Checking lost+found...
9717 Checking cached objects...
9718 Checking names (refcounts)...
9719 Checking contents (names)...
9720 Checking contents (inodes)...
9721 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
9722 Checking objects (reference counts)...
9723 Checking objects (backend)...
9724 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
9725 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
9726 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
9727 Checking objects (sizes)...
9728 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
9729 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
9730 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
9731 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
9732 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
9733 Checking inodes (sizes)...
9734 Checking extended attributes (names)...
9735 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
9736 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
9737 Checking directory reachability...
9738 Checking unix conventions...
9739 Checking referential integrity...
9740 Dropping temporary indices...
9741 Backing up old metadata...
9742 Dumping metadata...
9743 ..objects..
9744 ..blocks..
9745 ..inodes..
9746 ..inode_blocks..
9747 ..symlink_targets..
9748 ..names..
9749 ..contents..
9750 ..ext_attributes..
9751 Compressing and uploading metadata...
9752 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
9753 #
9754 </pre></blockquote></p>
9755
9756 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
9757 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
9758 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
9759 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
9760 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
9761 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
9762 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
9763 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
9764 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
9765 working set.</p>
9766
9767 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
9768 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
9769 busy:</p>
9770
9771 <p><blockquote><pre>
9772 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9773   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
9774 Using 8 upload threads.
9775 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
9776 #
9777 </pre></blockquote></p>
9778
9779 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
9780 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
9781 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
9782 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
9783 s3qlctrl:
9784
9785 <p><blockquote><pre>
9786 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
9787 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
9788 #
9789 </pre></blockquote></p>
9790
9791 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
9792 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
9793 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
9794 a report:</p>
9795
9796 <p><blockquote><pre>
9797 # s3qlstat /s3ql
9798 Directory entries:    9141
9799 Inodes:               9143
9800 Data blocks:          8851
9801 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
9802 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
9803 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
9804 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
9805 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
9806 #
9807 </pre></blockquote></p>
9808
9809 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
9810 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
9811 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
9812 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
9813 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
9814 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
9815 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
9816 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
9817 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
9818 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
9819 best.</p>
9820
9821 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
9822 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
9823 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
9824 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
9825 poster is titled
9826 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
9827 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
9828 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
9829 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
9830 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
9831
9832 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
9833 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
9834 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
9835 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
9836 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
9837 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
9838 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
9839 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
9840
9841 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
9842 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
9843 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
9844 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
9845 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
9846 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
9847 only read from it.</p>
9848
9849 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9850 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9851 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9852
9853       </div>
9854       <div class="tags">
9855
9856
9857         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/nice free software">nice free software</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>.
9858
9859
9860       </div>
9861     </div>
9862     <div class="padding"></div>
9863
9864     <div class="entry">
9865       <div class="title">
9866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
9867       </div>
9868       <div class="date">
9869          1st April 2014
9870       </div>
9871       <div class="body">
9872         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
9873 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
9874 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
9875 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
9876 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
9877 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
9878 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
9879 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
9880 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
9881 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
9882 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
9883 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
9884 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
9885
9886 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
9887 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
9888 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
9889 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
9890 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
9891 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
9892 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
9893 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
9894 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
9895 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
9896 Linux.</p>
9897
9898 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
9899 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
9900 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
9901 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
9902 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
9903 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
9904 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
9905 Windows before metro).</p>
9906
9907 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
9908 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
9909 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
9910 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
9911 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
9912 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
9913 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
9914 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
9915 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
9916 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
9917 old Windows binaries, check it out by
9918 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
9919 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
9920 image.</p>
9921
9922       </div>
9923       <div class="tags">
9924
9925
9926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
9927
9928
9929       </div>
9930     </div>
9931     <div class="padding"></div>
9932
9933     <div class="entry">
9934       <div class="title">
9935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
9936       </div>
9937       <div class="date">
9938         30th March 2014
9939       </div>
9940       <div class="body">
9941         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9942 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
9943 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
9944 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
9945 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
9946
9947 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9948
9949 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
9950 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
9951 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
9952 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
9953 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
9954
9955 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
9956 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
9957 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
9958
9959 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
9960 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
9961 hunger.</p>
9962
9963 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9964 project?</strong></p>
9965
9966 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
9967 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
9968 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
9969 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
9970 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
9971 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
9972 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
9973 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
9974 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
9975 running.  I just loved it.</p>
9976
9977 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9978 Edu?</strong></p>
9979
9980 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
9981 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
9982 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
9983 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
9984 be made of steel.</p>
9985
9986 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9987 Edu?</strong></p>
9988
9989 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
9990
9991 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
9992 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
9993 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
9994 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
9995 or dropped.</p>
9996
9997 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
9998 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
9999 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
10000 discourage many people too.</p>
10001
10002 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10003
10004 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
10005 Virtualbox.</p>
10006
10007
10008 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10009 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10010
10011 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
10012 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
10013 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
10014 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
10015 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
10016 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
10017 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
10018 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
10019 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
10020
10021       </div>
10022       <div class="tags">
10023
10024
10025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10026
10027
10028       </div>
10029     </div>
10030     <div class="padding"></div>
10031
10032     <div class="entry">
10033       <div class="title">
10034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
10035       </div>
10036       <div class="date">
10037         25th March 2014
10038       </div>
10039       <div class="body">
10040         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
10041 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
10042 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
10043 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
10044 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
10045 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
10046 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
10047 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
10048 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
10049
10050 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
10051 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
10052 looked a given way.  Such
10053 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
10054 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
10055 called a
10056 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
10057 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
10058 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
10059 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
10060 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
10061 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
10062 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
10063 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
10064 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
10065 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
10066 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
10067 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
10068 There are several commercial services around providing such
10069 timestamping.  A quick search for
10070 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
10071 service</a>" pointed me to at least
10072 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
10073 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
10074 Vadis</a>,
10075 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
10076 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
10077 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
10078 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
10079
10080 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
10081 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
10082 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
10083 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
10084 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
10085 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
10086 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
10087 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
10088 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
10089 Greifswald.</p>
10090
10091 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
10092 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
10093 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
10094 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
10095 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
10096
10097 <p><blockquote><pre>
10098 #!/bin/sh
10099 set -e
10100 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
10101 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
10102 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
10103 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
10104 cafile=chain.txt
10105 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
10106     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
10107 fi
10108 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
10109     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
10110 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
10111 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
10112 base64 < "$resfile"
10113 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
10114 </pre></blockquote></p>
10115
10116 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
10117 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
10118 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
10119 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
10120 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
10121 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
10122 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
10123 changed.</p>
10124
10125 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
10126 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
10127 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
10128 to set up?</p>
10129
10130       </div>
10131       <div class="tags">
10132
10133
10134         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10135
10136
10137       </div>
10138     </div>
10139     <div class="padding"></div>
10140
10141     <div class="entry">
10142       <div class="title">
10143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
10144       </div>
10145       <div class="date">
10146         21st March 2014
10147       </div>
10148       <div class="body">
10149         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
10150 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
10151 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
10152 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
10153 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
10154 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
10155 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
10156
10157 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
10158 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
10159 tried using
10160 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
10161 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
10162 and program
10163 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
10164 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
10165 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
10166 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
10167 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
10168 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
10169 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
10170 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
10171 this method.</p>
10172
10173 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
10174 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
10175 problem is
10176 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
10177 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
10178 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
10179 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
10180 DVD structures, as the python library
10181 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
10182 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
10183 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
10184 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
10185 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
10186 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
10187
10188 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
10189 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
10190
10191       </div>
10192       <div class="tags">
10193
10194
10195         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10196
10197
10198       </div>
10199     </div>
10200     <div class="padding"></div>
10201
10202     <div class="entry">
10203       <div class="title">
10204         <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>
10205       </div>
10206       <div class="date">
10207         14th March 2014
10208       </div>
10209       <div class="body">
10210         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
10211 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
10212 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
10213 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
10214 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
10215 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
10216 release (0.2).</p>
10217
10218 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
10219 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
10220 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
10221 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
10222 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
10223 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
10224 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
10225 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
10226 and build using
10227 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
10228 with a user with sudo access to become root:
10229
10230 <pre>
10231 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
10232   freedom-maker
10233 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
10234   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
10235   u-boot-tools
10236 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
10237 </pre>
10238
10239 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
10240 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
10241 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
10242 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
10243 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
10244 kpartx call.</p>
10245
10246 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
10247 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
10248 the preseed values:</p>
10249
10250 <pre>
10251 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
10252 </pre>
10253
10254 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
10255 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
10256 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
10257 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
10258 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
10259 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
10260
10261 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
10262 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
10263 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
10264 irc.debian.org)</a> and
10265 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
10266 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
10267
10268       </div>
10269       <div class="tags">
10270
10271
10272         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>.
10273
10274
10275       </div>
10276     </div>
10277     <div class="padding"></div>
10278
10279     <div class="entry">
10280       <div class="title">
10281         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10282       </div>
10283       <div class="date">
10284         12th March 2014
10285       </div>
10286       <div class="body">
10287         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
10288 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
10289 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
10290 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
10291 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
10292 document this better when one of the customers of
10293 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
10294 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
10295 get this working are the following:</p>
10296
10297 <p><ol>
10298
10299 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
10300 example host here.</li>
10301
10302 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
10303 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
10304
10305 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
10306 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
10307
10308 </ol></p>
10309
10310 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
10311 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
10312 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
10313 started).</p>
10314
10315 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
10316 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
10317
10318 <p><blockquote><pre>
10319 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
10320 Export list for nas-server:
10321 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
10322 root@tjener:~#
10323 </pre></blockquote></p>
10324
10325 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
10326 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
10327 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
10328 NFS access.</p>
10329
10330 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
10331 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
10332 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
10333
10334 <p><blockquote><pre>
10335 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10336 </pre></blockquote></p>
10337
10338 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
10339 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
10340 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
10341 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
10342
10343 <p><blockquote><pre>
10344 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10345 objectClass: automount
10346 cn: nas-server
10347 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10348
10349 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10350 objectClass: top
10351 objectClass: automountMap
10352 ou: auto.nas-server
10353
10354 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10355 objectClass: automount
10356 cn: /
10357 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
10358 </pre></blockquote></p>
10359
10360 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
10361 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
10362 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
10363
10364 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
10365 the storage server directly by just visiting the
10366 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
10367 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
10368
10369       </div>
10370       <div class="tags">
10371
10372
10373         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
10374
10375
10376       </div>
10377     </div>
10378     <div class="padding"></div>
10379
10380     <div class="entry">
10381       <div class="title">
10382         <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>
10383       </div>
10384       <div class="date">
10385         22nd February 2014
10386       </div>
10387       <div class="body">
10388         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
10389 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
10390 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
10391 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
10392 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
10393 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
10394 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
10395 proper home since then.</p>
10396
10397 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
10398 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
10399 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
10400 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
10401 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
10402
10403 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
10404 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
10405 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
10406 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
10407 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
10408 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
10409 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
10410 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
10411 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
10412
10413       </div>
10414       <div class="tags">
10415
10416
10417         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>.
10418
10419
10420       </div>
10421     </div>
10422     <div class="padding"></div>
10423
10424     <div class="entry">
10425       <div class="title">
10426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
10427       </div>
10428       <div class="date">
10429          3rd February 2014
10430       </div>
10431       <div class="body">
10432         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
10433 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
10434 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
10435 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
10436 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
10437 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
10438 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
10439 <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>,
10440 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
10441
10442 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
10443 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
10444 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
10445 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
10446 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
10447 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
10448
10449 <p><blockquote><pre>
10450 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
10451 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
10452 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
10453 dhclient /dev/eth0
10454 </pre></blockquote></p>
10455
10456 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
10457 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
10458 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
10459
10460 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
10461 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
10462 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
10463 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
10464 side.</p>
10465
10466 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
10467 stuff:</p>
10468
10469 <p><blockquote><pre>
10470 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
10471 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
10472 EOF
10473 apt-get update
10474 apt-get dist-upgrade
10475 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
10476     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
10477 update-alternatives --config runsystem
10478 </pre></blockquote></p>
10479
10480 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
10481 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
10482 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
10483 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
10484 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
10485 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
10486 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
10487 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
10488 ssh instead.
10489
10490 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
10491 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
10492 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
10493 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
10494 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
10495 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
10496
10497 <p><blockquote><pre>
10498 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
10499 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
10500 EOF
10501 </pre></blockquote></p>
10502
10503 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
10504 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
10505 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
10506 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
10507
10508 <p><blockquote><pre>
10509 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
10510 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
10511 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
10512 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
10513 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
10514 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
10515 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
10516 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
10517 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
10518 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
10519 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
10520 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
10521 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
10522 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
10523 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
10524 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
10525 #
10526 </pre></blockquote></p>
10527
10528 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
10529 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
10530 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
10531 command line stuff.<p>
10532
10533       </div>
10534       <div class="tags">
10535
10536
10537         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>.
10538
10539
10540       </div>
10541     </div>
10542     <div class="padding"></div>
10543
10544     <div class="entry">
10545       <div class="title">
10546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
10547       </div>
10548       <div class="date">
10549         29th January 2014
10550       </div>
10551       <div class="body">
10552         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
10553 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
10554 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
10555 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
10556 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
10557 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
10558 investigated in
10559 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
10560 from December 2013, in the article
10561 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
10562 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
10563 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
10564 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
10565 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
10566 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
10567 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
10568 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
10569
10570 <p><blockquote>
10571 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
10572 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
10573 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
10574 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
10575 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
10576 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
10577 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
10578 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
10579 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
10580 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
10581 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
10582 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
10583
10584 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
10585 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
10586 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
10587 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
10588 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
10589 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
10590 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
10591 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
10592 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
10593 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
10594 </blockquote><p>
10595
10596 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
10597 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
10598 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
10599 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
10600 summarized like this:</p>
10601
10602 <p><blockquote>
10603 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
10604 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
10605 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
10606 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
10607 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
10608 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
10609 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
10610 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
10611 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
10612 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
10613 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
10614 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
10615 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
10616 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
10617 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
10618 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
10619 </blockquote></p>
10620
10621 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
10622 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
10623 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
10624 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
10625
10626 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10627 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10628 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10629
10630       </div>
10631       <div class="tags">
10632
10633
10634         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
10635
10636
10637       </div>
10638     </div>
10639     <div class="padding"></div>
10640
10641     <div class="entry">
10642       <div class="title">
10643         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
10644       </div>
10645       <div class="date">
10646         14th January 2014
10647       </div>
10648       <div class="body">
10649         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
10650 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
10651 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
10652 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
10653 the source.  The company behind it provide
10654 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
10655 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
10656 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
10657 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
10658 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
10659 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
10660 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
10661 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
10662 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
10663 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
10664 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
10665 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
10666 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
10667 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
10668 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
10669 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
10670 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
10671 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
10672 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
10673
10674 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
10675
10676 <ul>
10677
10678   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
10679   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
10680   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
10681
10682 </ul>
10683
10684 <p>You can
10685 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
10686 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
10687 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
10688 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
10689 include a test suite check.</p>
10690
10691       </div>
10692       <div class="tags">
10693
10694
10695         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>.
10696
10697
10698       </div>
10699     </div>
10700     <div class="padding"></div>
10701
10702     <div class="entry">
10703       <div class="title">
10704         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
10705       </div>
10706       <div class="date">
10707         25th December 2013
10708       </div>
10709       <div class="body">
10710         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10711 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
10712 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
10713 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
10714 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
10715 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
10716 George</a>.</p>
10717
10718 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
10719
10720 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10721
10722 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
10723 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
10724 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
10725 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
10726 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
10727 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
10728
10729 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
10730 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
10731 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
10732 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
10733 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
10734 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
10735 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
10736 to help building another school's informational education concept from
10737 scratch.</p>
10738
10739 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
10740 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
10741 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
10742
10743 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
10744 and cycling.</p>
10745
10746 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
10747 project?</strong></p>
10748
10749 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
10750 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
10751 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
10752 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
10753 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
10754 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
10755
10756 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
10757 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
10758 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
10759 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
10760 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
10761 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
10762 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
10763 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
10764 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
10765
10766 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
10767 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
10768 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
10769 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
10770
10771 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10772 Edu?</strong></p>
10773
10774 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
10775 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
10776 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
10777 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
10778 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
10779 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
10780 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
10781 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
10782 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
10783 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
10784 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
10785 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
10786 that it rocks!</p>
10787
10788 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
10789 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
10790 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
10791 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
10792 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
10793 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
10794 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
10795
10796 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10797 Edu?</strong></p>
10798
10799 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
10800 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
10801 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
10802 can list a few points about that:</p>
10803
10804 <ul>
10805
10806  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
10807  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
10808  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
10809
10810 </ul>
10811
10812 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
10813
10814 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10815
10816 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
10817 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
10818 year.</p>
10819
10820 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
10821 run text tools. I use
10822 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
10823 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
10824 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
10825 based full-featured student management software with the two),
10826 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
10827 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
10828 coloured world called the WWW, I use
10829 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
10830 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
10831 e-mail.</p>
10832
10833 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
10834 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
10835 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
10836 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
10837 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
10838 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
10839 Facebook now ;).</p>
10840
10841 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10842 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10843
10844 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
10845 side is what I have experienced.</p>
10846
10847 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
10848 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
10849 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
10850 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
10851 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
10852 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
10853 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
10854 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
10855 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
10856 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
10857 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
10858 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
10859 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
10860 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
10861 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
10862 plain criminal.</p>
10863
10864 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
10865 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
10866 founded an association named
10867 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
10868 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
10869 area of free and open source software, for example the
10870 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
10871 Teckids and are the youth programme of
10872 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
10873 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
10874 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
10875 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
10876 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
10877 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
10878
10879 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
10880 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
10881 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
10882 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
10883 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
10884 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
10885 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
10886 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
10887 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
10888 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
10889 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
10890 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
10891
10892 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
10893 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
10894 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
10895 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
10896
10897 <!--
10898
10899 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
10900
10901 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
10902 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
10903
10904  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
10905    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
10906    of the decision makers above;
10907  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
10908    knowledge about free software
10909
10910 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
10911
10912 -->
10913
10914       </div>
10915       <div class="tags">
10916
10917
10918         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10919
10920
10921       </div>
10922     </div>
10923     <div class="padding"></div>
10924
10925     <div class="entry">
10926       <div class="title">
10927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
10928       </div>
10929       <div class="date">
10930          6th December 2013
10931       </div>
10932       <div class="body">
10933         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
10934 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10935 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
10936 had a new school administrator show up on
10937 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
10938 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
10939 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
10940 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
10941 Germany a few years ago.</p>
10942
10943 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10944
10945 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
10946 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
10947 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
10948 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
10949
10950 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
10951 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
10952 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
10953 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
10954 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
10955 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
10956 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
10957 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
10958 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
10959
10960 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
10961 project?</strong></p>
10962
10963 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
10964 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
10965 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
10966 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
10967
10968 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10969 Edu?</strong></p>
10970
10971 <ul>
10972   <li>Quick installation,</li>
10973   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
10974   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
10975   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
10976     single company,</li>
10977   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
10978     experience and problem solutions.</li>
10979 </ul>
10980
10981 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10982 Edu?</strong></p>
10983
10984 <ul>
10985   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
10986   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
10987   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
10988   working again reliably.
10989
10990   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
10991   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
10992   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
10993   as their base.
10994
10995   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
10996   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
10997   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
10998   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
10999   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
11000   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
11001
11002   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
11003   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
11004   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
11005   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
11006   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
11007   schemes.</li>
11008
11009   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
11010   compared to Debian.</li>
11011
11012 </ul>
11013
11014 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
11015 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
11016 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
11017 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
11018
11019 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11020
11021 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
11022 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
11023 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
11024 programming languages for teaching.</p>
11025
11026 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11027 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11028
11029 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
11030
11031 <ul>
11032
11033   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
11034     teaching and learning.</li>
11035
11036   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
11037     home, and at their working place without running into license or
11038     conversion problems.</li>
11039
11040   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
11041     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
11042     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
11043     science, not products.</li>
11044
11045   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
11046     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
11047
11048 </ul>
11049
11050       </div>
11051       <div class="tags">
11052
11053
11054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11055
11056
11057       </div>
11058     </div>
11059     <div class="padding"></div>
11060
11061     <div class="entry">
11062       <div class="title">
11063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
11064       </div>
11065       <div class="date">
11066         30th November 2013
11067       </div>
11068       <div class="body">
11069         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
11070 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
11071 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
11072 experiment with interesting network technology, the
11073 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
11074 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
11075 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
11076 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
11077 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
11078 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
11079 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
11080 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
11081 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
11082 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
11083 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
11084 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
11085 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
11086 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
11087 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
11088 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
11089
11090       </div>
11091       <div class="tags">
11092
11093
11094         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11095
11096
11097       </div>
11098     </div>
11099     <div class="padding"></div>
11100
11101     <div class="entry">
11102       <div class="title">
11103         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
11104       </div>
11105       <div class="date">
11106         24th November 2013
11107       </div>
11108       <div class="body">
11109         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
11110 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
11111 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
11112 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
11113 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
11114 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
11115 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
11116 is working on.  I checked the
11117 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
11118 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
11119 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
11120 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
11121 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
11122 These are the release notes:</p>
11123
11124 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
11125
11126 <ul>
11127
11128   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
11129    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
11130    up.</li>
11131
11132   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
11133
11134   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
11135    Matthias Klose.</li>
11136
11137   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
11138    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
11139
11140   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
11141    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
11142    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
11143
11144 </ul>
11145
11146 <p>You can
11147 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
11148 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
11149 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
11150 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
11151 include a testsuite check.</p>
11152
11153       </div>
11154       <div class="tags">
11155
11156
11157         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>.
11158
11159
11160       </div>
11161     </div>
11162     <div class="padding"></div>
11163
11164     <div class="entry">
11165       <div class="title">
11166         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
11167       </div>
11168       <div class="date">
11169         21st November 2013
11170       </div>
11171       <div class="body">
11172         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
11173 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
11174 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
11175 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
11176 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
11177 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
11178 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
11179 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
11180 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
11181 TED talk
11182 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
11183 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
11184 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
11185
11186 <blockquote>
11187
11188 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
11189 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
11190 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
11191 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
11192 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
11193 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
11194 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
11195 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
11196 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
11197 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
11198 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
11199
11200 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
11201 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
11202 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
11203
11204 </blockquote>
11205
11206 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
11207 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
11208 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
11209 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
11210 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
11211 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
11212 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
11213 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
11214 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
11215
11216       </div>
11217       <div class="tags">
11218
11219
11220         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
11221
11222
11223       </div>
11224     </div>
11225     <div class="padding"></div>
11226
11227     <div class="entry">
11228       <div class="title">
11229         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
11230       </div>
11231       <div class="date">
11232         13th November 2013
11233       </div>
11234       <div class="body">
11235         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
11236 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
11237 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
11238 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
11239 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
11240 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
11241 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
11242 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
11243 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
11244 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
11245 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
11246 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
11247 right away. :)</p>
11248
11249       </div>
11250       <div class="tags">
11251
11252
11253         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11254
11255
11256       </div>
11257     </div>
11258     <div class="padding"></div>
11259
11260     <div class="entry">
11261       <div class="title">
11262         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
11263       </div>
11264       <div class="date">
11265         10th November 2013
11266       </div>
11267       <div class="body">
11268         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
11269 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
11270 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
11271 MR3040 as a mesh node using
11272 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
11273
11274 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
11275 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
11276 and downloaded
11277 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
11278 recommended firmware image</a>
11279 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
11280 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
11281 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
11282 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
11283 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
11284
11285 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
11286 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
11287 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
11288 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
11289 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
11290 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
11291 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
11292 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
11293 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
11294 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
11295 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
11296 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
11297 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
11298
11299 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
11300 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
11301 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
11302 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
11303 them:</p>
11304
11305 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
11306
11307 <pre>
11308
11309 config interface 'loopback'
11310         option ifname 'lo'
11311         option proto 'static'
11312         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
11313         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
11314
11315 config globals 'globals'
11316         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
11317
11318 config interface 'lan'
11319         option ifname 'eth0'
11320         option type 'bridge'
11321         option proto 'dhcp'
11322         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
11323         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
11324         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
11325         option ip6assign '60'
11326
11327 config interface 'mesh'
11328         option ifname 'adhoc0'
11329         option mtu '1528'
11330         option proto 'batadv'
11331         option mesh 'bat0'
11332 </pre>
11333
11334 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
11335 <pre>
11336
11337 config wifi-device 'radio0'
11338         option type 'mac80211'
11339         option channel '11'
11340         option hwmode '11ng'
11341         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
11342         option htmode 'HT20'
11343         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
11344         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
11345         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
11346         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
11347         option disabled '0'
11348
11349 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
11350         option device 'radio0'
11351         option ifname 'adhoc0'
11352         option network 'mesh'
11353         option encryption 'none'
11354         option mode 'adhoc'
11355         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
11356         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
11357 </pre>
11358 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
11359 <pre>
11360
11361 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
11362         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
11363         option 'aggregated_ogms'
11364         option 'ap_isolation'
11365         option 'bonding'
11366         option 'fragmentation'
11367         option 'gw_bandwidth'
11368         option 'gw_mode'
11369         option 'gw_sel_class'
11370         option 'log_level'
11371         option 'orig_interval'
11372         option 'vis_mode'
11373         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
11374         option 'distributed_arp_table'
11375         option 'network_coding'
11376         option 'hop_penalty'
11377
11378 # yet another batX instance
11379 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
11380 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
11381 </pre>
11382
11383 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
11384 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
11385 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
11386
11387       </div>
11388       <div class="tags">
11389
11390
11391         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11392
11393
11394       </div>
11395     </div>
11396     <div class="padding"></div>
11397
11398     <div class="entry">
11399       <div class="title">
11400         <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>
11401       </div>
11402       <div class="date">
11403          2nd November 2013
11404       </div>
11405       <div class="body">
11406         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
11407 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
11408 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
11409 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
11410 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
11411
11412 <p><pre>
11413 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
11414 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
11415 # Provides:          rsyslog
11416 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
11417 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
11418 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
11419 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
11420 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
11421 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
11422 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
11423 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
11424 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
11425 ### END INIT INFO
11426 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
11427 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
11428 </pre></p>
11429
11430 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
11431 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
11432 info/comments.</p>
11433
11434 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
11435 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
11436
11437 <p><pre>
11438 #!/bin/sh
11439
11440 # Define LSB log_* functions.
11441 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
11442 # and status_of_proc is working.
11443 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
11444
11445 #
11446 # Function that starts the daemon/service
11447
11448 #
11449 do_start()
11450 {
11451         # Return
11452         #   0 if daemon has been started
11453         #   1 if daemon was already running
11454         #   2 if daemon could not be started
11455         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
11456                 || return 1
11457         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
11458                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
11459                 || return 2
11460         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
11461         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
11462         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
11463 }
11464
11465 #
11466 # Function that stops the daemon/service
11467 #
11468 do_stop()
11469 {
11470         # Return
11471         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
11472         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
11473         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
11474         #   other if a failure occurred
11475         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
11476         RETVAL="$?"
11477         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
11478         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
11479         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
11480         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
11481         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
11482         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
11483         # sleep for some time.
11484         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
11485         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
11486         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
11487         rm -f $PIDFILE
11488         return "$RETVAL"
11489 }
11490
11491 #
11492 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
11493 #
11494 do_reload() {
11495         #
11496         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
11497         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
11498         # then implement that here.
11499         #
11500         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
11501         return 0
11502 }
11503
11504 SCRIPTNAME=$1
11505 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
11506 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
11507 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
11508     script="$1"
11509     shift
11510     . $script
11511 else
11512     exit 0
11513 fi
11514
11515 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
11516 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
11517
11518 # Exit if the package is not installed
11519 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
11520
11521 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
11522 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
11523
11524 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
11525 . /lib/init/vars.sh
11526
11527 case "$1" in
11528   start)
11529         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
11530         do_start
11531         case "$?" in
11532                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
11533                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
11534         esac
11535         ;;
11536   stop)
11537         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
11538         do_stop
11539         case "$?" in
11540                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
11541                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
11542         esac
11543         ;;
11544   status)
11545         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
11546         ;;
11547   #reload|force-reload)
11548         #
11549         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
11550         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
11551         #
11552         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
11553         #do_reload
11554         #log_end_msg $?
11555         #;;
11556   restart|force-reload)
11557         #
11558         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
11559         # 'force-reload' alias
11560         #
11561         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
11562         do_stop
11563         case "$?" in
11564           0|1)
11565                 do_start
11566                 case "$?" in
11567                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
11568                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
11569                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
11570                 esac
11571                 ;;
11572           *)
11573                 # Failed to stop
11574                 log_end_msg 1
11575                 ;;
11576         esac
11577         ;;
11578   *)
11579         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
11580         exit 3
11581         ;;
11582 esac
11583
11584 :
11585 </pre></p>
11586
11587 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
11588 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
11589 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
11590 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
11591
11592 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
11593 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
11594 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
11595 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
11596 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
11597
11598       </div>
11599       <div class="tags">
11600
11601
11602         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>.
11603
11604
11605       </div>
11606     </div>
11607     <div class="padding"></div>
11608
11609     <div class="entry">
11610       <div class="title">
11611         <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>
11612       </div>
11613       <div class="date">
11614          1st November 2013
11615       </div>
11616       <div class="body">
11617         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
11618 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
11619 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
11620 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
11621 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
11622 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
11623 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
11624 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
11625 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
11626 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
11627 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
11628 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
11629
11630 <p>The source is now available from
11631 <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>
11632
11633       </div>
11634       <div class="tags">
11635
11636
11637         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>.
11638
11639
11640       </div>
11641     </div>
11642     <div class="padding"></div>
11643
11644     <div class="entry">
11645       <div class="title">
11646         <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>
11647       </div>
11648       <div class="date">
11649         27th October 2013
11650       </div>
11651       <div class="body">
11652         <p>The
11653 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
11654 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
11655 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
11656 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
11657 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
11658 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
11659 of a plan to simplify the build system for
11660 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
11661 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
11662 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
11663 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
11664 Raspberry Pi.</p>
11665
11666 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
11667 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
11668 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
11669 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
11670 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
11671 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
11672 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
11673 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
11674 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
11675 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
11676 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
11677 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
11678 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
11679 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
11680 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
11681 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
11682 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
11683 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
11684 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
11685 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
11686 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
11687 available from
11688 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
11689 upstream project page</a>.</p>
11690
11691 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
11692 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
11693 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
11694 list:</p>
11695
11696 <p><pre>
11697 #!/bin/sh
11698 set -e # Exit on first error
11699 rootdir="$1"
11700 cd "$rootdir"
11701 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
11702 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
11703 EOF
11704 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
11705 # install a kernel somewhere too.
11706 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
11707     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
11708 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
11709 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
11710 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
11711 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
11712 </pre></p>
11713
11714 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
11715 to build the image:</p>
11716
11717 <pre>
11718 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
11719     --variant minbase \
11720     --arch armel \
11721     --distribution jessie \
11722     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
11723     --image test.img \
11724     --size 600M \
11725     --bootsize 64M \
11726     --boottype vfat \
11727     --log-level debug \
11728     --verbose \
11729     --no-kernel \
11730     --no-extlinux \
11731     --root-password raspberry \
11732     --hostname raspberrypi \
11733     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
11734     --customize `pwd`/customize \
11735     --package netbase \
11736     --package git-core \
11737     --package binutils \
11738     --package ca-certificates \
11739     --package wget \
11740     --package kmod
11741 </pre></p>
11742
11743 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
11744 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
11745 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
11746 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
11747 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
11748 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
11749 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
11750
11751 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
11752 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
11753 build dependency list.</p>
11754
11755 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
11756 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
11757 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
11758 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
11759
11760       </div>
11761       <div class="tags">
11762
11763
11764         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>.
11765
11766
11767       </div>
11768     </div>
11769     <div class="padding"></div>
11770
11771     <div class="entry">
11772       <div class="title">
11773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
11774       </div>
11775       <div class="date">
11776         21st October 2013
11777       </div>
11778       <div class="body">
11779         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
11780 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
11781 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
11782 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
11783 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
11784 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
11785 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
11786 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
11787
11788 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
11789 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
11790 instead, I started playing with a
11791 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
11792 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
11793 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
11794 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
11795 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
11796 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
11797 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
11798 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
11799 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
11800 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
11801 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
11802 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
11803 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
11804 every client on the local network.</p>
11805
11806 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
11807 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
11808 and a script
11809 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
11810 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
11811 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
11812 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
11813 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
11814 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
11815 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
11816 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
11817 support.</p>
11818
11819 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
11820 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
11821
11822 <p><pre>
11823 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
11824     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
11825 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
11826 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
11827 %
11828 </pre></p>
11829
11830 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
11831 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
11832 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
11833 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
11834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
11835 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
11836
11837 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
11838 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
11839 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
11840
11841 <p><table>
11842
11843 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
11844 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
11845 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
11846 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
11847 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
11848 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
11849
11850 </table></p>
11851
11852 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
11853 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
11854 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
11855 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
11856 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
11857 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
11858 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
11859
11860       </div>
11861       <div class="tags">
11862
11863
11864         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11865
11866
11867       </div>
11868     </div>
11869     <div class="padding"></div>
11870
11871     <div class="entry">
11872       <div class="title">
11873         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
11874       </div>
11875       <div class="date">
11876         19th October 2013
11877       </div>
11878       <div class="body">
11879         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
11880 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
11881 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
11882 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
11883 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
11884 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
11885 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
11886 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
11887
11888       </div>
11889       <div class="tags">
11890
11891
11892         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11893
11894
11895       </div>
11896     </div>
11897     <div class="padding"></div>
11898
11899     <div class="entry">
11900       <div class="title">
11901         <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>
11902       </div>
11903       <div class="date">
11904         15th October 2013
11905       </div>
11906       <div class="body">
11907         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
11908 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
11909 these. :)</p>
11910
11911 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
11912 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
11913 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
11914 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
11915 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
11916 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
11917 hope you will to. :)</p>
11918
11919 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
11920 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
11921 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
11922 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
11923 donated.  Are you next?</p>
11924
11925 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
11926 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
11927 statement under the heading
11928 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
11929 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
11930 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
11931 too.</p>
11932
11933       </div>
11934       <div class="tags">
11935
11936
11937         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>.
11938
11939
11940       </div>
11941     </div>
11942     <div class="padding"></div>
11943
11944     <div class="entry">
11945       <div class="title">
11946         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
11947       </div>
11948       <div class="date">
11949         11th October 2013
11950       </div>
11951       <div class="body">
11952         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
11953 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
11954 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
11955 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
11956 successful examples like
11957 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
11958 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
11959 (see
11960 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
11961 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
11962 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
11963 can be seen from their
11964 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
11965 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
11966 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
11967 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
11968 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
11969
11970 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
11971 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
11972 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
11973 my recent involvement in
11974 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
11975 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
11976 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
11977 when possible, given that most communication between people are
11978 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
11979 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
11980 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
11981 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
11982 important over the years.</p>
11983
11984 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
11985 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
11986 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
11987 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
11988 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
11989 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
11990 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
11991 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
11992 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
11993 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
11994 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
11995 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
11996 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
11997 speakers about this talk (from
11998 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
11999
12000 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
12001
12002 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
12003 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
12004 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
12005 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
12006 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
12007 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
12008 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
12009 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
12010 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
12011 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
12012 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
12013 that project (from
12014 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
12015
12016 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
12017
12018 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
12019 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
12020 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
12021 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
12022 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
12023 based community mesh networks.</p>
12024
12025 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
12026 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
12027 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
12028 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
12029 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
12030 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
12031 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
12032 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
12033 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
12034
12035 <p><table>
12036 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
12037 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
12038 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
12039 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
12040 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
12041 </table></p>
12042
12043 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
12044 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
12045 VillageTelco about
12046 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
12047 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
12048 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
12049 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
12050 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
12051 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
12052
12053 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
12054 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
12055 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
12056 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
12057
12058 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
12059 us on IRC, either channel
12060 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
12061 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
12062 irc.freenode.net.</p>
12063
12064 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
12065 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
12066 and Innovation called
12067 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
12068 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
12069 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
12070 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
12071 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
12072 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
12073 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
12074 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
12075
12076 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
12077 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
12078 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
12079 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
12080 mesh system.</p>
12081
12082       </div>
12083       <div class="tags">
12084
12085
12086         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12087
12088
12089       </div>
12090     </div>
12091     <div class="padding"></div>
12092
12093     <div class="entry">
12094       <div class="title">
12095         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
12096       </div>
12097       <div class="date">
12098          8th October 2013
12099       </div>
12100       <div class="body">
12101         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
12102 Salvador had published a
12103 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
12104 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
12105 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
12106 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
12107 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
12108 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
12109 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
12110 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
12111 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
12112 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
12113 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
12114 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
12115 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
12116 computers without hard drives by installing one central
12117 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
12118
12119 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
12120
12121 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
12122
12123 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
12124 me know. :)</p>
12125
12126       </div>
12127       <div class="tags">
12128
12129
12130         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12131
12132
12133       </div>
12134     </div>
12135     <div class="padding"></div>
12136
12137     <div class="entry">
12138       <div class="title">
12139         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
12140       </div>
12141       <div class="date">
12142         29th September 2013
12143       </div>
12144       <div class="body">
12145         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
12146 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
12147 complete announcement text can be found at
12148 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
12149 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
12150
12151 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
12152 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
12153 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
12154 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
12155
12156       </div>
12157       <div class="tags">
12158
12159
12160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12161
12162
12163       </div>
12164     </div>
12165     <div class="padding"></div>
12166
12167     <div class="entry">
12168       <div class="title">
12169         <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>
12170       </div>
12171       <div class="date">
12172         27th September 2013
12173       </div>
12174       <div class="body">
12175         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
12176 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
12177 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
12178 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
12179
12180 <ul>
12181
12182 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
12183 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
12184
12185 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
12186 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
12187
12188 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
12189 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
12190 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
12191 (Youtube)</li>
12192
12193 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
12194 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
12195
12196 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
12197 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
12198
12199 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
12200 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
12201 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
12202
12203 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
12204 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
12205 (Youtube)</li>
12206
12207 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
12208 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
12209
12210 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
12211 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
12212
12213 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
12214 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
12215 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
12216
12217 </ul>
12218
12219 <p>A larger list is available from
12220 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
12221 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
12222
12223 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
12224 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
12225 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
12226 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
12227 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
12228 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
12229 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
12230 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
12231 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
12232 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
12233 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
12234
12235       </div>
12236       <div class="tags">
12237
12238
12239         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>.
12240
12241
12242       </div>
12243     </div>
12244     <div class="padding"></div>
12245
12246     <div class="entry">
12247       <div class="title">
12248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
12249       </div>
12250       <div class="date">
12251         16th September 2013
12252       </div>
12253       <div class="body">
12254         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
12255 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
12256
12257 <blockquote>
12258 <p>Hi,</p>
12259
12260 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
12261 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12262 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
12263
12264 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
12265 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
12266 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
12267 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
12268
12269 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
12270 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
12271
12272 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
12273 compared to beta1:</p>
12274
12275 <ul>
12276
12277 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
12278 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
12279 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
12280 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
12281 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
12282 main server.</li>
12283 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
12284 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
12285 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
12286 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
12287 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
12288
12289 </ul>
12290
12291 <p>Where to get it:</p>
12292
12293 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
12294
12295 <ul>
12296 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
12297 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
12298 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
12299 </ul>
12300
12301 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
12302
12303 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
12304 <ul>
12305 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
12306 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
12307 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
12308 </ul>
12309
12310 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
12311
12312 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
12313 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
12314 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
12315 as the other isos.</p>
12316
12317 <p>How to report bugs</p>
12318
12319 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
12320 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
12321
12322
12323 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
12324
12325 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
12326 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
12327 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
12328 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
12329 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
12330 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
12331 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
12332 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
12333 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
12334 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
12335 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
12336 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
12337 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
12338
12339 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
12340 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
12341 Squeeze release.</p>
12342
12343 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
12344
12345 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
12346 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
12347 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
12348 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
12349 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
12350 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
12351 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
12352 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
12353 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
12354 directory.</p>
12355
12356
12357 <p>cheers,
12358 <br>        Holger</p>
12359 </blockquote>
12360
12361       </div>
12362       <div class="tags">
12363
12364
12365         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12366
12367
12368       </div>
12369     </div>
12370     <div class="padding"></div>
12371
12372     <div class="entry">
12373       <div class="title">
12374         <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>
12375       </div>
12376       <div class="date">
12377         10th September 2013
12378       </div>
12379       <div class="body">
12380         <p>I was introduced to the
12381 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
12382 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
12383 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
12384 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
12385 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
12386 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
12387 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
12388 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
12389
12390 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
12391 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
12392 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
12393 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
12394 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
12395
12396 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
12397 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
12398 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
12399 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
12400 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
12401 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
12402 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
12403 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
12404 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
12405 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
12406 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
12407 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
12408 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
12409 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
12410 missing in Debian).</p>
12411
12412 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
12413 scripts
12414 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
12415 and a administrative web interface
12416 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
12417 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
12418 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
12419 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
12420 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
12421 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
12422 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
12423 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
12424 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
12425 this is really working yet, see
12426 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
12427 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
12428 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
12429 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
12430 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
12431 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
12432 with lots of half baked features.</p>
12433
12434 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
12435 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
12436 at.</p>
12437
12438 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
12439
12440 <ol>
12441
12442 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
12443 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
12444 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
12445 to the Debian installer:<p>
12446 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
12447
12448 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
12449 install on.</li>
12450
12451 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
12452 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
12453
12454 </ol>
12455
12456 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
12457
12458 <ol>
12459
12460 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
12461 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
12462 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
12463 <pre>
12464 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
12465 </pre></li>
12466 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
12467 <pre>
12468 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
12469    apt-key add -
12470 apt-get update
12471 apt-get install freedombox-setup
12472 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
12473 </pre></li>
12474 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
12475
12476 </ol>
12477
12478 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
12479 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
12480 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
12481 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
12482 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
12483
12484 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
12485 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
12486 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
12487 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
12488
12489 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
12490 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
12491 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
12492 irc.debian.org and the
12493 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
12494 mailing list</a>.</p>
12495
12496 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
12497 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
12498 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
12499 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
12500 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
12501 default password is 'secret'.</p>
12502
12503       </div>
12504       <div class="tags">
12505
12506
12507         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>.
12508
12509
12510       </div>
12511     </div>
12512     <div class="padding"></div>
12513
12514     <div class="entry">
12515       <div class="title">
12516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
12517       </div>
12518       <div class="date">
12519         22nd August 2013
12520       </div>
12521       <div class="body">
12522         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
12523 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
12524 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
12525
12526 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
12527
12528 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12529 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
12530
12531 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
12532
12533 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
12534 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
12535 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
12536 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
12537 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
12538 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
12539 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
12540 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
12541 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
12542 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
12543 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
12544 desktop contains
12545 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
12546 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
12547 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
12548 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
12549
12550 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
12551 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
12552 release.</p>
12553
12554 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
12555 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
12556 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
12557 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
12558 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
12559 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
12560 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
12561 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
12562 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
12563 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
12564 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
12565
12566 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
12567
12568 <ul>
12569
12570 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
12571     work also without a attached tty.</li>
12572 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
12573     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
12574     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
12575     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
12576     required).</li>
12577
12578 </ul>
12579
12580 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
12581
12582 <ul>
12583
12584 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
12585 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
12586 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
12587 stick ISO image.</li>
12588 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
12589 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
12590 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
12591     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
12592     cope with this.</li>
12593 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
12594 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
12595     empty password hashes.</li>
12596 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
12597     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
12598     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
12599
12600 </ul>
12601
12602 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
12603
12604 <ul>
12605
12606 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
12607     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
12608 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
12609     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
12610
12611 </ul>
12612
12613 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
12614
12615 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
12616
12617 <ul>
12618
12619 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
12620
12621 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
12622
12623 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
12624
12625 </ul>
12626
12627 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
12628 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
12629
12630 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
12631
12632 <ul>
12633
12634 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
12635 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
12636 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
12637
12638 </ul>
12639
12640 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
12641 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
12642
12643
12644 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
12645
12646 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
12647
12648       </div>
12649       <div class="tags">
12650
12651
12652         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12653
12654
12655       </div>
12656     </div>
12657     <div class="padding"></div>
12658
12659     <div class="entry">
12660       <div class="title">
12661         <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>
12662       </div>
12663       <div class="date">
12664         18th August 2013
12665       </div>
12666       <div class="body">
12667         <p>Earlier, I reported about
12668 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
12669 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
12670 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
12671 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
12672 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
12673 currently on the disk.</p>
12674
12675 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
12676 <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>
12677 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
12678 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
12679 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
12680 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
12681 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
12682 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
12683 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
12684 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
12685 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
12686 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
12687 the broken disks.</p>
12688
12689       </div>
12690       <div class="tags">
12691
12692
12693         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>.
12694
12695
12696       </div>
12697     </div>
12698     <div class="padding"></div>
12699
12700     <div class="entry">
12701       <div class="title">
12702         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
12703       </div>
12704       <div class="date">
12705          2nd August 2013
12706       </div>
12707       <div class="body">
12708         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
12709 have worked on a Norwegian
12710 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
12711 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
12712 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
12713 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
12714 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
12715 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
12716 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
12717 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
12718 progress of the translation:</p>
12719
12720 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
12721
12722 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
12723 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
12724 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
12725 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
12726 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
12727 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
12728 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
12729 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
12730 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
12731 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
12732 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
12733
12734 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
12735 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
12736 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
12737 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
12738 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
12739 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
12740 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
12741 project files currently available from
12742 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12743
12744 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12745 the updated
12746 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12747 and
12748 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12749 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12750 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12751 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12752
12753       </div>
12754       <div class="tags">
12755
12756
12757         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12758
12759
12760       </div>
12761     </div>
12762     <div class="padding"></div>
12763
12764     <div class="entry">
12765       <div class="title">
12766         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
12767       </div>
12768       <div class="date">
12769         27th July 2013
12770       </div>
12771       <div class="body">
12772         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
12773 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
12774
12775 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
12776 2013-07-27</strong></p>
12777
12778 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12779 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
12780
12781 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
12782
12783 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
12784 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
12785 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
12786 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
12787 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
12788 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
12789 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
12790 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
12791 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
12792 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
12793 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
12794 desktop contains
12795 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
12796 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
12797 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
12798 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
12799
12800 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
12801 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
12802 Squeeze release.</p>
12803
12804 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
12805 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
12806 release.</p>
12807
12808 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
12809
12810 <ul>
12811
12812 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
12813    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
12814 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
12815    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
12816    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
12817    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
12818    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
12819 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
12820 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
12821 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
12822    crash bugs.</li>
12823
12824 </ul>
12825
12826 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
12827
12828 <ul>
12829
12830 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
12831    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
12832 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
12833    netinst CD.</li>
12834 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
12835    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
12836 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
12837    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
12838    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
12839 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
12840    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
12841    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
12842 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
12843    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
12844    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
12845 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
12846    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
12847 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
12848
12849 </ul>
12850
12851 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
12852
12853 <ul>
12854
12855 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
12856 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
12857     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
12858 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
12859
12860 </ul>
12861
12862 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
12863
12864 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
12865
12866 <ul>
12867
12868 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
12869
12870 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
12871
12872 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
12873
12874 </ul>
12875
12876 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
12877 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
12878
12879 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
12880
12881 <ul>
12882
12883 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
12884 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
12885 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
12886
12887 </ul>
12888
12889 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
12890 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
12891
12892
12893 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
12894
12895 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
12896
12897       </div>
12898       <div class="tags">
12899
12900
12901         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12902
12903
12904       </div>
12905     </div>
12906     <div class="padding"></div>
12907
12908     <div class="entry">
12909       <div class="title">
12910         <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>
12911       </div>
12912       <div class="date">
12913         17th July 2013
12914       </div>
12915       <div class="body">
12916         <p>Today I switched to
12917 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
12918 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
12919 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
12920 <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
12921 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
12922 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
12923 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
12924 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
12925 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
12926 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
12927 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
12928 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
12929 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
12930 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
12931 station from now on.</p>
12932
12933 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
12934 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
12935 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
12936 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
12937 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
12938 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
12939 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
12940 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
12941 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
12942 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
12943 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
12944 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
12945
12946 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
12947 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
12948 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
12949 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
12950 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
12951 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
12952 parameters are tuned:</p>
12953
12954 <ul>
12955
12956 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
12957     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
12958
12959 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
12960     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
12961     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
12962
12963 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
12964     systems.</li>
12965
12966 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
12967     /etc/fstab.</li>
12968
12969 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
12970
12971 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
12972     cron.daily).</li>
12973
12974 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
12975     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
12976
12977 </ul>
12978
12979 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
12980 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
12981 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
12982 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
12983 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
12984 from getting the data on the disk (see
12985 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
12986 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
12987 right thing to do.</p>
12988
12989 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
12990 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
12991 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
12992
12993 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
12994 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
12995 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
12996 instead of during my work.</p>
12997
12998 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
12999 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
13000
13001 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
13002 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
13003 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
13004
13005 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
13006 there.</p>
13007
13008 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
13009 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
13010 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
13011 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
13012 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
13013 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
13014 back.</p>
13015
13016       </div>
13017       <div class="tags">
13018
13019
13020         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>.
13021
13022
13023       </div>
13024     </div>
13025     <div class="padding"></div>
13026
13027     <div class="entry">
13028       <div class="title">
13029         <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>
13030       </div>
13031       <div class="date">
13032         10th July 2013
13033       </div>
13034       <div class="body">
13035         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
13036 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
13037 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
13038 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
13039 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
13040 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
13041 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
13042 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
13043
13044 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
13045 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
13046 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
13047 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
13048 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
13049 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
13050 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
13051 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
13052 lock up when I download a new
13053 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
13054 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
13055 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
13056
13057 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
13058 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
13059 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
13060 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
13061 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
13062 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
13063
13064 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
13065 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
13066 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
13067 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
13068 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
13069 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
13070
13071 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
13072 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
13073 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
13074 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
13075 exist).</p>
13076
13077       </div>
13078       <div class="tags">
13079
13080
13081         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>.
13082
13083
13084       </div>
13085     </div>
13086     <div class="padding"></div>
13087
13088     <div class="entry">
13089       <div class="title">
13090         <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>
13091       </div>
13092       <div class="date">
13093          9th July 2013
13094       </div>
13095       <div class="body">
13096         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
13097 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
13098 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
13099 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
13100 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13101 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
13102 Bitraf</a>.</p>
13103
13104 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
13105 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
13106 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
13107 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
13108 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
13109
13110       </div>
13111       <div class="tags">
13112
13113
13114         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>.
13115
13116
13117       </div>
13118     </div>
13119     <div class="padding"></div>
13120
13121     <div class="entry">
13122       <div class="title">
13123         <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>
13124       </div>
13125       <div class="date">
13126          5th July 2013
13127       </div>
13128       <div class="body">
13129         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
13130 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
13131 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
13132 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
13133 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
13134 ended up picking a
13135 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
13136 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
13137 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
13138 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
13139 on that below.</p>
13140
13141 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
13142 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
13143 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
13144 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
13145 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
13146 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
13147 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
13148 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
13149 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
13150
13151 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
13152 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
13153 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
13154 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
13155 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
13156 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
13157 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
13158
13159 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
13160 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
13161
13162 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
13163 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
13164 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
13165 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
13166 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
13167 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
13168 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
13169 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
13170 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
13171 kernel developers as
13172 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
13173 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
13174 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
13175 Lenovo forums, both for
13176 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
13177 2012-11-10</a> and for
13178 <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
13179 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
13180 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
13181 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
13182 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
13183 There is even a
13184 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
13185 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
13186 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
13187
13188 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
13189 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
13190 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
13191 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
13192 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
13193 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
13194 fixed. :)</p>
13195
13196       </div>
13197       <div class="tags">
13198
13199
13200         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>.
13201
13202
13203       </div>
13204     </div>
13205     <div class="padding"></div>
13206
13207     <div class="entry">
13208       <div class="title">
13209         <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>
13210       </div>
13211       <div class="date">
13212          4th July 2013
13213       </div>
13214       <div class="body">
13215         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
13216 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
13217 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
13218 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
13219 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
13220 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
13221 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
13222 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
13223 with an expencive door stop.</p>
13224
13225 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
13226 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
13227 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
13228 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
13229 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
13230 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
13231 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
13232
13233 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
13234 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
13235 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
13236 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
13237 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
13238 new laptop now. :)</p>
13239
13240 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
13241
13242       </div>
13243       <div class="tags">
13244
13245
13246         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>.
13247
13248
13249       </div>
13250     </div>
13251     <div class="padding"></div>
13252
13253     <div class="entry">
13254       <div class="title">
13255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
13256       </div>
13257       <div class="date">
13258          3rd July 2013
13259       </div>
13260       <div class="body">
13261         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
13262 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
13263
13264 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
13265 2013-07-03</strong></p>
13266
13267 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13268 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
13269
13270 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
13271
13272 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
13273 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
13274 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
13275 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
13276 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
13277 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
13278 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
13279 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
13280 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
13281 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
13282 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
13283 desktop contains
13284 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
13285 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
13286 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
13287 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
13288
13289 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
13290 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
13291 Squeeze release.</p>
13292
13293 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
13294 <ul>
13295   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
13296   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
13297     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
13298     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
13299   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
13300     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
13301     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
13302   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
13303     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
13304     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
13305     too.</li>
13306   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
13307     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
13308 </ul>
13309 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
13310 <ul>
13311   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
13312   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
13313   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
13314     up for some language options.</li>
13315   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
13316   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
13317   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
13318     d-i is doing it.</li>
13319   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
13320     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
13321   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
13322     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
13323     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
13324   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
13325     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
13326   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
13327   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
13328     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
13329   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
13330     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
13331 </ul>
13332 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
13333 <ul>
13334   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
13335     available yet (698840).</li>
13336   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
13337 </ul>
13338 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
13339
13340 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
13341 <ul>
13342   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
13343   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
13344   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
13345 </ul>
13346
13347 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
13348 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
13349
13350 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
13351 <ul>
13352   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
13353   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
13354   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
13355 </ul>
13356
13357 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
13358 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
13359
13360 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
13361
13362 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
13363
13364       </div>
13365       <div class="tags">
13366
13367
13368         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13369
13370
13371       </div>
13372     </div>
13373     <div class="padding"></div>
13374
13375     <div class="entry">
13376       <div class="title">
13377         <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>
13378       </div>
13379       <div class="date">
13380         25th June 2013
13381       </div>
13382       <div class="body">
13383         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
13384 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
13385 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
13386 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
13387 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
13388 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
13389 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
13390 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
13391 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
13392 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
13393 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
13394
13395 <p><pre>
13396 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
13397 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
13398 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
13399 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
13400 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
13401 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
13402 firmware-ipw2x00
13403 firmware-ipw2x00
13404 Preconfiguring packages ...
13405 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
13406 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
13407 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
13408 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
13409 #
13410 </pre></p>
13411
13412 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
13413 printed instead:</p>
13414
13415 <p><pre>
13416 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
13417 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
13418 #
13419 </pre></p>
13420
13421 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
13422 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
13423
13424 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
13425 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
13426 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
13427 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
13428 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
13429 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
13430 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
13431 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
13432 machine.</p>
13433
13434 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
13435 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
13436 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
13437 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
13438 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
13439 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
13440
13441       </div>
13442       <div class="tags">
13443
13444
13445         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>.
13446
13447
13448       </div>
13449     </div>
13450     <div class="padding"></div>
13451
13452     <div class="entry">
13453       <div class="title">
13454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
13455       </div>
13456       <div class="date">
13457         22nd June 2013
13458       </div>
13459       <div class="body">
13460         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13461 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
13462 which check that services are running, working, and return the
13463 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
13464 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
13465 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
13466 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
13467 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
13468 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
13469
13470 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
13471 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
13472 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
13473 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
13474 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
13475 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
13476 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
13477 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
13478 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
13479 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
13480 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
13481 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
13482 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
13483 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
13484
13485 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
13486 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
13487 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
13488 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
13489 the problem.</p>
13490
13491 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
13492 please join us on
13493 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
13494 irc.debian.org</a> and the
13495 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
13496 list.</p>
13497
13498       </div>
13499       <div class="tags">
13500
13501
13502         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13503
13504
13505       </div>
13506     </div>
13507     <div class="padding"></div>
13508
13509     <div class="entry">
13510       <div class="title">
13511         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
13512       </div>
13513       <div class="date">
13514         17th June 2013
13515       </div>
13516       <div class="body">
13517         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13518 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
13519 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
13520 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
13521 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
13522 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
13523 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
13524 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
13525
13526 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13527
13528 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
13529 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
13530 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
13531 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
13532 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
13533 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
13534 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
13535 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
13536 field.</p>
13537
13538 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
13539 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
13540 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
13541 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
13542 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
13543 the only one we have in our country.</p>
13544
13545 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
13546 project?</strong></p>
13547
13548 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
13549 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
13550 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
13551 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
13552 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
13553 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
13554 ways to contribute.</p>
13555
13556 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
13557 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
13558 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
13559 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
13560 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
13561 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
13562 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
13563 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
13564 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
13565 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
13566
13567 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13568 Edu?</strong></p>
13569
13570 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
13571 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
13572 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
13573 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
13574 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
13575 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
13576 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
13577 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
13578
13579 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
13580 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
13581 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
13582 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
13583 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
13584 project.</p>
13585
13586 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
13587 Edu?</strong></p>
13588
13589 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
13590 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
13591 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
13592 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
13593 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
13594 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
13595 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
13596 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
13597 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
13598
13599 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
13600 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
13601 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
13602 on.</p>
13603
13604 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13605
13606 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
13607 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
13608 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
13609 Enlightenment project a lot!),
13610 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
13611 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
13612 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
13613 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
13614 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
13615
13616 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13617 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13618
13619 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
13620 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
13621 that:</p>
13622
13623 <ul>
13624
13625 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
13626
13627 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
13628     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
13629     of teenagers more?</li>
13630
13631 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
13632     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
13633     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
13634     them!)</li>
13635
13636 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
13637     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
13638     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
13639
13640 </ul>
13641
13642 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
13643 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
13644 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
13645 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
13646 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
13647
13648       </div>
13649       <div class="tags">
13650
13651
13652         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13653
13654
13655       </div>
13656     </div>
13657     <div class="padding"></div>
13658
13659     <div class="entry">
13660       <div class="title">
13661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
13662       </div>
13663       <div class="date">
13664         12th June 2013
13665       </div>
13666       <div class="body">
13667         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
13668 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13669 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
13670 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
13671 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
13672 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
13673
13674 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13675
13676 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
13677 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
13678 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
13679
13680 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
13681 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
13682 each other.</p>
13683
13684 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
13685 project?</strong></p>
13686
13687 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
13688 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
13689 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
13690 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
13691 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
13692 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
13693 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
13694 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
13695 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
13696 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
13697 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
13698 we'll get there one day.</p>
13699
13700 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
13701 Edu?</strong></p>
13702
13703 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
13704 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
13705 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
13706 very high quality work.</p>
13707
13708 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
13709 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
13710 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
13711 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
13712 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
13713
13714 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
13715 Edu?</strong></p>
13716
13717 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
13718 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
13719 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
13720
13721 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
13722 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
13723 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
13724 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
13725 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
13726 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
13727 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
13728 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
13729 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
13730 currently.</p>
13731
13732 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
13733 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
13734 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
13735 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
13736 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
13737 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
13738 autonomous.</p>
13739
13740 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13741
13742 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
13743 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
13744 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
13745 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
13746 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
13747
13748 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
13749 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
13750 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
13751 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
13752 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
13753 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
13754 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
13755 X.</p>
13756
13757 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
13758 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
13759 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
13760 it :p)
13761
13762 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13763 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13764
13765 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
13766 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
13767 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
13768 that.</p>
13769
13770 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
13771 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
13772 advantage of that.</p>
13773
13774 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
13775 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
13776 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
13777 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
13778 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
13779 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
13780 best solution for them.</p>
13781
13782 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
13783 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
13784 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
13785
13786       </div>
13787       <div class="tags">
13788
13789
13790         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13791
13792
13793       </div>
13794     </div>
13795     <div class="padding"></div>
13796
13797     <div class="entry">
13798       <div class="title">
13799         <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>
13800       </div>
13801       <div class="date">
13802         11th June 2013
13803       </div>
13804       <div class="body">
13805         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
13806 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
13807 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
13808 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
13809 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
13810 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
13811 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
13812 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
13813 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
13814 i915 driver used by the
13815 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
13816 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
13817
13818 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
13819 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
13820 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
13821 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
13822 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
13823
13824 <pre>
13825 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
13826 update-initramfs -u -k all
13827 </pre>
13828
13829 <p>Since March 2012 there is
13830 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
13831 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
13832 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
13833 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
13834 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
13835 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
13836 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
13837 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
13838 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
13839 number.</p>
13840
13841 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
13842 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
13843
13844 <p><pre>
13845 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
13846     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
13847     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
13848  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
13849  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
13850     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
13851  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
13852     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
13853  Latency: 0
13854  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
13855  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
13856  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
13857  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
13858  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
13859  Capabilities: <access denied>
13860  Kernel driver in use: i915
13861 </pre></p>
13862
13863 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
13864
13865 <p><pre>
13866 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
13867        ...
13868         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
13869         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
13870        ...
13871 }
13872 </pre></p>
13873
13874 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
13875 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
13876 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
13877 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
13878 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
13879 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
13880 yet shown up in
13881 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
13882 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
13883 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
13884 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
13885 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
13886 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
13887
13888 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
13889 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
13890 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
13891 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
13892 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
13893 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
13894 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
13895 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
13896 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
13897 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
13898 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
13899 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
13900
13901 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
13902 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
13903 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
13904 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
13905 backlight.</p>
13906
13907       </div>
13908       <div class="tags">
13909
13910
13911         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>.
13912
13913
13914       </div>
13915     </div>
13916     <div class="padding"></div>
13917
13918     <div class="entry">
13919       <div class="title">
13920         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
13921       </div>
13922       <div class="date">
13923         10th June 2013
13924       </div>
13925       <div class="body">
13926         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
13927 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
13928
13929 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
13930 2013-06-10</strong></p>
13931
13932 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
13933 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
13934
13935 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
13936
13937 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
13938 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
13939 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
13940 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
13941 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
13942 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
13943 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
13944 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
13945 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
13946 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
13947 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
13948 desktop contains
13949 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
13950 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
13951 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
13952 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
13953
13954 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
13955 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
13956 Squeeze release.</p>
13957
13958 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
13959
13960 <ul>
13961
13962 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
13963 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
13964 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
13965 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
13966 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
13967
13968 </ul>
13969
13970 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
13971
13972 <ul>
13973
13974 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
13975 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
13976 <li>New Romanian translation.
13977 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
13978 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
13979 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
13980 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
13981 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
13982 <li>More testsuite tests.
13983 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
13984 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
13985
13986 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
13987 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
13988
13989 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
13990 them up with GOsa².</li>
13991
13992 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
13993
13994 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
13995 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
13996 entered password). </li>
13997
13998 </ul>
13999
14000 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
14001
14002 <ul>
14003
14004 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
14005
14006 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
14007 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
14008 missing import feature).</li>
14009
14010 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
14011
14012 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
14013 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
14014 unfixed.</li>
14015
14016 </ul>
14017
14018 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
14019
14020 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
14021
14022 <ul>
14023
14024 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
14025
14026 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
14027
14028 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
14029
14030 </ul>
14031
14032 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
14033 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
14034
14035 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
14036
14037 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
14038
14039       </div>
14040       <div class="tags">
14041
14042
14043         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14044
14045
14046       </div>
14047     </div>
14048     <div class="padding"></div>
14049
14050     <div class="entry">
14051       <div class="title">
14052         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
14053       </div>
14054       <div class="date">
14055          5th June 2013
14056       </div>
14057       <div class="body">
14058         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
14059 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
14060 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
14061 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
14062 the project:
14063
14064 <ol>
14065
14066 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
14067   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
14068   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
14069   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
14070   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
14071
14072 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
14073   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
14074   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
14075   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
14076   #698840</a>.</li>
14077
14078 </ol>
14079
14080 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
14081 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
14082 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
14083
14084       </div>
14085       <div class="tags">
14086
14087
14088         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14089
14090
14091       </div>
14092     </div>
14093     <div class="padding"></div>
14094
14095     <div class="entry">
14096       <div class="title">
14097         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
14098       </div>
14099       <div class="date">
14100          4th June 2013
14101       </div>
14102       <div class="body">
14103         <p>It has been a while since my last English
14104 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14105 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
14106 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
14107 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
14108 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
14109
14110 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14111
14112 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
14113 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
14114 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
14115 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
14116
14117 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
14118 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
14119 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
14120
14121 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
14122 project?</strong></p>
14123
14124 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
14125 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
14126 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
14127 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
14128 manual.
14129
14130 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
14131 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
14132 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
14133 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
14134
14135 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
14136 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
14137 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
14138 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
14139 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
14140 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
14141 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
14142 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
14143 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
14144 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
14145
14146 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
14147 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
14148 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
14149 beautiful project.</p>
14150
14151 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
14152 Edu?</strong></p>
14153
14154 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
14155 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
14156 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
14157
14158 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
14159 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
14160 of educational free software.</p>
14161
14162 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
14163 Edu?</strong></p>
14164
14165 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
14166 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
14167 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
14168 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
14169 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
14170
14171 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
14172 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
14173 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
14174 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
14175 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
14176 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
14177 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
14178 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
14179
14180 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14181
14182 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
14183 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
14184 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
14185 also using the mathematical software
14186 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
14187 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
14188 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
14189
14190 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
14191 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
14192 statistics?</strong></p>
14193
14194 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
14195 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
14196 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
14197 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
14198
14199 <ul>
14200
14201 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
14202 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
14203 constructions in planar geometry
14204
14205 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
14206 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
14207 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
14208
14209 </ul>
14210
14211 <p>I like also
14212 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
14213 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
14214 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
14215
14216 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14217 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14218
14219 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
14220
14221 <ul>
14222
14223 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
14224
14225 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
14226     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
14227     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
14228
14229 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
14230
14231 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
14232     system.</li>
14233
14234 </ul>
14235
14236       </div>
14237       <div class="tags">
14238
14239
14240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14241
14242
14243       </div>
14244     </div>
14245     <div class="padding"></div>
14246
14247     <div class="entry">
14248       <div class="title">
14249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
14250       </div>
14251       <div class="date">
14252          1st June 2013
14253       </div>
14254       <div class="body">
14255         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14256 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
14257 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
14258 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
14259 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
14260 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
14261 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
14262 program.</p>
14263
14264 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
14265
14266 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
14267 <p>
14268 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
14269 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
14270 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
14271 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
14272 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14273 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
14274 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
14275 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
14276 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
14277 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
14278 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
14279 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
14280 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
14281 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
14282 </p>
14283
14284 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
14285 <p>
14286 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
14287 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
14288 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
14289 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
14290 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
14291 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
14292 </p>
14293
14294 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
14295 <p>
14296 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
14297 </p>
14298
14299 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
14300 <p>
14301 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
14302 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
14303 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
14304 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
14305 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
14306 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
14307 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
14308 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
14309 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
14310 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
14311 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
14312 </p>
14313
14314 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
14315 <p>
14316 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14317 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
14318 </p>
14319
14320 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
14321 <p>
14322 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
14323 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
14324 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
14325 </p>
14326
14327 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
14328 <p>
14329 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14330 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
14331 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
14332 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
14333 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
14334 </p>
14335
14336 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
14337 <p>
14338 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
14339 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
14340 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14341 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
14342 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
14343 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
14344 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
14345 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
14346 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
14347 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
14348 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
14349 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
14350 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
14351 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
14352 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
14353 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
14354 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
14355 </p>
14356
14357 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
14358 <p>
14359 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14360 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
14361 </p>
14362
14363 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
14364 <p>
14365 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
14366 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
14367 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
14368 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
14369 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
14370 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
14371 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
14372 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
14373 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
14374 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
14375 </p>
14376
14377 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
14378 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
14379 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
14380 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
14381 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
14382 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
14383 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
14384
14385       </div>
14386       <div class="tags">
14387
14388
14389         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14390
14391
14392       </div>
14393     </div>
14394     <div class="padding"></div>
14395
14396     <div class="entry">
14397       <div class="title">
14398         <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>
14399       </div>
14400       <div class="date">
14401         27th May 2013
14402       </div>
14403       <div class="body">
14404         <p>Two days ago, I asked
14405 <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
14406 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
14407 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
14408 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
14409 and Windows 8.</p>
14410
14411 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
14412 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
14413 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
14414 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
14415 enough to tell.</p>
14416
14417 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
14418 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
14419 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
14420 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
14421 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
14422 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
14423 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
14424 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
14425 to follow.</p>
14426
14427 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
14428 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
14429 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
14430 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
14431 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
14432 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
14433 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
14434 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
14435
14436 <p>I've updated the
14437 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
14438 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
14439 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
14440 machine.</p>
14441
14442 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
14443 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
14444
14445       </div>
14446       <div class="tags">
14447
14448
14449         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>.
14450
14451
14452       </div>
14453     </div>
14454     <div class="padding"></div>
14455
14456     <div class="entry">
14457       <div class="title">
14458         <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>
14459       </div>
14460       <div class="date">
14461         25th May 2013
14462       </div>
14463       <div class="body">
14464         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
14465 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
14466 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
14467 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
14468 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
14469 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
14470
14471 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
14472 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
14473 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
14474 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
14475 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
14476 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
14477 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
14478 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
14479 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
14480 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
14481
14482 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
14483 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
14484 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
14485 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
14486 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
14487 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
14488
14489 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
14490 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
14491 on new Laptops?</p>
14492
14493       </div>
14494       <div class="tags">
14495
14496
14497         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>.
14498
14499
14500       </div>
14501     </div>
14502     <div class="padding"></div>
14503
14504     <div class="entry">
14505       <div class="title">
14506         <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>
14507       </div>
14508       <div class="date">
14509         17th May 2013
14510       </div>
14511       <div class="body">
14512         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
14513 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
14514 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
14515 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
14516 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
14517 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
14518 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
14519 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
14520 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
14521 donate some money</a>.
14522
14523 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
14524 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
14525 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
14526 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
14527 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
14528
14529 <p>The script,
14530 <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/>
14531 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
14532 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
14533 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
14534
14535 <ol>
14536
14537 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
14538 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
14539 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
14540     our configuration.</li>
14541 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
14542     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
14543     according to the profile specified in the config above,
14544     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
14545 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
14546     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
14547 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
14548
14549 </ol>
14550
14551 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
14552 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
14553 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
14554 the needed packages.</p>
14555
14556 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
14557 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
14558 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
14559 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
14560 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
14561 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
14562
14563 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
14564 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
14565 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
14566
14567 <p><pre>
14568 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
14569 DESKTOP="lxde"
14570 </pre></p>
14571
14572 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
14573 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
14574 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
14575 boot.</p>
14576
14577       </div>
14578       <div class="tags">
14579
14580
14581         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>.
14582
14583
14584       </div>
14585     </div>
14586     <div class="padding"></div>
14587
14588     <div class="entry">
14589       <div class="title">
14590         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
14591       </div>
14592       <div class="date">
14593         14th May 2013
14594       </div>
14595       <div class="body">
14596         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
14597 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
14598 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
14599
14600 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
14601 2013-05-14</strong></p>
14602
14603 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
14604 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
14605 codename "Wheezy".</p>
14606
14607 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
14608
14609 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
14610 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
14611 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
14612 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
14613 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
14614 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
14615 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
14616 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
14617
14618 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
14619 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
14620 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
14621
14622 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
14623 <ul>
14624   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
14625     default.</li>
14626   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
14627   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
14628   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
14629     ibus-anthy.</li>
14630 </ul>
14631
14632 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
14633 <ul>
14634
14635   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
14636     reliability improvements.</li>
14637   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
14638     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
14639   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
14640     problems.</li>
14641   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
14642     direct:// URL.</li>
14643   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
14644   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
14645   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
14646   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
14647     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
14648   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
14649     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
14650 </ul>
14651
14652 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
14653 <ul>
14654
14655   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
14656     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
14657     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
14658   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
14659   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
14660     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
14661   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
14662   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
14663   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
14664     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
14665   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
14666     password submission problem
14667     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
14668
14669 </ul>
14670
14671 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
14672
14673 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
14674 <ul>
14675
14676   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
14677   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
14678   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
14679
14680 </ul>
14681
14682 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
14683
14684 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
14685
14686 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
14687
14688 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
14689
14690       </div>
14691       <div class="tags">
14692
14693
14694         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14695
14696
14697       </div>
14698     </div>
14699     <div class="padding"></div>
14700
14701     <div class="entry">
14702       <div class="title">
14703         <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>
14704       </div>
14705       <div class="date">
14706         11th May 2013
14707       </div>
14708       <div class="body">
14709         <P>In January,
14710 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
14711 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
14712 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
14713 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
14714 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
14715 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
14716 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
14717 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
14718 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
14719 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
14720 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
14721 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
14722
14723 <p><table>
14724 <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>
14725 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
14726 <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>
14727 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
14728 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
14729 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
14730 <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>
14731 <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>
14732 <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>
14733 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
14734 </table></p>
14735
14736 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
14737 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
14738 available in experimental.</p>
14739
14740 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
14741 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
14742 for LEGO designers.</p>
14743
14744       </div>
14745       <div class="tags">
14746
14747
14748         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>.
14749
14750
14751       </div>
14752     </div>
14753     <div class="padding"></div>
14754
14755     <div class="entry">
14756       <div class="title">
14757         <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>
14758       </div>
14759       <div class="date">
14760          5th May 2013
14761       </div>
14762       <div class="body">
14763         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
14764 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
14765 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
14766 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
14767 soon.</p>
14768
14769 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
14770 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
14771 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
14772 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
14773 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
14774 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
14775 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
14776 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
14777 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
14778 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
14779 Edu.</a>
14780
14781 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
14782 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
14783 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
14784 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
14785 follow.<p>
14786
14787       </div>
14788       <div class="tags">
14789
14790
14791         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>.
14792
14793
14794       </div>
14795     </div>
14796     <div class="padding"></div>
14797
14798     <div class="entry">
14799       <div class="title">
14800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
14801       </div>
14802       <div class="date">
14803         26th April 2013
14804       </div>
14805       <div class="body">
14806         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
14807 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
14808 announcement:</p>
14809
14810 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
14811 2013-04-26</strong></p>
14812
14813 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
14814 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
14815
14816 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
14817
14818 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
14819 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
14820 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
14821 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
14822 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
14823 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
14824 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
14825 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
14826 installed via the network.</p>
14827
14828 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
14829 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
14830 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
14831
14832 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
14833
14834 <ul>
14835 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
14836   <ul>
14837      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
14838      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
14839          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
14840          manual.)</li>
14841      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
14842      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
14843      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
14844      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
14845      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
14846      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
14847      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
14848      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
14849      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
14850      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
14851      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
14852      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
14853          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
14854          manual</a> for more details.</li>
14855      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
14856          installation.</li>
14857      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
14858          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
14859   </ul></li>
14860 </ul>
14861
14862 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
14863 <ul>
14864 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
14865     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
14866     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
14867 </ul>
14868
14869 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
14870 <ul>
14871 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
14872     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
14873     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
14874 </ul>
14875
14876 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
14877 <ul>
14878 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
14879     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
14880     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
14881 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
14882     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
14883     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
14884 </ul>
14885
14886 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
14887 <ul>
14888 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
14889     yet.</li>
14890 </ul>
14891
14892 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
14893
14894 <ul>
14895 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
14896     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
14897     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
14898 </ul>
14899
14900 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
14901
14902 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
14903 <ul>
14904 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
14905 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
14906 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
14907 </ul>
14908
14909 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
14910
14911 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
14912
14913 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
14914
14915 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
14916
14917       </div>
14918       <div class="tags">
14919
14920
14921         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14922
14923
14924       </div>
14925     </div>
14926     <div class="padding"></div>
14927
14928     <div class="entry">
14929       <div class="title">
14930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
14931       </div>
14932       <div class="date">
14933         16th April 2013
14934       </div>
14935       <div class="body">
14936         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
14937 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
14938 Details about the gathering can be found
14939 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
14940 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
14941 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
14942 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
14943 weekend.</p>
14944
14945 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
14946 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
14947 Edu release.</p>
14948
14949 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
14950
14951       </div>
14952       <div class="tags">
14953
14954
14955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14956
14957
14958       </div>
14959     </div>
14960     <div class="padding"></div>
14961
14962     <div class="entry">
14963       <div class="title">
14964         <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>
14965       </div>
14966       <div class="date">
14967          3rd April 2013
14968       </div>
14969       <div class="body">
14970         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
14971 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
14972 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
14973 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
14974
14975 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
14976 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
14977 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
14978 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
14979 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
14980 BTS. :)</p>
14981
14982       </div>
14983       <div class="tags">
14984
14985
14986         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>.
14987
14988
14989       </div>
14990     </div>
14991     <div class="padding"></div>
14992
14993     <div class="entry">
14994       <div class="title">
14995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
14996       </div>
14997       <div class="date">
14998         26th March 2013
14999       </div>
15000       <div class="body">
15001         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
15002 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
15003 font you use when printing.</p>
15004
15005 <p>Three years ago,
15006 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
15007 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
15008 changed their default front from
15009 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
15010 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
15011 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
15012 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
15013 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
15014 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
15015 prints.</p>
15016
15017 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
15018 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
15019 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
15020 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
15021 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
15022 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
15023 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
15024 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
15025 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
15026 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
15027 depend on the documents printed.</p>
15028
15029 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
15030 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
15031 and save some money in the process.</p>
15032
15033 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
15034 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
15035 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
15036 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
15037 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
15038 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
15039 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
15040 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
15041 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
15042
15043       </div>
15044       <div class="tags">
15045
15046
15047         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15048
15049
15050       </div>
15051     </div>
15052     <div class="padding"></div>
15053
15054     <div class="entry">
15055       <div class="title">
15056         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
15057       </div>
15058       <div class="date">
15059         24th March 2013
15060       </div>
15061       <div class="body">
15062         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
15063 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
15064 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
15065 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
15066 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
15067 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
15068 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
15069 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
15070 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
15071 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
15072 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
15073 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
15074
15075 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
15076 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
15077 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
15078 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
15079 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
15080 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
15081 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
15082 all I had to do was to use the
15083 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
15084 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
15085 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
15086 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
15087 xsltproc/fop (aka
15088 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
15089 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
15090 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
15091 technical detail.</p>
15092
15093 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
15094 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
15095 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
15096 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
15097 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
15098 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
15099
15100 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
15101 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
15102 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
15103 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
15104 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
15105 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
15106 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
15107 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
15108 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
15109
15110 <p><blockquote><pre>
15111 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
15112 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
15113   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
15114     &lt;hr/&gt;
15115   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
15116 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
15117 </pre></blockquote></p>
15118
15119 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
15120
15121 <p><blockquote><pre>
15122 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
15123 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
15124   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
15125     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
15126       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
15127     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
15128   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
15129 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
15130 </pre></blockquote></p>
15131
15132 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
15133 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
15134 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
15135 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
15136 enough.</p>
15137
15138 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
15139 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
15140 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
15141 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
15142 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
15143 look like this:</p>
15144
15145 <p><blockquote><pre>
15146 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
15147 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
15148   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
15149     &lt;br/&gt;
15150   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
15151 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
15152 </pre></blockquote></p>
15153
15154 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
15155
15156 <p><blockquote><pre>
15157 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
15158 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
15159   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
15160   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
15161     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
15162   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
15163 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
15164 </pre></blockquote></p>
15165
15166 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
15167 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
15168 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
15169 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
15170 page.</p>
15171
15172 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
15173 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
15174 github</a>
15175 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
15176 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
15177 days.</p>
15178
15179       </div>
15180       <div class="tags">
15181
15182
15183         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
15184
15185
15186       </div>
15187     </div>
15188     <div class="padding"></div>
15189
15190     <div class="entry">
15191       <div class="title">
15192         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
15193       </div>
15194       <div class="date">
15195         17th March 2013
15196       </div>
15197       <div class="body">
15198         <p>Via
15199 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
15200 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
15201 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
15202 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
15203 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
15204 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
15205 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
15206
15207 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
15208 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
15209
15210 <blockquote>
15211 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
15212 </blockquote>
15213
15214 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
15215
15216 <blockquote>
15217 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
15218 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
15219 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
15220 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
15221 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
15222 </blockquote>
15223
15224 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
15225 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
15226 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
15227 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
15228
15229 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
15230 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
15231
15232 <blockquote>
15233 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
15234 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
15235 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
15236 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
15237 </blockquote>
15238
15239 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
15240 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
15241 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
15242 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
15243 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
15244
15245 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
15246 embedding:</p>
15247
15248 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
15249
15250       </div>
15251       <div class="tags">
15252
15253
15254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15255
15256
15257       </div>
15258     </div>
15259     <div class="padding"></div>
15260
15261     <div class="entry">
15262       <div class="title">
15263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
15264       </div>
15265       <div class="date">
15266          8th March 2013
15267       </div>
15268       <div class="body">
15269         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
15270 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
15271 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
15272 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
15273 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
15274 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
15275 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
15276
15277 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
15278
15279 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
15280 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
15281
15282 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
15283 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
15284 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
15285 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
15286 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
15287 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
15288
15289 <p>Images are available for download at
15290 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
15291
15292 <p>md5sums:
15293 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
15294 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
15295 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
15296
15297 <p>sha1sums:
15298 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
15299 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
15300 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
15301
15302 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
15303
15304 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
15305 2013-03-03:</p>
15306
15307 <ul>
15308   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
15309   <ul>
15310         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
15311         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
15312   </ul></li>
15313   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
15314   <ul>
15315         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
15316         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
15317   </ul></li>
15318   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
15319      <ul>
15320         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
15321         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
15322         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
15323                 Closes: #664596</li>
15324         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
15325                 Closes: #664976</li>
15326         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
15327            <ul>
15328                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
15329                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
15330            </ul></li>
15331         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
15332            <ul>
15333                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
15334                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
15335                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
15336                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
15337                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
15338            </ul></li>
15339         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
15340     </ul>
15341   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
15342     <ul>
15343         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
15344     </ul></li>
15345 </ul>
15346
15347 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
15348 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
15349 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
15350 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
15351
15352 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
15353 mailinglist
15354 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
15355 </p></blockquote>
15356
15357 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
15358
15359       </div>
15360       <div class="tags">
15361
15362
15363         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15364
15365
15366       </div>
15367     </div>
15368     <div class="padding"></div>
15369
15370     <div class="entry">
15371       <div class="title">
15372         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
15373       </div>
15374       <div class="date">
15375          3rd March 2013
15376       </div>
15377       <div class="body">
15378         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
15379 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
15380 support using
15381 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
15382 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
15383 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
15384 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
15385 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
15386 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
15387 using the GNU LGPL, and
15388 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
15389
15390 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
15391 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
15392 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
15393 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
15394 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
15395 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
15396
15397 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
15398 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
15399 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
15400 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
15401 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
15402 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
15403 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
15404 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
15405 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
15406 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
15407 signal distribution is handled using
15408 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
15409 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
15410 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
15411 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
15412 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
15413 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
15414 them up a bit more first.</p>
15415
15416 <p>The development is coordinated on the
15417 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
15418 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
15419 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
15420 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
15421 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
15422 development.</p>
15423
15424       </div>
15425       <div class="tags">
15426
15427
15428         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15429
15430
15431       </div>
15432     </div>
15433     <div class="padding"></div>
15434
15435     <div class="entry">
15436       <div class="title">
15437         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
15438       </div>
15439       <div class="date">
15440         27th February 2013
15441       </div>
15442       <div class="body">
15443         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
15444 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
15445 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
15446 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
15447 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
15448 (where I am the chair of the board) and
15449 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
15450 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
15451 GNU», with this description:
15452
15453 <p><blockquote>
15454 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
15455 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
15456 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
15457 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
15458 </blockquote></p>
15459
15460 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
15461 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
15462 am really curious how many will show up.  See
15463 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
15464 page</a> for the location details.</p>
15465
15466       </div>
15467       <div class="tags">
15468
15469
15470         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
15471
15472
15473       </div>
15474     </div>
15475     <div class="padding"></div>
15476
15477     <div class="entry">
15478       <div class="title">
15479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
15480       </div>
15481       <div class="date">
15482         15th February 2013
15483       </div>
15484       <div class="body">
15485         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
15486 now a great source of free maps available from
15487 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
15488 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
15489 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
15490 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
15491 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
15492 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
15493 page for descriptions).</p>
15494
15495 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
15496 map you can just edit the
15497 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
15498 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
15499
15500       </div>
15501       <div class="tags">
15502
15503
15504         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
15505
15506
15507       </div>
15508     </div>
15509     <div class="padding"></div>
15510
15511     <div class="entry">
15512       <div class="title">
15513         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
15514       </div>
15515       <div class="date">
15516         12th February 2013
15517       </div>
15518       <div class="body">
15519         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
15520 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
15521 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
15522 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
15523 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
15524 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
15525 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
15526 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
15527 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
15528 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
15529 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
15530 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
15531 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
15532 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
15533 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
15534 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
15535
15536 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
15537 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
15538 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
15539 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
15540 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
15541 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
15542 fields:</p>
15543
15544 <p><pre>
15545 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
15546 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
15547 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
15548 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
15549 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
15550 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
15551 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
15552 </pre></p>
15553
15554 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
15555 answer regarding
15556 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
15557 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
15558 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
15559 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
15560
15561 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
15562
15563 <p><pre>
15564 BEGIN:VCARD
15565 VERSION:2.1
15566 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
15567 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
15568 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
15569 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
15570 REV:20130212T095000Z
15571 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
15572 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
15573 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
15574 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
15575 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
15576 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
15577 END:VCARD
15578 </pre></p>
15579
15580 <p>The resulting QR code created using
15581 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
15582 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
15583 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
15584 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
15585 system.</p>
15586
15587 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
15588
15589 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
15590 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
15591 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
15592 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
15593
15594 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
15595 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
15596
15597       </div>
15598       <div class="tags">
15599
15600
15601         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15602
15603
15604       </div>
15605     </div>
15606     <div class="padding"></div>
15607
15608     <div class="entry">
15609       <div class="title">
15610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
15611       </div>
15612       <div class="date">
15613         10th February 2013
15614       </div>
15615       <div class="body">
15616         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
15617
15618 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
15619 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
15620 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
15621 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
15622 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
15623 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
15624 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
15625 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
15626 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
15627 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
15628 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
15629
15630 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
15631 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
15632 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
15633 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
15634 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
15635 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
15636 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
15637 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
15638 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
15639 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
15640 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
15641 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
15642 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
15643 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
15644 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
15645 ones own
15646 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
15647 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
15648 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
15649 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
15650 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
15651 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
15652 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
15653 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
15654 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
15655 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
15656 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
15657
15658 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
15659 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
15660 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
15661 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
15662 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
15663 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
15664
15665 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
15666 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
15667 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
15668
15669       </div>
15670       <div class="tags">
15671
15672
15673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15674
15675
15676       </div>
15677     </div>
15678     <div class="padding"></div>
15679
15680     <div class="entry">
15681       <div class="title">
15682         <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>
15683       </div>
15684       <div class="date">
15685          2nd February 2013
15686       </div>
15687       <div class="body">
15688         <p>My
15689 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
15690 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
15691 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
15692 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
15693 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
15694 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
15695 version too.</p>
15696
15697 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
15698 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
15699 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
15700 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
15701 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
15702 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
15703 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
15704 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
15705
15706 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
15707 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
15708 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
15709 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
15710 it. :)</p>
15711
15712 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
15713 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
15714 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
15715
15716       </div>
15717       <div class="tags">
15718
15719
15720         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>.
15721
15722
15723       </div>
15724     </div>
15725     <div class="padding"></div>
15726
15727     <div class="entry">
15728       <div class="title">
15729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
15730       </div>
15731       <div class="date">
15732         22nd January 2013
15733       </div>
15734       <div class="body">
15735         <p>Yesterday, I
15736 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
15737 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
15738 pluggable hardware devices, which I
15739 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
15740 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
15741 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
15742 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
15743 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
15744 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
15745 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
15746 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
15747 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
15748 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
15749
15750 <pre>
15751 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
15752 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
15753 </pre>
15754
15755 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
15756 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
15757 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
15758 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
15759
15760 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
15761 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
15762 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
15763 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
15764 word.</p>
15765
15766 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
15767 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
15768 process.</p>
15769
15770 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
15771 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
15772
15773       </div>
15774       <div class="tags">
15775
15776
15777         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>.
15778
15779
15780       </div>
15781     </div>
15782     <div class="padding"></div>
15783
15784     <div class="entry">
15785       <div class="title">
15786         <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>
15787       </div>
15788       <div class="date">
15789         21st January 2013
15790       </div>
15791       <div class="body">
15792         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
15793 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
15794 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
15795 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
15796 it, fetch the
15797 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
15798 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
15799 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
15800 autostart script.</p>
15801
15802 <p>The design is simple:</p>
15803
15804 <ul>
15805
15806 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
15807 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
15808
15809 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
15810 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
15811 initially did.</li>
15812
15813 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
15814 the APT database, a database
15815 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
15816 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
15817
15818 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
15819 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
15820 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
15821 package or packages.</li>
15822
15823 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
15824 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
15825
15826 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
15827 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
15828
15829 </ul>
15830
15831 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
15832 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
15833 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
15834 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
15835
15836 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
15837 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
15838 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
15839 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
15840 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
15841
15842 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
15843 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
15844 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
15845 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
15846 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
15847 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
15848 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
15849 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
15850
15851 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
15852 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
15853 '<tt>svn checkout
15854 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
15855 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
15856 devscripts package.</p>
15857
15858 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
15859 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
15860 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
15861 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
15862 instructions</a> for details.</p>
15863
15864       </div>
15865       <div class="tags">
15866
15867
15868         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>.
15869
15870
15871       </div>
15872     </div>
15873     <div class="padding"></div>
15874
15875     <div class="entry">
15876       <div class="title">
15877         <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>
15878       </div>
15879       <div class="date">
15880         19th January 2013
15881       </div>
15882       <div class="body">
15883         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
15884 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
15885 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
15886 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
15887 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
15888 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
15889 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
15890 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
15891 not a durable solution.
15892
15893 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
15894 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
15895
15896 <ul>
15897
15898 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
15899   than A4).</li>
15900 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
15901 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
15902 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
15903 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
15904 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
15905 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
15906 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
15907 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
15908 size).</li>
15909 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
15910   X.org packages.</li>
15911 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
15912   the time).
15913
15914 </ul>
15915
15916 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
15917 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
15918 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
15919 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
15920 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
15921 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
15922 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
15923 still be useful.</p>
15924
15925 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
15926 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
15927 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
15928 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
15929 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
15930 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
15931
15932       </div>
15933       <div class="tags">
15934
15935
15936         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>.
15937
15938
15939       </div>
15940     </div>
15941     <div class="padding"></div>
15942
15943     <div class="entry">
15944       <div class="title">
15945         <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>
15946       </div>
15947       <div class="date">
15948         18th January 2013
15949       </div>
15950       <div class="body">
15951         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
15952 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
15953 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
15954 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
15955 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
15956 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
15957 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
15958
15959 <pre>
15960 #!/usr/bin/python
15961 import sys
15962 import apt
15963 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
15964     cache = apt.Cache()
15965     cache.open(None)
15966     thepkgs = []
15967     for pkg in cache:
15968         version = pkg.candidate
15969         if version is None:
15970             version = pkg.installed
15971         if version is None:
15972             continue
15973         record = version.record
15974         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
15975             continue
15976         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
15977         for t in mime_types:
15978             t = t.rstrip().strip()
15979             if t == mimetype:
15980                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
15981     return thepkgs
15982 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
15983 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
15984     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
15985 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
15986 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
15987     print "  %s" %pkg
15988 </pre>
15989
15990 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
15991
15992 <pre>
15993 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
15994 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
15995   gecko-mediaplayer
15996 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
15997 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
15998   browser-plugin-gnash
15999 %
16000 </pre>
16001
16002 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
16003 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
16004 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
16005 anyone working on adding it?</p>
16006
16007 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
16008 request for icweasel support for this feature is
16009 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
16010 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
16011 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
16012 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
16013
16014       </div>
16015       <div class="tags">
16016
16017
16018         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>.
16019
16020
16021       </div>
16022     </div>
16023     <div class="padding"></div>
16024
16025     <div class="entry">
16026       <div class="title">
16027         <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>
16028       </div>
16029       <div class="date">
16030         16th January 2013
16031       </div>
16032       <div class="body">
16033         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
16034 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
16035 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
16036 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
16037 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
16038 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
16039 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
16040 downloaded by the browser.</p>
16041
16042 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
16043 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
16044 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
16045 can be found on the
16046 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
16047 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
16048 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
16049 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
16050 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
16051
16052 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
16053
16054 <pre>
16055   count MIME type
16056   ----- -----------------------
16057      32 text/plain
16058      30 audio/mpeg
16059      29 image/png
16060      28 image/jpeg
16061      27 application/ogg
16062      26 audio/x-mp3
16063      25 image/tiff
16064      25 image/gif
16065      22 image/bmp
16066      22 audio/x-wav
16067      20 audio/x-flac
16068      19 audio/x-mpegurl
16069      18 video/x-ms-asf
16070      18 audio/x-musepack
16071      18 audio/x-mpeg
16072      18 application/x-ogg
16073      17 video/mpeg
16074      17 audio/x-scpls
16075      17 audio/ogg
16076      16 video/x-ms-wmv
16077 </pre>
16078
16079 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
16080
16081 <pre>
16082   count MIME type
16083   ----- -----------------------
16084      33 text/plain
16085      32 image/png
16086      32 image/jpeg
16087      29 audio/mpeg
16088      27 image/gif
16089      26 image/tiff
16090      26 application/ogg
16091      25 audio/x-mp3
16092      22 image/bmp
16093      21 audio/x-wav
16094      19 audio/x-mpegurl
16095      19 audio/x-mpeg
16096      18 video/mpeg
16097      18 audio/x-scpls
16098      18 audio/x-flac
16099      18 application/x-ogg
16100      17 video/x-ms-asf
16101      17 text/html
16102      17 audio/x-musepack
16103      16 image/x-xbitmap
16104 </pre>
16105
16106 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
16107
16108 <pre>
16109   count MIME type
16110   ----- -----------------------
16111      31 text/plain
16112      31 image/png
16113      31 image/jpeg
16114      29 audio/mpeg
16115      28 application/ogg
16116      27 image/gif
16117      26 image/tiff
16118      26 audio/x-mp3
16119      23 audio/x-wav
16120      22 image/bmp
16121      21 audio/x-flac
16122      20 audio/x-mpegurl
16123      19 audio/x-mpeg
16124      18 video/x-ms-asf
16125      18 video/mpeg
16126      18 audio/x-scpls
16127      18 application/x-ogg
16128      17 audio/x-musepack
16129      16 video/x-ms-wmv
16130      16 video/x-msvideo
16131 </pre>
16132
16133 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
16134 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
16135 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
16136 issues.</p>
16137
16138 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
16139 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
16140
16141       </div>
16142       <div class="tags">
16143
16144
16145         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>.
16146
16147
16148       </div>
16149     </div>
16150     <div class="padding"></div>
16151
16152     <div class="entry">
16153       <div class="title">
16154         <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>
16155       </div>
16156       <div class="date">
16157         15th January 2013
16158       </div>
16159       <div class="body">
16160         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
16161 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
16162 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
16163 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
16164 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
16165 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
16166 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
16167 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
16168 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
16169 packages.</p>
16170
16171 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
16172 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
16173 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
16174 modalias.</p>
16175
16176 <p><blockquote>
16177 Package: package-name
16178 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
16179 </blockquote></p>
16180
16181 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
16182 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
16183
16184 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
16185 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
16186
16187 <p><blockquote>
16188 Package: cheese
16189 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
16190 </blockquote></p>
16191
16192 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
16193 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
16194
16195 <p><blockquote>
16196 Package: pcmciautils
16197 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
16198 </blockquote></p>
16199
16200 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
16201 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
16202
16203 <p><blockquote>
16204 Package: colorhug-client
16205 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
16206 </blockquote></p>
16207
16208 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
16209 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
16210 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
16211
16212 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
16213 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
16214 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
16215 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
16216 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
16217 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
16218 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
16219 Raring.</p>
16220
16221 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
16222 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
16223 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
16224 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
16225 try the
16226 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
16227 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
16228 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
16229 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
16230
16231 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
16232 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
16233
16234 <p><blockquote>
16235 % ./hw-support-lookup
16236 <br>yubikey-personalization
16237 <br>%
16238 </blockquote></p>
16239
16240 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
16241 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
16242
16243 <p><blockquote>
16244 % ./hw-support-lookup
16245 <br>pcmciautils
16246 <br>%
16247 </blockquote></p>
16248
16249 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
16250 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
16251 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
16252
16253 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
16254 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
16255 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
16256 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
16257 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
16258 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
16259 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
16260 see if it work.</p>
16261
16262 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
16263 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
16264 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
16265 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
16266
16267       </div>
16268       <div class="tags">
16269
16270
16271         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>.
16272
16273
16274       </div>
16275     </div>
16276     <div class="padding"></div>
16277
16278     <div class="entry">
16279       <div class="title">
16280         <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>
16281       </div>
16282       <div class="date">
16283         14th January 2013
16284       </div>
16285       <div class="body">
16286         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
16287 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
16288 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
16289 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
16290 in
16291 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
16292 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
16293
16294 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
16295
16296 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
16297 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
16298 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
16299 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
16300 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
16301 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
16302
16303 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
16304 this shell script:</p>
16305
16306 <pre>
16307 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
16308 </pre>
16309
16310 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
16311 using modinfo:</p>
16312
16313 <pre>
16314 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
16315 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
16316 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
16317 %
16318 </pre>
16319
16320 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
16321
16322 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
16323 Bridge memory controller:</p>
16324
16325 <p><blockquote>
16326 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
16327 </blockquote></p>
16328
16329 <p>This represent these values:</p>
16330
16331 <pre>
16332  v   00008086  (vendor)
16333  d   00002770  (device)
16334  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
16335  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
16336  bc  06        (bus class)
16337  sc  00        (bus subclass)
16338  i   00        (interface)
16339 </pre>
16340
16341 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
16342 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
16343 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
16344 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
16345
16346 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
16347 means.</p>
16348
16349 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
16350
16351 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
16352 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
16353
16354 <p><blockquote>
16355 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
16356 </blockquote></p>
16357
16358 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
16359
16360 <pre>
16361  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
16362  p    0001  (device product)
16363  d    0206  (bcddevice)
16364  dc     09  (device class)
16365  dsc    00  (device subclass)
16366  dp     00  (device protocol)
16367  ic     09  (interface class)
16368  isc    00  (interface subclass)
16369  ip     00  (interface protocol)
16370 </pre>
16371
16372 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
16373 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
16374 these alias entries show up:</p>
16375
16376 <p><blockquote>
16377 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
16378 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
16379 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
16380 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
16381 </blockquote></p>
16382
16383 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
16384 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
16385 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
16386
16387 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
16388
16389 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
16390 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
16391
16392 <p><blockquote>
16393 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
16394 </blockquote></p>
16395
16396 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
16397
16398 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
16399
16400 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
16401 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
16402 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
16403
16404 <p><blockquote>
16405 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
16406 </blockquote></p>
16407
16408 <p>The values present are</p>
16409
16410 <pre>
16411  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
16412  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
16413  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
16414  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
16415  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
16416  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
16417  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
16418  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
16419  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
16420  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
16421  ct   10             (chassis type)
16422  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
16423 </pre>
16424
16425 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
16426 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
16427
16428 <pre>
16429   3 Desktop
16430   4 Low Profile Desktop
16431   5 Pizza Box
16432   6 Mini Tower
16433   7 Tower
16434   8 Portable
16435   9 Laptop
16436  10 Notebook
16437  11 Hand Held
16438  12 Docking Station
16439  13 All In One
16440  14 Sub Notebook
16441  15 Space-saving
16442  16 Lunch Box
16443  17 Main Server Chassis
16444  18 Expansion Chassis
16445  19 Sub Chassis
16446  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
16447  21 Peripheral Chassis
16448  22 RAID Chassis
16449  23 Rack Mount Chassis
16450  24 Sealed-case PC
16451  25 Multi-system
16452  26 CompactPCI
16453  27 AdvancedTCA
16454  28 Blade
16455  29 Blade Enclosing
16456 </pre>
16457
16458 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
16459 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
16460 claim it is a desktop.</p>
16461
16462 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
16463
16464 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
16465 test machine:</p>
16466
16467 <p><blockquote>
16468 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
16469 </blockquote></p>
16470
16471 <p>The values present are</p>
16472
16473 <pre>
16474   ty  01  (type)
16475   pr  00  (prototype)
16476   id  00  (id)
16477   ex  00  (extra)
16478 </pre>
16479
16480 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
16481 the valid values are.</p>
16482
16483 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
16484
16485 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
16486 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
16487 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
16488 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
16489 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
16490 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
16491 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
16492
16493 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
16494
16495 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
16496 one can use the following shell script:</p>
16497
16498 <pre>
16499   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
16500     echo "$id" ; \
16501     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
16502   done
16503 </pre>
16504
16505 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
16506 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
16507
16508 <pre>
16509   acpi:ACPI0003:
16510     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
16511   acpi:device:
16512   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
16513   acpi:IBM0068:
16514     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
16515     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
16516     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
16517     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
16518   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
16519     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
16520     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
16521     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
16522   [...]
16523 </pre>
16524
16525 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
16526 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
16527 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
16528 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
16529
16530 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
16531 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
16532 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
16533
16534       </div>
16535       <div class="tags">
16536
16537
16538         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>.
16539
16540
16541       </div>
16542     </div>
16543     <div class="padding"></div>
16544
16545     <div class="entry">
16546       <div class="title">
16547         <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>
16548       </div>
16549       <div class="date">
16550         10th January 2013
16551       </div>
16552       <div class="body">
16553         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
16554 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
16555 Launcher and updated the Debian package
16556 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
16557 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
16558 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
16559 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
16560 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
16561 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
16562 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
16563 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
16564 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
16565 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
16566 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
16567 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
16568 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
16569 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
16570 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
16571
16572       </div>
16573       <div class="tags">
16574
16575
16576         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
16577
16578
16579       </div>
16580     </div>
16581     <div class="padding"></div>
16582
16583     <div class="entry">
16584       <div class="title">
16585         <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>
16586       </div>
16587       <div class="date">
16588          9th January 2013
16589       </div>
16590       <div class="body">
16591         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
16592 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
16593 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
16594 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
16595 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
16596 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
16597 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
16598 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
16599 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
16600 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
16601 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
16602
16603 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
16604 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
16605 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
16606 simple:
16607
16608 <ul>
16609
16610 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
16611   starting when a user log in.</li>
16612
16613 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
16614   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
16615
16616 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
16617   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
16618   packages.</li>
16619
16620 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
16621   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
16622
16623 </ul>
16624
16625 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
16626 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
16627 discover database to find packages and
16628 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
16629 packages.</p>
16630
16631 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
16632 draft package is now checked into
16633 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
16634 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
16635 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
16636 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
16637 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
16638 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
16639 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
16640 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
16641 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
16642 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
16643 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
16644 because of the freeze).</p>
16645
16646 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
16647 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
16648 inserted):</p>
16649
16650 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
16651
16652 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
16653 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
16654 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
16655
16656 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
16657 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
16658 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
16659 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
16660 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
16661 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
16662 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
16663
16664 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
16665 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
16666 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
16667 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
16668 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
16669 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
16670 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
16671 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
16672 not be installed?</p>
16673
16674 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
16675 please send me an email. :)</p>
16676
16677       </div>
16678       <div class="tags">
16679
16680
16681         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>.
16682
16683
16684       </div>
16685     </div>
16686     <div class="padding"></div>
16687
16688     <div class="entry">
16689       <div class="title">
16690         <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>
16691       </div>
16692       <div class="date">
16693          2nd January 2013
16694       </div>
16695       <div class="body">
16696         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
16697 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
16698 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
16699 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
16700 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
16701 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
16702 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
16703 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
16704 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
16705 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
16706
16707 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
16708 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
16709 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
16710
16711       </div>
16712       <div class="tags">
16713
16714
16715         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>.
16716
16717
16718       </div>
16719     </div>
16720     <div class="padding"></div>
16721
16722     <div class="entry">
16723       <div class="title">
16724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
16725       </div>
16726       <div class="date">
16727         28th December 2012
16728       </div>
16729       <div class="body">
16730         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
16731 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
16732 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
16733 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
16734 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
16735 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
16736 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
16737 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
16738 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
16739 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
16740 followed by many others. :)</p>
16741
16742 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
16743 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
16744 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
16745 you want to donate to the project.</p>
16746
16747       </div>
16748       <div class="tags">
16749
16750
16751         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16752
16753
16754       </div>
16755     </div>
16756     <div class="padding"></div>
16757
16758     <div class="entry">
16759       <div class="title">
16760         <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>
16761       </div>
16762       <div class="date">
16763         25th December 2012
16764       </div>
16765       <div class="body">
16766         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
16767 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
16768
16769 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
16770 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
16771 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
16772 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
16773 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
16774 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
16775 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
16776 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
16777 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
16778 name.</p>
16779
16780 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
16781 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
16782 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
16783
16784 <blockquote><pre>
16785 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
16786 cd bitcoin
16787 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
16788 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
16789 </pre></blockquote>
16790
16791 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
16792 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
16793 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
16794 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
16795 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
16796 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
16797 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
16798 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
16799 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
16800
16801 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
16802 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
16803 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
16804
16805       </div>
16806       <div class="tags">
16807
16808
16809         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>.
16810
16811
16812       </div>
16813     </div>
16814     <div class="padding"></div>
16815
16816     <div class="entry">
16817       <div class="title">
16818         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
16819       </div>
16820       <div class="date">
16821         21st December 2012
16822       </div>
16823       <div class="body">
16824         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
16825 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
16826 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
16827 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
16828 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
16829 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
16830 is now maintained by a
16831 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
16832 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
16833 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
16834 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
16835 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
16836 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
16837 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
16838 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
16839 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
16840 Corallo in a
16841 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
16842 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
16843 Debian package.</p>
16844
16845 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
16846 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
16847 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
16848 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
16849 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
16850 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
16851 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
16852 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
16853 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
16854 new version to unstable.
16855
16856 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
16857 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
16858 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
16859 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
16860 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
16861 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
16862 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
16863 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
16864 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
16865 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
16866 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
16867 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
16868 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
16869 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
16870 have not tested them.</p>
16871
16872 <p>My
16873 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
16874 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
16875 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
16876 years ago, as can be
16877 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
16878 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
16879 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
16880 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
16881 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
16882 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
16883 the same address as last time,
16884 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
16885
16886       </div>
16887       <div class="tags">
16888
16889
16890         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>.
16891
16892
16893       </div>
16894     </div>
16895     <div class="padding"></div>
16896
16897     <div class="entry">
16898       <div class="title">
16899         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
16900       </div>
16901       <div class="date">
16902         18th December 2012
16903       </div>
16904       <div class="body">
16905         <p>A few days ago I came across
16906 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
16907 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
16908 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
16909 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
16910 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
16911 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
16912 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
16913 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
16914 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
16915
16916 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
16917 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
16918 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
16919 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
16920
16921 <blockquote><pre>
16922 2004-05-27 Book Store
16923       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
16924       Liabilities:Visa
16925 </pre></blockquote>
16926
16927 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
16928 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
16929 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
16930 Spang</a>,
16931 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
16932 Keen</a>,
16933 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
16934 Cantino</a> and
16935 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
16936 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
16937 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
16938 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
16939 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
16940
16941 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
16942 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
16943 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
16944 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
16945 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
16946
16947 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
16948 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
16949 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
16950 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
16951 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
16952 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
16953 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
16954 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
16955 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
16956
16957       </div>
16958       <div class="tags">
16959
16960
16961         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16962
16963
16964       </div>
16965     </div>
16966     <div class="padding"></div>
16967
16968     <div class="entry">
16969       <div class="title">
16970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
16971       </div>
16972       <div class="date">
16973          6th December 2012
16974       </div>
16975       <div class="body">
16976         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
16977 Oslo</a>, we use the
16978 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
16979 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
16980 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
16981 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
16982 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
16983 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
16984 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
16985 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
16986 Python.</p>
16987
16988 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
16989 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
16990 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
16991 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
16992 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
16993 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
16994
16995 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
16996 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
16997 user currently logged in:</p>
16998
16999 <blockquote><pre>
17000 #!/usr/bin/env python
17001 import getpass
17002 import xmlrpclib
17003 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
17004 username = getpass.getuser()
17005 password = getpass.getpass()
17006 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
17007 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
17008 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
17009 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
17010 result = server.logout(sessionid)
17011 print result
17012 </pre></blockquote>
17013
17014 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
17015 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
17016
17017       </div>
17018       <div class="tags">
17019
17020
17021         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
17022
17023
17024       </div>
17025     </div>
17026     <div class="padding"></div>
17027
17028     <div class="entry">
17029       <div class="title">
17030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
17031       </div>
17032       <div class="date">
17033         17th November 2012
17034       </div>
17035       <div class="body">
17036         <p>While working on a
17037 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
17038 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
17039 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
17040 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
17041 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
17042 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
17043
17044 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
17045 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
17046 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
17047 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
17048 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
17049 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
17050 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
17051 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
17052 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
17053 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
17054 arguments.</p>
17055
17056 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
17057 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
17058 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
17059 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
17060 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
17061 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
17062 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
17063 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
17064
17065 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
17066 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
17067 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
17068 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
17069 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
17070 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
17071 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
17072 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
17073 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
17074 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
17075 correct right holder.</p>
17076
17077 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
17078 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
17079 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
17080 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
17081 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
17082 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
17083 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
17084 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
17085 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
17086 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
17087 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
17088 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
17089 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
17090 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
17091
17092 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
17093 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
17094 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
17095
17096 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
17097 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
17098
17099       </div>
17100       <div class="tags">
17101
17102
17103         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
17104
17105
17106       </div>
17107     </div>
17108     <div class="padding"></div>
17109
17110     <div class="entry">
17111       <div class="title">
17112         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
17113       </div>
17114       <div class="date">
17115         14th November 2012
17116       </div>
17117       <div class="body">
17118         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
17119 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
17120 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
17121 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
17122 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
17123 the people behind the German
17124 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
17125 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
17126 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
17127
17128 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17129
17130 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
17131 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
17132 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
17133
17134 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
17135 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
17136 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
17137 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
17138 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
17139 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
17140
17141 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
17142 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
17143 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
17144 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
17145 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
17146 relationship management and the communication processes in the
17147 project.</p>
17148
17149 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
17150 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
17151 and a yoga teacher.</p>
17152
17153 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
17154 project?</strong></p>
17155
17156 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
17157
17158 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
17159 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
17160 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
17161 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
17162 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
17163 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
17164 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
17165 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
17166 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
17167 parents.</p>
17168
17169 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
17170 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
17171 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
17172 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
17173 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
17174 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
17175 Germany.</p>
17176
17177 <p>For information about our school project you can read
17178 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
17179 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
17180
17181 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
17182 Edu?</strong></p>
17183
17184 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
17185 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
17186
17187 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
17188 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
17189 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
17190 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
17191 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
17192 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
17193 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
17194 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
17195 teachers, parents...</p>
17196
17197 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
17198 Edu?</strong></p>
17199
17200 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
17201 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
17202
17203 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
17204 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
17205 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
17206 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
17207 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
17208
17209 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
17210 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
17211 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
17212 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
17213 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
17214 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
17215 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
17216
17217 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17218
17219 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
17220 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
17221 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
17222 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
17223
17224 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17225 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17226
17227 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
17228 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
17229 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
17230 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
17231 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
17232
17233 <ul>
17234
17235 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
17236 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
17237 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
17238
17239 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
17240 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
17241 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
17242 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
17243 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
17244 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
17245 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
17246
17247 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
17248 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
17249 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
17250 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
17251
17252 </ul>
17253
17254       </div>
17255       <div class="tags">
17256
17257
17258         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
17259
17260
17261       </div>
17262     </div>
17263     <div class="padding"></div>
17264
17265     <div class="entry">
17266       <div class="title">
17267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
17268       </div>
17269       <div class="date">
17270          4th November 2012
17271       </div>
17272       <div class="body">
17273         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
17274 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
17275 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
17276 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
17277 see how a member of the bitcoin community
17278 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
17279 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
17280 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
17281 competition.  My thoughts go to the
17282 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
17283 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
17284 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
17285 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
17286 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
17287
17288 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
17289 that the community already seem to have
17290 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
17291 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
17292 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
17293 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
17294 wealth is available.</p>
17295
17296       </div>
17297       <div class="tags">
17298
17299
17300         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17301
17302
17303       </div>
17304     </div>
17305     <div class="padding"></div>
17306
17307     <div class="entry">
17308       <div class="title">
17309         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
17310       </div>
17311       <div class="date">
17312         26th October 2012
17313       </div>
17314       <div class="body">
17315         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
17316 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
17317 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
17318 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
17319 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
17320 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
17321 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
17322 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
17323 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
17324 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
17325 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
17326 it every time.</p>
17327
17328 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
17329 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
17330 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
17331 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
17332 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
17333 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
17334 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
17335 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
17336 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
17337 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
17338 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
17339 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
17340
17341 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
17342 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
17343 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
17344 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
17345 article: First the unplanned outage:
17346
17347 <blockquote><pre>
17348 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
17349 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
17350 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
17351 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
17352 Duration:    40 minutes
17353 Scope:       Exchange 2003
17354 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
17355              a cluster failover.
17356
17357 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
17358              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
17359 Technician:  [xxx]
17360 </pre></blockquote>
17361
17362 Next the planned outage:
17363
17364 <blockquote><pre>
17365 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
17366 Severity:    Major (Planned)
17367 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
17368 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
17369 Duration:    10 hours
17370 Scope:       H2 Transport
17371 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
17372              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
17373              4510s.
17374 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
17375              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
17376              connectivity.
17377 Technician:  [xxx]
17378 </pre></blockquote>
17379
17380 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
17381 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
17382 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
17383 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
17384 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
17385 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
17386 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
17387
17388 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
17389 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
17390 university too.  We do register
17391 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
17392 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
17393 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
17394 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
17395 for other sites to consider too?</p>
17396
17397       </div>
17398       <div class="tags">
17399
17400
17401         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
17402
17403
17404       </div>
17405     </div>
17406     <div class="padding"></div>
17407
17408     <div class="entry">
17409       <div class="title">
17410         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
17411       </div>
17412       <div class="date">
17413         22nd October 2012
17414       </div>
17415       <div class="body">
17416         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
17417 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
17418 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
17419 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
17420 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
17421 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
17422 background information is available in Norwegian from
17423 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
17424 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
17425 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
17426 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
17427 willing to
17428 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
17429 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
17430 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
17431 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
17432 sounded like
17433 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
17434 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
17435 later.</p>
17436
17437 <p>And thought this action is
17438 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
17439 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
17440 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
17441 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
17442 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
17443 rights.</p>
17444
17445 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
17446 unacceptable terms.  For example
17447 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
17448 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
17449 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
17450 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
17451 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
17452
17453 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
17454 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
17455 restored the account of the user, as reported by
17456 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
17457 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
17458 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
17459 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
17460 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
17461 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
17462 reading two opinions from
17463 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
17464 Phipps</a> and
17465 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
17466 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
17467 details about the original story.</p>
17468
17469       </div>
17470       <div class="tags">
17471
17472
17473         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
17474
17475
17476       </div>
17477     </div>
17478     <div class="padding"></div>
17479
17480     <div class="entry">
17481       <div class="title">
17482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
17483       </div>
17484       <div class="date">
17485         18th October 2012
17486       </div>
17487       <div class="body">
17488         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
17489 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
17490 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
17491 across a marvellous drawing by
17492 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
17493 visualising some of what is going on.
17494
17495 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
17496 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
17497
17498 <blockquote>
17499 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
17500 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
17501 </blockquote>
17502
17503 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
17504 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
17505 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
17506 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
17507 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
17508 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
17509
17510       </div>
17511       <div class="tags">
17512
17513
17514         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
17515
17516
17517       </div>
17518     </div>
17519     <div class="padding"></div>
17520
17521     <div class="entry">
17522       <div class="title">
17523         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
17524       </div>
17525       <div class="date">
17526         12th October 2012
17527       </div>
17528       <div class="body">
17529         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
17530 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
17531 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
17532 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
17533 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
17534 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
17535 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
17536 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
17537 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
17538 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
17539 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
17540 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
17541 matter".</p>
17542
17543 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
17544 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
17545 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
17546 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
17547 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
17548 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
17549 to argue its side.</p>
17550
17551 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
17552 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
17553 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
17554 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
17555
17556 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
17557 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
17558 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
17559
17560       </div>
17561       <div class="tags">
17562
17563
17564         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
17565
17566
17567       </div>
17568     </div>
17569     <div class="padding"></div>
17570
17571     <div class="entry">
17572       <div class="title">
17573         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
17574       </div>
17575       <div class="date">
17576          3rd October 2012
17577       </div>
17578       <div class="body">
17579         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
17580 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
17581 the computer science book collection available in his local
17582 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
17583 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
17584 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
17585 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
17586 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
17587 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
17588 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
17589 recently published books.</p>
17590
17591 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
17592 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
17593 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
17594 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
17595 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
17596 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
17597 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
17598 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
17599 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
17600 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
17601 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
17602 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
17603 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
17604 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
17605 for the library that evening.</p>
17606
17607 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
17608 going to know that for example
17609 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
17610 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
17611 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
17612 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
17613 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
17614 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
17615 book right away.</p>
17616
17617       </div>
17618       <div class="tags">
17619
17620
17621         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17622
17623
17624       </div>
17625     </div>
17626     <div class="padding"></div>
17627
17628     <div class="entry">
17629       <div class="title">
17630         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
17631       </div>
17632       <div class="date">
17633         23rd September 2012
17634       </div>
17635       <div class="body">
17636         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
17637 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
17638 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
17639 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
17640 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
17641 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
17642
17643 When I started, I
17644 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
17645 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
17646 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
17647 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
17648 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
17649 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
17650 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
17651
17652 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
17653
17654 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
17655 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
17656 the project files currently available from
17657 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
17658
17659 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
17660 the updated
17661 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
17662 and
17663 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
17664 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
17665 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
17666 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
17667
17668       </div>
17669       <div class="tags">
17670
17671
17672         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
17673
17674
17675       </div>
17676     </div>
17677     <div class="padding"></div>
17678
17679     <div class="entry">
17680       <div class="title">
17681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
17682       </div>
17683       <div class="date">
17684         17th September 2012
17685       </div>
17686       <div class="body">
17687         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
17688 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
17689 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
17690 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
17691 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
17692 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
17693 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
17694
17695 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17696
17697 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
17698 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
17699 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
17700 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
17701 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
17702 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
17703 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
17704 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
17705 training is anyway very important</p>
17706
17707 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
17708 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
17709 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
17710 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
17711 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
17712
17713 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
17714 project?</strong></p>
17715
17716 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
17717 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
17718 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
17719 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
17720 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
17721 hole.</p>
17722
17723 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17724 Edu?</strong></p>
17725
17726 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
17727 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
17728 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
17729 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
17730 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
17731 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
17732 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
17733 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
17734 hassle.</p>
17735
17736 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17737 Edu?</strong></p>
17738
17739 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
17740 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
17741 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
17742 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
17743 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
17744 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
17745 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
17746 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
17747
17748 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17749
17750 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
17751 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
17752 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
17753 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
17754 has the same...</p>
17755
17756 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
17757 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
17758 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
17759 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
17760
17761 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17762 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17763
17764 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
17765 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
17766 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
17767
17768 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
17769 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
17770 don't.</p>
17771
17772 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
17773 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
17774 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
17775 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
17776 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
17777 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
17778 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
17779
17780       </div>
17781       <div class="tags">
17782
17783
17784         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
17785
17786
17787       </div>
17788     </div>
17789     <div class="padding"></div>
17790
17791     <div class="entry">
17792       <div class="title">
17793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
17794       </div>
17795       <div class="date">
17796         15th September 2012
17797       </div>
17798       <div class="body">
17799         <p>After the
17800 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
17801 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
17802 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
17803 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
17804 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
17805 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
17806 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
17807 was
17808 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
17809 formal working group should be formed.</p>
17810
17811 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
17812 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
17813 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
17814 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
17815 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
17816 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
17817 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
17818 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
17819
17820 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
17821 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
17822 IETF.</p>
17823
17824       </div>
17825       <div class="tags">
17826
17827
17828         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17829
17830
17831       </div>
17832     </div>
17833     <div class="padding"></div>
17834
17835     <div class="entry">
17836       <div class="title">
17837         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
17838       </div>
17839       <div class="date">
17840         12th September 2012
17841       </div>
17842       <div class="body">
17843         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
17844 publication of of
17845 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
17846 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
17847 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
17848 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
17849 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
17850 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
17851 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
17852 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
17853 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
17854 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
17855
17856 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
17857 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
17858 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
17859 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
17860
17861 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
17862 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
17863
17864       </div>
17865       <div class="tags">
17866
17867
17868         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17869
17870
17871       </div>
17872     </div>
17873     <div class="padding"></div>
17874
17875     <div class="entry">
17876       <div class="title">
17877         <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>
17878       </div>
17879       <div class="date">
17880          7th September 2012
17881       </div>
17882       <div class="body">
17883         <p>As I
17884 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
17885 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
17886 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
17887 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
17888 repository for the project</a>.</p>
17889
17890 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
17891 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
17892 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
17893 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
17894
17895 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
17896 PostScript formats at
17897 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
17898 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
17899
17900       </div>
17901       <div class="tags">
17902
17903
17904         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>.
17905
17906
17907       </div>
17908     </div>
17909     <div class="padding"></div>
17910
17911     <div class="entry">
17912       <div class="title">
17913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
17914       </div>
17915       <div class="date">
17916         23rd August 2012
17917       </div>
17918       <div class="body">
17919         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
17920 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
17921 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
17922 revisit the great site
17923 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
17924 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
17925 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
17926
17927       </div>
17928       <div class="tags">
17929
17930
17931         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17932
17933
17934       </div>
17935     </div>
17936     <div class="padding"></div>
17937
17938     <div class="entry">
17939       <div class="title">
17940         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
17941       </div>
17942       <div class="date">
17943         17th August 2012
17944       </div>
17945       <div class="body">
17946         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
17947 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
17948 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
17949 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
17950 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
17951 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
17952 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
17953 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
17954 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
17955 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
17956 summer I
17957 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
17958 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
17959 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
17960
17961 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
17962 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
17963 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
17964 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
17965 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
17966 progress:</p>
17967
17968 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
17969
17970 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
17971 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
17972 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
17973 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
17974 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
17975 english version of the docbook source.</p>
17976
17977 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
17978 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
17979 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
17980 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
17981 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
17982 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
17983 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
17984 project files currently available from <a
17985 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
17986
17987 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
17988 the updated
17989 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
17990 and
17991 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
17992 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
17993 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
17994 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
17995
17996       </div>
17997       <div class="tags">
17998
17999
18000         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
18001
18002
18003       </div>
18004     </div>
18005     <div class="padding"></div>
18006
18007     <div class="entry">
18008       <div class="title">
18009         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
18010       </div>
18011       <div class="date">
18012         10th August 2012
18013       </div>
18014       <div class="body">
18015         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
18016 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
18017 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
18018 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
18019 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
18020 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
18021 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
18022 case for the language
18023 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
18024 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
18025
18026 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
18027 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
18028 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
18029 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
18030 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
18031
18032 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
18033 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
18034 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
18035 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
18036 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
18037 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
18038 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
18039 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
18040 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
18041 alias for 'nb'.</p>
18042
18043 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
18044 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
18045 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
18046 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
18047 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
18048 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
18049 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
18050 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
18051 at the same time. :(</p>
18052
18053 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
18054 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
18055 processors. :(</p>
18056
18057 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
18058
18059       </div>
18060       <div class="tags">
18061
18062
18063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
18064
18065
18066       </div>
18067     </div>
18068     <div class="padding"></div>
18069
18070     <div class="entry">
18071       <div class="title">
18072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
18073       </div>
18074       <div class="date">
18075         31st July 2012
18076       </div>
18077       <div class="body">
18078         <p>I tried to send this text to the
18079 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
18080 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
18081 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
18082 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
18083 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
18084 out.</p>
18085
18086 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
18087 learning curve at the moment.</p>
18088
18089 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
18090 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
18091 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
18092 available from
18093 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
18094 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
18095 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
18096 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
18097 Squeeze.</p>
18098
18099 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
18100 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
18101 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
18102 problems.</p>
18103
18104 <ul>
18105
18106 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
18107    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
18108    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
18109    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
18110    index references spanning several pages (See
18111    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
18112    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
18113    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
18114
18115 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
18116    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
18117    #683163</a>).</li>
18118
18119 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
18120    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
18121    footnote and text body, see
18122    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
18123    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
18124    refs listed are not right).</li>
18125
18126 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
18127
18128 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
18129    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
18130
18131 </ul>
18132
18133 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
18134 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
18135 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
18136
18137 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
18138
18139       </div>
18140       <div class="tags">
18141
18142
18143         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
18144
18145
18146       </div>
18147     </div>
18148     <div class="padding"></div>
18149
18150     <div class="entry">
18151       <div class="title">
18152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
18153       </div>
18154       <div class="date">
18155         21st July 2012
18156       </div>
18157       <div class="body">
18158         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
18159 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
18160 norwegian version</a> of the book
18161 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
18162 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
18163 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
18164 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
18165 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
18166
18167 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
18168 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
18169 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
18170 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
18171 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
18172 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
18173 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
18174 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
18175 print. :)</p>
18176
18177 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
18178 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
18179 language.</p>
18180
18181       </div>
18182       <div class="tags">
18183
18184
18185         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
18186
18187
18188       </div>
18189     </div>
18190     <div class="padding"></div>
18191
18192     <div class="entry">
18193       <div class="title">
18194         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
18195       </div>
18196       <div class="date">
18197         16th July 2012
18198       </div>
18199       <div class="body">
18200         <p>I am currently working on a
18201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
18202 to translate</a> the book
18203 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
18204 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
18205 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
18206 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
18207 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
18208 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
18209 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
18210
18211 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
18212 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
18213 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
18214 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
18215 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
18216 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
18217 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
18218 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
18219 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
18220
18221       </div>
18222       <div class="tags">
18223
18224
18225         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
18226
18227
18228       </div>
18229     </div>
18230     <div class="padding"></div>
18231
18232     <div class="entry">
18233       <div class="title">
18234         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
18235       </div>
18236       <div class="date">
18237          9th July 2012
18238       </div>
18239       <div class="body">
18240         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
18241 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
18242 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
18243 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
18244 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
18245 to adjust and scale the just released
18246 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
18247 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
18248 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
18249
18250 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18251
18252 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
18253 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
18254 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
18255 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
18256 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
18257 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
18258 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
18259 perspective when working with IT.</p>
18260
18261 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18262 project?</strong></p>
18263
18264 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
18265 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
18266 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
18267 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
18268 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
18269 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
18270
18271 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18272 Edu?</strong></p>
18273
18274 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
18275 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
18276 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
18277 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
18278 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
18279 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
18280 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
18281 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
18282 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
18283 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
18284 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
18285 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
18286 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
18287 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
18288 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
18289 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
18290 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
18291 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
18292 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
18293 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
18294 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
18295 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
18296 quicker to update.
18297
18298 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18299 Edu?</strong></p>
18300
18301 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
18302 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
18303 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
18304 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
18305 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
18306 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
18307
18308 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
18309 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
18310 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
18311 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
18312 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
18313 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
18314 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
18315 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
18316 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
18317 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
18318 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
18319 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
18320 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
18321 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
18322 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
18323
18324 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
18325 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
18326 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
18327 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
18328 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
18329 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
18330 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
18331 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
18332
18333 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
18334 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
18335 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
18336 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
18337 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
18338 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
18339 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
18340 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
18341 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
18342 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
18343 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
18344 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
18345 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
18346 sound file.</p>
18347
18348 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
18349 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
18350 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
18351 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
18352 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
18353 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
18354 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
18355 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
18356 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
18357
18358 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18359
18360 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
18361 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
18362 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
18363 )</p>
18364
18365 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18366 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18367
18368 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
18369 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
18370 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
18371 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
18372 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
18373 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
18374 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
18375 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
18376 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
18377 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
18378 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
18379 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
18380 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
18381 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
18382 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
18383
18384 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
18385 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
18386 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
18387 management with Airtime</a>,
18388 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
18389 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
18390 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
18391 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
18392 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
18393
18394       </div>
18395       <div class="tags">
18396
18397
18398         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
18399
18400
18401       </div>
18402     </div>
18403     <div class="padding"></div>
18404
18405     <div class="entry">
18406       <div class="title">
18407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
18408       </div>
18409       <div class="date">
18410          8th July 2012
18411       </div>
18412       <div class="body">
18413         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
18414 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
18415 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
18416 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
18417 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
18418 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
18419 Steinberg in his blog post
18420 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
18421 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
18422 spending of your tax money.</p>
18423
18424 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
18425 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
18426 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
18427 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
18428 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
18429 purchases.</p>
18430
18431       </div>
18432       <div class="tags">
18433
18434
18435         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18436
18437
18438       </div>
18439     </div>
18440     <div class="padding"></div>
18441
18442     <div class="entry">
18443       <div class="title">
18444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
18445       </div>
18446       <div class="date">
18447          7th July 2012
18448       </div>
18449       <div class="body">
18450         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
18451 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
18452 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
18453 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
18454 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
18455 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
18456 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
18457 receive.  The software is
18458
18459 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
18460 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
18461 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
18462 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
18463 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
18464 Windows</a>.</p>
18465
18466 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
18467 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
18468
18469 <p><ul>
18470
18471   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
18472     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
18473
18474   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
18475     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
18476     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
18477     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
18478     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
18479     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
18480     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
18481     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
18482     </li>
18483
18484   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
18485     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
18486
18487   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
18488     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
18489
18490   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
18491     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
18492
18493   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
18494
18495   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
18496     formats </li>
18497
18498   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
18499     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
18500     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
18501     (as separate sets)</li>
18502
18503   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
18504     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
18505     percentage)</li>
18506
18507   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
18508     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
18509     memory):
18510     <ul>
18511       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
18512       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
18513       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
18514       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
18515       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
18516       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
18517       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
18518       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
18519       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
18520       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
18521           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
18522           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
18523           activity)</li>
18524       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
18525       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
18526     </ul></li>
18527
18528   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
18529     <ul>
18530       <li>Break periods</li>
18531       <li>For teacher(s):
18532         <ul>
18533           <li>Not available periods</li>
18534           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
18535           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
18536           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
18537           <li>Min hours daily</li>
18538           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
18539
18540           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
18541             days per week</li>
18542         </ul></li>
18543       <li>For students (sets):
18544         <ul>
18545           <li>Not available periods</li>
18546           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
18547           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
18548           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
18549           <li>Min hours daily</li>
18550           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
18551
18552           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
18553             days per week</li>
18554         </ul></li>
18555       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
18556         <ul>
18557           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
18558           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
18559           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
18560           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
18561           <li>End(s) students day</li>
18562           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
18563           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
18564             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
18565           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
18566           <li>Not overlapping</li>
18567           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
18568           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
18569         </ul></li>
18570     </ul></li>
18571
18572   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
18573     <ul>
18574       <li>Room not available periods</li>
18575       <li>For teacher(s):
18576         <ul>
18577           <li>Home room(s)</li>
18578           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
18579           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
18580         </ul>
18581       </li>
18582
18583       <li>For students (sets):
18584         <ul>
18585           <li>Home room(s)</li>
18586           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
18587           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
18588         </ul>
18589       </li>
18590       <li>Preferred room(s):
18591         <ul>
18592           <li>For a subject</li>
18593           <li>For an activity tag</li>
18594           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
18595           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
18596         </ul>
18597       </li>
18598
18599       <li>For a set of activities:
18600         <ul>
18601           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
18602         </ul>
18603       </li>
18604     </ul>
18605   </li>
18606 </ul></p>
18607
18608 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
18609 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
18610 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
18611 manually, check it out.
18612
18613 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
18614 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
18615 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
18616 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
18617 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
18618 section</a>.</p>
18619
18620       </div>
18621       <div class="tags">
18622
18623
18624         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
18625
18626
18627       </div>
18628     </div>
18629     <div class="padding"></div>
18630
18631     <div class="entry">
18632       <div class="title">
18633         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
18634       </div>
18635       <div class="date">
18636          3rd July 2012
18637       </div>
18638       <div class="body">
18639         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
18640 project (Norwegian version of
18641 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
18642 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
18643 a problem with the municipalities using
18644 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
18645 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
18646 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
18647 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
18648 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
18649 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
18650 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
18651 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
18652 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
18653 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
18654 the From: header.</p>
18655
18656 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
18657 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
18658 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
18659 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
18660 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
18661 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
18662 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
18663 behaviour.</p>
18664
18665 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
18666 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
18667 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
18668 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
18669 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
18670 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
18671 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
18672
18673       </div>
18674       <div class="tags">
18675
18676
18677         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18678
18679
18680       </div>
18681     </div>
18682     <div class="padding"></div>
18683
18684     <div class="entry">
18685       <div class="title">
18686         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
18687       </div>
18688       <div class="date">
18689         26th June 2012
18690       </div>
18691       <div class="body">
18692         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
18693 another interview with the people behind
18694 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
18695 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
18696 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
18697 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
18698 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
18699 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
18700 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
18701
18702 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18703
18704 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
18705 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
18706 ICT in schools</p>
18707
18708 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18709 project?</strong></p>
18710
18711 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
18712 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
18713 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
18714 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
18715
18716 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18717 Edu?</strong></p>
18718
18719 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
18720 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
18721 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
18722 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
18723
18724 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18725 Edu?</strong></p>
18726
18727 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
18728 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
18729 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
18730 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
18731 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
18732 technologies in school.</p>
18733
18734 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18735
18736 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
18737 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
18738 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
18739
18740 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18741 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18742
18743 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
18744 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
18745 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
18746 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
18747
18748 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
18749 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
18750 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
18751
18752 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
18753 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
18754 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
18755 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
18756 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
18757 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
18758 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
18759 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
18760 working there.</p>
18761
18762       </div>
18763       <div class="tags">
18764
18765
18766         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
18767
18768
18769       </div>
18770     </div>
18771     <div class="padding"></div>
18772
18773     <div class="entry">
18774       <div class="title">
18775         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
18776       </div>
18777       <div class="date">
18778         24th June 2012
18779       </div>
18780       <div class="body">
18781         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
18782 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
18783 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
18784 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
18785 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
18786 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
18787 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
18788 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
18789 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
18790 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
18791 missing in my book.</p>
18792
18793 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
18794 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
18795 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
18796 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
18797 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
18798 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
18799 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
18800
18801       </div>
18802       <div class="tags">
18803
18804
18805         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>.
18806
18807
18808       </div>
18809     </div>
18810     <div class="padding"></div>
18811
18812     <div class="entry">
18813       <div class="title">
18814         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
18815       </div>
18816       <div class="date">
18817         11th June 2012
18818       </div>
18819       <div class="body">
18820         <p>During my work on
18821 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
18822 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
18823 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
18824 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
18825 explanation.</p>
18826
18827 <p><ul>
18828
18829 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
18830 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
18831 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
18832 system depend on tasksel tasks in
18833 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
18834 installation.</li>
18835
18836 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
18837 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
18838 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
18839 at least try to enable it for these services:
18840 <ul>
18841
18842   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
18843     quotas.</li>
18844   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
18845   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
18846   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
18847   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
18848   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
18849
18850 </ul></li>
18851
18852 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
18853 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
18854 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
18855 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
18856
18857 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
18858 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
18859 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
18860
18861 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
18862 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
18863 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
18864 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
18865 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
18866 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
18867
18868 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
18869 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
18870 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
18871 in Wheezy.
18872
18873 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
18874 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
18875 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
18876
18877 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
18878 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
18879 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
18880 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
18881
18882 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
18883 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
18884 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
18885 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
18886
18887 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
18888 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
18889 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
18890
18891 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
18892 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
18893 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
18894
18895 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
18896 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
18897 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
18898 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
18899 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
18900
18901 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
18902 <ul>
18903
18904 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
18905 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
18906 <li>and probably more?</li>
18907 </ul></li>
18908
18909 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
18910 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
18911 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
18912 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
18913 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
18914 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
18915 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
18916 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
18917
18918
18919 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
18920 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
18921 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
18922 use.</li>
18923
18924 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
18925 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
18926 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
18927 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
18928 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
18929
18930 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
18931 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
18932 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
18933 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
18934 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
18935 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
18936
18937 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
18938 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
18939 There are at least three implementations,
18940 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
18941 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
18942 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
18943 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
18944 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
18945 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
18946 given room.</li>
18947
18948 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
18949 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
18950 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
18951 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
18952 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
18953 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
18954 investigated.</li>
18955
18956 </ul></p>
18957
18958 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
18959 version.</p>
18960
18961       </div>
18962       <div class="tags">
18963
18964
18965         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18966
18967
18968       </div>
18969     </div>
18970     <div class="padding"></div>
18971
18972     <div class="entry">
18973       <div class="title">
18974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
18975       </div>
18976       <div class="date">
18977          9th June 2012
18978       </div>
18979       <div class="body">
18980         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
18981 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
18982 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
18983 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
18984 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
18985 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
18986 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
18987 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
18988 be willing to pay for.</p>
18989
18990 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
18991 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
18992 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
18993 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
18994 Orwell</a>.</p>
18995
18996       </div>
18997       <div class="tags">
18998
18999
19000         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
19001
19002
19003       </div>
19004     </div>
19005     <div class="padding"></div>
19006
19007     <div class="entry">
19008       <div class="title">
19009         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
19010       </div>
19011       <div class="date">
19012          6th June 2012
19013       </div>
19014       <div class="body">
19015         <p>A few days ago
19016 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
19017 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
19018 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
19019 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
19020 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
19021 code for HP, Dell and IBM
19022 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
19023 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
19024 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
19025 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
19026 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
19027
19028 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
19029 output:
19030
19031 <blockquote><pre>
19032 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
19033 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
19034 %
19035 </pre></blockquote>
19036
19037 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
19038 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
19039 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
19040
19041       </div>
19042       <div class="tags">
19043
19044
19045         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19046
19047
19048       </div>
19049     </div>
19050     <div class="padding"></div>
19051
19052     <div class="entry">
19053       <div class="title">
19054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
19055       </div>
19056       <div class="date">
19057          2nd June 2012
19058       </div>
19059       <div class="body">
19060         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
19061 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
19062 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
19063 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
19064 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
19065 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
19066
19067 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
19068
19069 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
19070 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
19071 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
19072 by Angela).</p>
19073
19074 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
19075 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
19076 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
19077 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
19078 becoming an osteopath.</p>
19079
19080 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
19081 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
19082 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
19083 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
19084 skills with communication skills.</p>
19085
19086 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
19087 project?</strong></p>
19088
19089 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
19090 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
19091 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
19092 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
19093 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
19094
19095 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
19096 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
19097 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
19098 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
19099 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
19100 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
19101 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
19102 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
19103 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
19104
19105 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
19106 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
19107 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
19108
19109 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
19110
19111 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
19112 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
19113 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
19114 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
19115 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
19116 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
19117 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
19118 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
19119 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
19120 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
19121 point.</p>
19122
19123 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
19124 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
19125 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
19126 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
19127 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
19128 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
19129
19130 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
19131 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
19132 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
19133 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
19134 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
19135 spare time.</p>
19136
19137 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
19138 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
19139 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
19140 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
19141 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
19142
19143 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
19144 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
19145 avoidance do exist.</p>
19146
19147 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
19148 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
19149 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
19150 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
19151 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
19152 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
19153 and probably a gain for all.</p>
19154
19155 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19156 Edu?</strong></p>
19157
19158 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
19159 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
19160 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
19161 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
19162 project communication, honest communication within the group of
19163 developers, etc.</p>
19164
19165 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19166 Edu?</strong></p>
19167
19168 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
19169
19170 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
19171 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
19172 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
19173 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
19174 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
19175 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
19176 contribute).</p>
19177
19178 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
19179 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
19180 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
19181 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
19182 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
19183 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
19184 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
19185 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
19186 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
19187 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
19188
19189 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
19190
19191 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
19192
19193 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
19194 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
19195 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
19196
19197 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
19198 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
19199 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
19200 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
19201
19202 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
19203 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
19204 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
19205 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
19206 whiteboard.</p>
19207
19208 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
19209
19210 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
19211 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
19212
19213 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
19214 enrol people.</p>
19215
19216       </div>
19217       <div class="tags">
19218
19219
19220         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
19221
19222
19223       </div>
19224     </div>
19225     <div class="padding"></div>
19226
19227     <div class="entry">
19228       <div class="title">
19229         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
19230       </div>
19231       <div class="date">
19232          1st June 2012
19233       </div>
19234       <div class="body">
19235         <p>A few years ago I wrote
19236 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
19237 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
19238 I have learned from colleges here at the
19239 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
19240 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
19241 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
19242 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
19243 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
19244
19245 <p><pre>
19246 use strict;
19247 use warnings;
19248 use SOAP::Lite;
19249 use Data::Dumper;
19250 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
19251 my $App = 'test';
19252 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
19253 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
19254 my $s = SOAP::Lite
19255     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
19256     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
19257     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
19258     ;
19259 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
19260     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
19261     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
19262     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
19263 );
19264 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
19265 </pre></p>
19266
19267 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
19268
19269 <p><pre>
19270 $VAR1 = {
19271           'Asset' => {
19272                      'Entitlements' => {
19273                                        'EntitlementData' => [
19274                                                             {
19275                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
19276                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
19277                                                               'Provider' => '',
19278                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
19279                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
19280                                                             },
19281                                                             {
19282                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
19283                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
19284                                                               'Provider' => '',
19285                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
19286                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
19287                                                             },
19288                                                             {
19289                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
19290                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
19291                                                               'Provider' => '',
19292                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
19293                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
19294                                                             }
19295                                                           ]
19296                                      },
19297                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
19298                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
19299                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
19300                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
19301                                           'Buid' => '2323',
19302                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
19303                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
19304                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
19305                                         }
19306                    }
19307         };
19308 </pre></p>
19309
19310 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
19311 service outside the
19312 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
19313 documentation</a>, and according to
19314 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
19315 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
19316 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
19317
19318 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
19319 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
19320
19321       </div>
19322       <div class="tags">
19323
19324
19325         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19326
19327
19328       </div>
19329     </div>
19330     <div class="padding"></div>
19331
19332     <div class="entry">
19333       <div class="title">
19334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
19335       </div>
19336       <div class="date">
19337         31st May 2012
19338       </div>
19339       <div class="body">
19340         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
19341 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
19342 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
19343 running Debian Squeeze, where
19344 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
19345 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
19346 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
19347 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
19348 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
19349 another day.</p>
19350
19351 <p>After calibration, I get a
19352 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
19353 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
19354 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
19355 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
19356 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
19357 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
19358 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
19359 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
19360 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
19361 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
19362 and a simple</p>
19363
19364 <p><pre>
19365 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
19366 </pre></p>
19367
19368 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
19369 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
19370 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
19371 enough for now.</p>
19372
19373       </div>
19374       <div class="tags">
19375
19376
19377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19378
19379
19380       </div>
19381     </div>
19382     <div class="padding"></div>
19383
19384     <div class="entry">
19385       <div class="title">
19386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
19387       </div>
19388       <div class="date">
19389         27th May 2012
19390       </div>
19391       <div class="body">
19392         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
19393 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
19394 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
19395 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
19396 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
19397 since then, helping to make sure the
19398 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
19399 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
19400
19401 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
19402
19403 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
19404 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
19405 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
19406 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
19407 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
19408 our computer network.</p>
19409
19410 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
19411 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
19412 (4 months).</p>
19413
19414 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
19415 project?</strong></p>
19416
19417 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
19418 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
19419 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
19420 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
19421 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
19422 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
19423 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
19424 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
19425 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
19426 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
19427 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
19428 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
19429 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
19430 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
19431
19432 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19433 Edu?</strong></p>
19434
19435 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
19436 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
19437 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
19438 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
19439 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
19440 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
19441 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
19442 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
19443
19444 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19445 Edu?</strong></p>
19446
19447 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
19448 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
19449 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
19450 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
19451 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
19452 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
19453 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
19454 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
19455 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
19456 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
19457 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
19458 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
19459
19460 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
19461
19462 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
19463 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
19464 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
19465
19466 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
19467 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
19468
19469 <p><ol>
19470
19471 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
19472 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
19473 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
19474 developing.</li>
19475
19476 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
19477 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
19478 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
19479 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
19480 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
19481
19482 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
19483 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
19484 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
19485
19486 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
19487 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
19488 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
19489 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
19490
19491 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
19492 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
19493 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
19494
19495 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
19496
19497 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
19498 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
19499 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
19500 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
19501
19502 </ol></p>
19503
19504       </div>
19505       <div class="tags">
19506
19507
19508         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
19509
19510
19511       </div>
19512     </div>
19513     <div class="padding"></div>
19514
19515     <div class="entry">
19516       <div class="title">
19517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
19518       </div>
19519       <div class="date">
19520         26th May 2012
19521       </div>
19522       <div class="body">
19523         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
19524 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
19525 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
19526 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
19527 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
19528
19529 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
19530 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
19531 comment:</p>
19532
19533 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
19534 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
19535 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
19536 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
19537 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
19538 </blockquote></p>
19539
19540 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
19541 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
19542 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
19543 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
19544 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
19545 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
19546 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
19547 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
19548 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
19549 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
19550 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
19551 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
19552 of wasted effort.</p>
19553
19554 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
19555 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
19556 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
19557
19558 <p>See
19559 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
19560 and
19561 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
19562 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
19563 </blockquote></p>
19564
19565       </div>
19566       <div class="tags">
19567
19568
19569         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
19570
19571
19572       </div>
19573     </div>
19574     <div class="padding"></div>
19575
19576     <div class="entry">
19577       <div class="title">
19578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
19579       </div>
19580       <div class="date">
19581         18th May 2012
19582       </div>
19583       <div class="body">
19584         <p>In january, I
19585 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
19586 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
19587 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
19588 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
19589 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
19590 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
19591 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
19592 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
19593 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
19594 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
19595
19596 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
19597 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
19598 drivers. :)</p>
19599
19600       </div>
19601       <div class="tags">
19602
19603
19604         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19605
19606
19607       </div>
19608     </div>
19609     <div class="padding"></div>
19610
19611     <div class="entry">
19612       <div class="title">
19613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
19614       </div>
19615       <div class="date">
19616         13th May 2012
19617       </div>
19618       <div class="body">
19619         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
19620 publish another interview with the people behind
19621 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
19622 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
19623 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
19624 details get right before release.
19625
19626 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
19627
19628 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
19629 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
19630 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
19631 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
19632 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
19633 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
19634 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
19635 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
19636
19637 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
19638 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
19639 home since 2006.</p>
19640
19641 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
19642 project?</strong></p>
19643
19644 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
19645 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
19646 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
19647 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
19648 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
19649 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
19650
19651 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
19652 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
19653 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
19654 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
19655 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
19656 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
19657 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
19658 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
19659 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
19660 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
19661 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
19662 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
19663 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
19664 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
19665 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
19666 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
19667
19668 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19669 Edu?</strong></p>
19670
19671 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
19672 for me as today.</p>
19673
19674 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
19675
19676 <p><ul>
19677
19678 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
19679 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
19680
19681 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
19682 cost.</li>
19683
19684 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
19685 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
19686 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
19687 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
19688 server</li>
19689
19690 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
19691 school.</li>
19692
19693 </ul></p>
19694
19695 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
19696 came up in this way:</p>
19697
19698 <p><ul>
19699
19700 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
19701 now.</li>
19702
19703 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
19704 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
19705 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
19706
19707 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
19708 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
19709 interfaces used in the past.</li>
19710
19711 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
19712 different needs.</li>
19713
19714 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
19715
19716 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
19717 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
19718 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
19719
19720 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
19721 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
19722
19723 </ul></p>
19724
19725 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19726 Edu?</strong></p>
19727
19728 <p><ul>
19729
19730 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
19731 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
19732 whole municipality areas.</li>
19733
19734 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
19735 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
19736 politicians.</li>
19737
19738 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
19739
19740 </ul></p>
19741
19742 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
19743
19744 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
19745 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
19746 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
19747 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
19748 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
19749 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
19750
19751 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
19752 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
19753 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
19754 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
19755 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
19756
19757 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
19758 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
19759
19760 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
19761 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
19762 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
19763
19764       </div>
19765       <div class="tags">
19766
19767
19768         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
19769
19770
19771       </div>
19772     </div>
19773     <div class="padding"></div>
19774
19775     <div class="entry">
19776       <div class="title">
19777         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
19778       </div>
19779       <div class="date">
19780         30th April 2012
19781       </div>
19782       <div class="body">
19783         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
19784 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
19785
19786 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
19787 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
19788 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
19789 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
19790 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
19791 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
19792 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
19793 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
19794 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
19795 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
19796 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
19797 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
19798 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
19799 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
19800 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
19801 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
19802
19803 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
19804 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
19805 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
19806 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
19807 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
19808 finally found a Danish supplier
19809 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
19810 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
19811 days ago.</p>
19812
19813 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
19814 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
19815 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
19816 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
19817 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
19818 toys.</p>
19819
19820       </div>
19821       <div class="tags">
19822
19823
19824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19825
19826
19827       </div>
19828     </div>
19829     <div class="padding"></div>
19830
19831     <div class="entry">
19832       <div class="title">
19833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
19834       </div>
19835       <div class="date">
19836         26th April 2012
19837       </div>
19838       <div class="body">
19839         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
19840 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
19841 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
19842 that the video editor application included with
19843 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
19844 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
19845 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
19846
19847 <p><blockquote>
19848 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
19849 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
19850 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
19851 </blockquote></p>
19852
19853 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
19854
19855 <p><blockquote>
19856 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
19857 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
19858 </blockquote></p>
19859
19860 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
19861 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
19862 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
19863 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
19864 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
19865 video.  AMR is
19866 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
19867 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
19868 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
19869 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
19870 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
19871 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
19872 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
19873
19874 <p>I know why I prefer
19875 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
19876 standards</a> also for video.</p>
19877
19878       </div>
19879       <div class="tags">
19880
19881
19882         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19883
19884
19885       </div>
19886     </div>
19887     <div class="padding"></div>
19888
19889     <div class="entry">
19890       <div class="title">
19891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
19892       </div>
19893       <div class="date">
19894         19th April 2012
19895       </div>
19896       <div class="body">
19897         <p>Here in Norway, the
19898 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
19899 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
19900 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
19901 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
19902 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
19903 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
19904 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
19905 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
19906 on the same level.</p>
19907
19908 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
19909 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
19910 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
19911 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
19912 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
19913 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
19914 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
19915 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
19916 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
19917 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
19918 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
19919 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
19920 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
19921 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
19922 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
19923 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
19924 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
19925 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
19926
19927 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
19928 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
19929 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
19930 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
19931 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
19932 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
19933 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
19934 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
19935
19936 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
19937 from Simon Phipps
19938 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
19939 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
19940
19941 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
19942 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
19943 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
19944 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
19945 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
19946 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
19947 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
19948 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
19949 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
19950
19951       </div>
19952       <div class="tags">
19953
19954
19955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
19956
19957
19958       </div>
19959     </div>
19960     <div class="padding"></div>
19961
19962     <div class="entry">
19963       <div class="title">
19964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
19965       </div>
19966       <div class="date">
19967         15th April 2012
19968       </div>
19969       <div class="body">
19970         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
19971 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
19972 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
19973 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
19974 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
19975 up in the recently released
19976 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
19977 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
19978
19979 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
19980
19981 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
19982 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
19983 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
19984 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
19985 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
19986 information technology and science/technology.</p>
19987
19988 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
19989 project?</strong></p>
19990
19991 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
19992 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
19993 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
19994 contributing.</p>
19995
19996 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
19997 Edu?</strong></p>
19998
19999 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
20000 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
20001 Debian Project!</p>
20002
20003 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20004 Edu?</strong></p>
20005
20006 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
20007 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
20008 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
20009 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
20010 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
20011 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
20012 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
20013
20014 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
20015 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
20016
20017 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20018
20019 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
20020 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
20021 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
20022 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
20023
20024 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20025 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20026
20027 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
20028 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
20029 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
20030 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
20031 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
20032 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
20033 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
20034
20035 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
20036 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
20037 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
20038 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
20039 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
20040 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
20041 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
20042 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
20043
20044       </div>
20045       <div class="tags">
20046
20047
20048         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20049
20050
20051       </div>
20052     </div>
20053     <div class="padding"></div>
20054
20055     <div class="entry">
20056       <div class="title">
20057         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
20058       </div>
20059       <div class="date">
20060          8th April 2012
20061       </div>
20062       <div class="body">
20063         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
20064 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
20065 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
20066 contributor to the
20067 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
20068 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
20069
20070 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
20071
20072 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
20073 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
20074
20075 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
20076 project?</strong></p>
20077
20078 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
20079 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
20080 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
20081 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
20082 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
20083 "localisation".</p>
20084
20085 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20086 Edu?</strong></p>
20087
20088 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20089 Edu?</strong></p>
20090
20091 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
20092 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
20093 education system.</p>
20094
20095 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
20096 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
20097 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
20098 money on the latest hardware.</p>
20099
20100 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20101
20102 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
20103 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
20104 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
20105
20106 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20107 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20108
20109 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
20110 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
20111 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
20112
20113       </div>
20114       <div class="tags">
20115
20116
20117         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20118
20119
20120       </div>
20121     </div>
20122     <div class="padding"></div>
20123
20124     <div class="entry">
20125       <div class="title">
20126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
20127       </div>
20128       <div class="date">
20129          6th April 2012
20130       </div>
20131       <div class="body">
20132         <p>Recently I have spent time with
20133 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
20134 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
20135 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
20136 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
20137 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
20138 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
20139 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
20140 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
20141
20142 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
20143 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
20144 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
20145 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
20146 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
20147 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
20148 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
20149 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
20150
20151 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
20152 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
20153 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
20154 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
20155 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
20156 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
20157 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
20158 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
20159
20160 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
20161 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
20162 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
20163 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
20164 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
20165 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
20166 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
20167 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
20168 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
20169 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
20170
20171 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
20172 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
20173 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
20174 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
20175
20176 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
20177 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
20178
20179 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
20180 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
20181 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
20182 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
20183
20184       </div>
20185       <div class="tags">
20186
20187
20188         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20189
20190
20191       </div>
20192     </div>
20193     <div class="padding"></div>
20194
20195     <div class="entry">
20196       <div class="title">
20197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
20198       </div>
20199       <div class="date">
20200          5th April 2012
20201       </div>
20202       <div class="body">
20203         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
20204 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
20205 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
20206 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
20207 for schools.  Check out his article
20208 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
20209 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
20210
20211       </div>
20212       <div class="tags">
20213
20214
20215         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20216
20217
20218       </div>
20219     </div>
20220     <div class="padding"></div>
20221
20222     <div class="entry">
20223       <div class="title">
20224         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
20225       </div>
20226       <div class="date">
20227          1st April 2012
20228       </div>
20229       <div class="body">
20230         <p>Germany is a core area for the
20231 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
20232 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
20233 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
20234
20235 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
20236
20237 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
20238 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
20239 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
20240 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
20241 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
20242 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
20243 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
20244 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
20245
20246 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
20247 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
20248 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
20249 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
20250 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
20251 the end of April this year.</p>
20252
20253 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
20254 project?</strong></p>
20255
20256 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
20257 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
20258 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
20259 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
20260 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
20261 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
20262 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
20263 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
20264 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
20265 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
20266 Skolelinux.</p>
20267
20268 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
20269 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
20270 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
20271 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
20272 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
20273 the admin teachers.</p>
20274
20275 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20276 Edu?</strong></p>
20277
20278 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
20279 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
20280 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
20281
20282 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
20283 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
20284 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
20285 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
20286 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
20287
20288 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20289 Edu?</strong></p>
20290
20291 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
20292
20293 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20294
20295 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
20296 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
20297 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
20298 LibreOffice.</p>
20299
20300 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20301 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20302
20303 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
20304 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
20305 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
20306
20307       </div>
20308       <div class="tags">
20309
20310
20311         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20312
20313
20314       </div>
20315     </div>
20316     <div class="padding"></div>
20317
20318     <div class="entry">
20319       <div class="title">
20320         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
20321       </div>
20322       <div class="date">
20323         25th March 2012
20324       </div>
20325       <div class="body">
20326         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
20327
20328 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
20329 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
20330 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
20331 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
20332 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
20333 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
20334 and download as a
20335 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
20336 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
20337
20338 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
20339   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
20340     <p>Download video as
20341       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
20342 </video></p>
20343
20344       </div>
20345       <div class="tags">
20346
20347
20348         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20349
20350
20351       </div>
20352     </div>
20353     <div class="padding"></div>
20354
20355     <div class="entry">
20356       <div class="title">
20357         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
20358       </div>
20359       <div class="date">
20360         19th March 2012
20361       </div>
20362       <div class="body">
20363         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
20364 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
20365 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
20366 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
20367 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
20368
20369 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
20370
20371 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
20372 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
20373 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
20374 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
20375 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
20376 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
20377 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
20378 installations.</p>
20379
20380 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
20381 project?</strong></p>
20382
20383 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
20384 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
20385 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
20386 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
20387 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
20388 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
20389 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
20390 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
20391 these things we decided to try it.</p>
20392
20393 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20394 Edu?</strong></p>
20395
20396 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
20397 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
20398 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
20399 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
20400 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
20401 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
20402 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
20403 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
20404
20405 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20406 Edu?</strong></p>
20407
20408 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
20409 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
20410 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
20411 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
20412 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
20413
20414 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20415
20416 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
20417 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
20418 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
20419 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
20420 that counts...)</p>
20421
20422 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20423 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20424
20425 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
20426 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
20427 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
20428 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
20429 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
20430 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
20431 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
20432 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
20433 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
20434 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
20435 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
20436
20437 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
20438 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
20439 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
20440
20441       </div>
20442       <div class="tags">
20443
20444
20445         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20446
20447
20448       </div>
20449     </div>
20450     <div class="padding"></div>
20451
20452     <div class="entry">
20453       <div class="title">
20454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
20455       </div>
20456       <div class="date">
20457         16th March 2012
20458       </div>
20459       <div class="body">
20460         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
20461 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
20462 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
20463 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
20464
20465 <ol>
20466
20467 <li>The documentation is written in a
20468 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
20469 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
20470 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
20471 docbook XML.</li>
20472
20473 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
20474 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
20475 with the translated text.</li>
20476
20477 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
20478 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
20479 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
20480 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
20481 images.</li>
20482
20483 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
20484 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
20485
20486 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
20487 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
20488
20489 </ol>
20490
20491 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
20492 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
20493 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
20494 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
20495 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
20496
20497 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
20498 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
20499 package</a>.</p>
20500
20501       </div>
20502       <div class="tags">
20503
20504
20505         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20506
20507
20508       </div>
20509     </div>
20510     <div class="padding"></div>
20511
20512     <div class="entry">
20513       <div class="title">
20514         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
20515       </div>
20516       <div class="date">
20517         11th March 2012
20518       </div>
20519       <div class="body">
20520         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
20521 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
20522 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
20523 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
20524 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
20525 you have not done so already.</p>
20526
20527 <p>I plan to present the new version at
20528 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
20529 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
20530 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
20531
20532       </div>
20533       <div class="tags">
20534
20535
20536         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20537
20538
20539       </div>
20540     </div>
20541     <div class="padding"></div>
20542
20543     <div class="entry">
20544       <div class="title">
20545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
20546       </div>
20547       <div class="date">
20548          9th March 2012
20549       </div>
20550       <div class="body">
20551         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
20552 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
20553 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
20554 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
20555 more international audience.</p>
20556
20557 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
20558 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
20559 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
20560 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
20561 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
20562 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
20563 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
20564
20565
20566 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
20567
20568 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
20569 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
20570 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
20571 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
20572 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
20573 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
20574 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
20575 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
20576 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
20577 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
20578 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
20579
20580 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
20581 project?</strong></p>
20582
20583 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
20584 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
20585 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
20586 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
20587 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
20588 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
20589 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
20590 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
20591 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
20592 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
20593 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
20594 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
20595 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
20596
20597 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20598 Edu?</strong></p>
20599
20600 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
20601 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
20602 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
20603 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
20604 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
20605 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
20606 Japan.</p>
20607
20608 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
20609 Edu?</strong></p>
20610
20611 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
20612 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
20613 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
20614 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
20615 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
20616 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
20617 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
20618 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
20619 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
20620 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
20621 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
20622 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
20623 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
20624 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
20625 help.</p>
20626
20627 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
20628
20629 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
20630 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
20631 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
20632 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
20633 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
20634 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
20635 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
20636 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
20637 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
20638 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
20639 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
20640
20641 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
20642 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
20643
20644 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
20645 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
20646 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
20647 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
20648 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
20649 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
20650 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
20651 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
20652 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
20653 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
20654 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
20655 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
20656
20657       </div>
20658       <div class="tags">
20659
20660
20661         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
20662
20663
20664       </div>
20665     </div>
20666     <div class="padding"></div>
20667
20668     <div class="entry">
20669       <div class="title">
20670         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
20671       </div>
20672       <div class="date">
20673          7th March 2012
20674       </div>
20675       <div class="body">
20676         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
20677
20678 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
20679 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
20680 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
20681 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
20682 download as a
20683 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
20684 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
20685
20686 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
20687   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
20688     <p>Download video as
20689       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
20690 </video></p>
20691
20692       </div>
20693       <div class="tags">
20694
20695
20696         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20697
20698
20699       </div>
20700     </div>
20701     <div class="padding"></div>
20702
20703     <div class="entry">
20704       <div class="title">
20705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
20706       </div>
20707       <div class="date">
20708          4th March 2012
20709       </div>
20710       <div class="body">
20711         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
20712 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
20713 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
20714 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
20715 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
20716 need a software solution for your school.</p>
20717
20718       </div>
20719       <div class="tags">
20720
20721
20722         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20723
20724
20725       </div>
20726     </div>
20727     <div class="padding"></div>
20728
20729     <div class="entry">
20730       <div class="title">
20731         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
20732       </div>
20733       <div class="date">
20734          3rd March 2012
20735       </div>
20736       <div class="body">
20737         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
20738 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
20739 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
20740 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
20741 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
20742 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
20743 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
20744 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
20745 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
20746 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
20747 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
20748 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
20749 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
20750 year...</p>
20751
20752 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
20753 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
20754 name,
20755 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
20756 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
20757 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
20758 mean). I've been following
20759 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
20760 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
20761 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
20762 Check it out. :)</p>
20763
20764       </div>
20765       <div class="tags">
20766
20767
20768         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20769
20770
20771       </div>
20772     </div>
20773     <div class="padding"></div>
20774
20775     <div class="entry">
20776       <div class="title">
20777         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
20778       </div>
20779       <div class="date">
20780         27th February 2012
20781       </div>
20782       <div class="body">
20783         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
20784 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
20785 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
20786 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
20787 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
20788 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
20789 need a software solution for your school.</p>
20790
20791       </div>
20792       <div class="tags">
20793
20794
20795         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20796
20797
20798       </div>
20799     </div>
20800     <div class="padding"></div>
20801
20802     <div class="entry">
20803       <div class="title">
20804         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
20805       </div>
20806       <div class="date">
20807         19th February 2012
20808       </div>
20809       <div class="body">
20810         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
20811 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
20812 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
20813 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
20814 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
20815 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
20816 solution for your school.</p>
20817
20818       </div>
20819       <div class="tags">
20820
20821
20822         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20823
20824
20825       </div>
20826     </div>
20827     <div class="padding"></div>
20828
20829     <div class="entry">
20830       <div class="title">
20831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
20832       </div>
20833       <div class="date">
20834         14th February 2012
20835       </div>
20836       <div class="body">
20837         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
20838 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
20839 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
20840 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
20841 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
20842 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
20843 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
20844 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
20845 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
20846
20847 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
20848 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
20849 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
20850 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
20851 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
20852
20853 <blockquote><pre>
20854 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
20855 do
20856     printf "Failed disk $d: "
20857     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
20858 done
20859 </blockquote></pre>
20860
20861 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
20862 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
20863
20864 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
20865
20866 <blockquote><pre>
20867 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
20868 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
20869 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
20870 </blockquote></pre>
20871
20872 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
20873 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
20874 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
20875 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
20876 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
20877 mounted inside my box.</p>
20878
20879 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
20880 Software RAID in the
20881 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
20882 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
20883 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
20884 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
20885 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
20886 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
20887
20888       </div>
20889       <div class="tags">
20890
20891
20892         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
20893
20894
20895       </div>
20896     </div>
20897     <div class="padding"></div>
20898
20899     <div class="entry">
20900       <div class="title">
20901         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
20902       </div>
20903       <div class="date">
20904         13th February 2012
20905       </div>
20906       <div class="body">
20907         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
20908 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
20909 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
20910 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
20911 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
20912 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
20913 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
20914 change the global proxy setting by editing
20915 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
20916 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
20917
20918 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
20919 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
20920 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
20921
20922 <blockquote><pre>
20923 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
20924 {
20925    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
20926        isPlainHostName(host) ||
20927        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
20928       return "DIRECT";
20929    else
20930       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
20931 }
20932 </pre></blockquote>
20933
20934 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
20935
20936 <blockquote><pre>
20937 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
20938 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
20939 </pre></blockquote>
20940
20941 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
20942 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
20943 would be used for
20944 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
20945 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
20946 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
20947 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
20948 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
20949 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
20950 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
20951 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
20952 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
20953 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
20954
20955 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
20956 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
20957 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
20958 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
20959 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
20960 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
20961
20962 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
20963 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
20964 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
20965 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
20966 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
20967 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
20968 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
20969 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
20970 the network setup changes.</p>
20971
20972 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
20973 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
20974 draft</a> and a
20975 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
20976 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
20977
20978       </div>
20979       <div class="tags">
20980
20981
20982         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20983
20984
20985       </div>
20986     </div>
20987     <div class="padding"></div>
20988
20989     <div class="entry">
20990       <div class="title">
20991         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
20992       </div>
20993       <div class="date">
20994          5th February 2012
20995       </div>
20996       <div class="body">
20997         <p>Since the Lenny version of
20998 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
20999 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
21000 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
21001 in the morning.  This is done using the
21002 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
21003
21004 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
21005 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
21006 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
21007 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
21008 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
21009 the
21010 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
21011 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
21012 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
21013 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
21014 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
21015
21016 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
21017 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
21018 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
21019 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
21020 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
21021 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
21022 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
21023
21024 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
21025 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
21026 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
21027 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
21028 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
21029
21030       </div>
21031       <div class="tags">
21032
21033
21034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21035
21036
21037       </div>
21038     </div>
21039     <div class="padding"></div>
21040
21041     <div class="entry">
21042       <div class="title">
21043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
21044       </div>
21045       <div class="date">
21046          4th February 2012
21047       </div>
21048       <div class="body">
21049         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
21050 publish the third beta version of
21051 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
21052 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
21053 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
21054 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
21055 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
21056 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
21057 on the project announcement list.</p>
21058
21059 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
21060 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
21061
21062 <ul>
21063
21064 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
21065   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
21066   the installation.</li>
21067
21068 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
21069   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
21070
21071 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
21072   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
21073   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
21074
21075 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
21076   for the local system administrator is created during installation
21077   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
21078   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
21079   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
21080   up to date on the system.</li>
21081
21082 </ul>
21083
21084 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
21085 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
21086 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
21087 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
21088
21089 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
21090 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
21091 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
21092 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
21093 will see you there?</p>
21094
21095       </div>
21096       <div class="tags">
21097
21098
21099         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21100
21101
21102       </div>
21103     </div>
21104     <div class="padding"></div>
21105
21106     <div class="entry">
21107       <div class="title">
21108         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
21109       </div>
21110       <div class="date">
21111         27th January 2012
21112       </div>
21113       <div class="body">
21114         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
21115 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
21116 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
21117 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
21118 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
21119 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
21120 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
21121
21122 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
21123 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
21124 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
21125 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
21126 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
21127 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
21128 not taken care of by this.</p>
21129
21130 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
21131 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
21132 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
21133 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
21134 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
21135 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
21136 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
21137 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
21138 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
21139 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
21140 firmware packages.</p>
21141
21142 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
21143 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
21144 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
21145 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
21146 initrd with extra firmware, the
21147 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
21148 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
21149 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
21150
21151 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
21152 network cards working.  For this,
21153 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
21154 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
21155 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
21156
21157 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
21158 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
21159 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
21160
21161 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
21162 try.</p>
21163
21164       </div>
21165       <div class="tags">
21166
21167
21168         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21169
21170
21171       </div>
21172     </div>
21173     <div class="padding"></div>
21174
21175     <div class="entry">
21176       <div class="title">
21177         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
21178       </div>
21179       <div class="date">
21180         25th January 2012
21181       </div>
21182       <div class="body">
21183         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
21184 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
21185 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
21186 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
21187 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
21188
21189 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
21190 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
21191 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
21192 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
21193 this is done, log on to the central server and run
21194 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
21195 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
21196 will look similar to this:</p>
21197
21198 <p><blockquote><pre>
21199 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
21200 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
21201 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
21202
21203 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
21204
21205 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21206 enter password: *******
21207 %
21208 </pre></blockquote></p>
21209
21210 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
21211 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
21212 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
21213 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
21214 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
21215 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
21216 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
21217 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
21218 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
21219 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
21220 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
21221 automatically.</p>
21222
21223 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
21224 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
21225
21226 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
21227 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
21228 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
21229
21230       </div>
21231       <div class="tags">
21232
21233
21234         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
21235
21236
21237       </div>
21238     </div>
21239     <div class="padding"></div>
21240
21241     <div class="entry">
21242       <div class="title">
21243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
21244       </div>
21245       <div class="date">
21246         10th January 2012
21247       </div>
21248       <div class="body">
21249         <p>In the Squeeze version of
21250 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
21251 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
21252 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
21253 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
21254 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
21255 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
21256 first time.</p>
21257
21258 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
21259 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
21260 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
21261 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
21262
21263 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
21264 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
21265 new setting.</p>
21266
21267 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
21268 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
21269 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
21270
21271       </div>
21272       <div class="tags">
21273
21274
21275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21276
21277
21278       </div>
21279     </div>
21280     <div class="padding"></div>
21281
21282     <div class="entry">
21283       <div class="title">
21284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
21285       </div>
21286       <div class="date">
21287          7th January 2012
21288       </div>
21289       <div class="body">
21290         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
21291 the second beta version of
21292 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
21293 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
21294 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
21295 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
21296 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
21297 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
21298 on the project announcement list.</p>
21299
21300       </div>
21301       <div class="tags">
21302
21303
21304         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21305
21306
21307       </div>
21308     </div>
21309     <div class="padding"></div>
21310
21311     <div class="entry">
21312       <div class="title">
21313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
21314       </div>
21315       <div class="date">
21316          3rd January 2012
21317       </div>
21318       <div class="body">
21319         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
21320 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
21321 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
21322 interesting.</p>
21323
21324 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
21325 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
21326 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
21327 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
21328 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
21329 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
21330 wrap up its tasks.</p>
21331
21332 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
21333 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
21334 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
21335 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
21336 because I was typing.</P>
21337
21338 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
21339 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
21340 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
21341 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
21342 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
21343 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
21344 generate entropy.</p>
21345
21346 <p>The fix is in
21347 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
21348 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
21349 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
21350 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
21351
21352       </div>
21353       <div class="tags">
21354
21355
21356         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21357
21358
21359       </div>
21360     </div>
21361     <div class="padding"></div>
21362
21363     <div class="entry">
21364       <div class="title">
21365         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
21366       </div>
21367       <div class="date">
21368         21st November 2011
21369       </div>
21370       <div class="body">
21371         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
21372 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
21373 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
21374 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
21375 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
21376 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
21377 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
21378 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
21379 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
21380 the tools to do so.</p>
21381
21382 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
21383 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
21384 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
21385 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
21386
21387 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
21388 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
21389 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
21390 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
21391 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
21392 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
21393 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
21394 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
21395
21396 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
21397 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
21398 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
21399
21400 <p><pre>
21401 #!/usr/bin/perl
21402 use strict;
21403 use warnings;
21404 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
21405 BEGIN {
21406     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
21407     my %rhelmodules = (
21408         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
21409         );
21410     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
21411         eval "use $module;";
21412         if ($@) {
21413             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
21414             system("yum install -y $pkg");
21415             eval "use $module;";
21416         }
21417     }
21418 }
21419 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
21420
21421 upgrade_dell();
21422
21423 exit 0;
21424
21425 sub run_firmware_script {
21426     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
21427     unless ($script) {
21428         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
21429         exit 1
21430     }
21431     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
21432
21433     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
21434         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
21435     } else {
21436         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
21437     }
21438 }
21439
21440 sub run_firmware_scripts {
21441     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
21442     # Run firmware packages
21443     for my $dir (@dirs) {
21444         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
21445         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
21446         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
21447             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
21448             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
21449         }
21450         closedir $dh;
21451     }
21452 }
21453
21454 sub download {
21455     my $url = shift;
21456     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
21457     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
21458 }
21459
21460 sub upgrade_dell {
21461     my @dirs;
21462     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
21463     chomp $product;
21464
21465     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
21466
21467         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
21468         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
21469
21470         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
21471             CLEANUP => 1
21472             );
21473         chdir($tmpdir);
21474         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
21475         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
21476         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
21477         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
21478         my $fwopts = "-q";
21479         if (@paths) {
21480             for my $url (@paths) {
21481                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
21482             }
21483             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
21484         } else {
21485             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
21486             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
21487         }
21488         chdir('/');
21489     } else {
21490         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
21491         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
21492     }
21493 }
21494
21495 sub fetch_dell_fw {
21496     my $path = shift;
21497     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
21498     download($url);
21499 }
21500
21501 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
21502 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
21503 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
21504 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
21505     my $filename = shift;
21506
21507     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
21508     chomp $product;
21509     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
21510
21511     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
21512
21513     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
21514     my @paths;
21515     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
21516         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
21517         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
21518         my $oscode;
21519         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
21520             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
21521         } else {
21522             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
21523         }
21524         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
21525         {
21526             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
21527         }
21528     }
21529     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
21530         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
21531
21532         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
21533         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
21534
21535         my $cpath = $component->{path};
21536         for my $path (@paths) {
21537             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
21538                 push(@paths, $cpath);
21539             }
21540         }
21541     }
21542     return @paths;
21543 }
21544 </pre>
21545
21546 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
21547 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
21548 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
21549 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
21550 outdated.</p>
21551
21552       </div>
21553       <div class="tags">
21554
21555
21556         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>.
21557
21558
21559       </div>
21560     </div>
21561     <div class="padding"></div>
21562
21563     <div class="entry">
21564       <div class="title">
21565         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
21566       </div>
21567       <div class="date">
21568          7th October 2011
21569       </div>
21570       <div class="body">
21571         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
21572 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
21573 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
21574 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
21575 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
21576 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
21577 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
21578 models.</p>
21579
21580 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
21581 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
21582 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
21583 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
21584
21585 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
21586 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
21587 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
21588 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
21589 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
21590 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
21591 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
21592 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
21593 distributed.</p>
21594
21595 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
21596
21597 <ul>
21598
21599 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
21600   other relevant equipment.</li>
21601
21602 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
21603
21604 </ul>
21605
21606 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
21607 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
21608 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
21609 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
21610 books available.</p>
21611
21612 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
21613 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
21614 libraries. :)</p>
21615
21616       </div>
21617       <div class="tags">
21618
21619
21620         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
21621
21622
21623       </div>
21624     </div>
21625     <div class="padding"></div>
21626
21627     <div class="entry">
21628       <div class="title">
21629         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
21630       </div>
21631       <div class="date">
21632         17th September 2011
21633       </div>
21634       <div class="body">
21635         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
21636 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
21637 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
21638 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
21639 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
21640 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
21641 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
21642 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
21643
21644 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
21645
21646 <blockquote><pre>
21647 #!/bin/sh
21648 # apt-get install lsdvd
21649 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
21650 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
21651 </pre></blockquote>
21652
21653 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
21654 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
21655 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
21656 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
21657
21658 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
21659 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
21660 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
21661 back as an ISO.
21662
21663 <blockquote><pre>
21664 #!/bin/sh
21665 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
21666 set -e
21667 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
21668 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
21669 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
21670 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
21671 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
21672 </pre></blockquote>
21673
21674 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
21675
21676 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
21677 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
21678 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
21679 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
21680 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
21681
21682 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
21683 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
21684 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
21685 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
21686 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
21687 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
21688
21689       </div>
21690       <div class="tags">
21691
21692
21693         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
21694
21695
21696       </div>
21697     </div>
21698     <div class="padding"></div>
21699
21700     <div class="entry">
21701       <div class="title">
21702         <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>
21703       </div>
21704       <div class="date">
21705          4th August 2011
21706       </div>
21707       <div class="body">
21708         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
21709 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
21710 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
21711 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
21712 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
21713 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
21714 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
21715 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
21716 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
21717
21718 <p><blockquote>
21719 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
21720 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
21721 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
21722 </blockquote></p>
21723
21724 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
21725 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
21726 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
21727 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
21728 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
21729 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
21730 hard to explain.</p>
21731
21732 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
21733 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
21734 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
21735 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
21736 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
21737 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
21738 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
21739 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
21740 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
21741 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
21742 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
21743 mode).</p>
21744
21745 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
21746 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
21747 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
21748 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
21749 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
21750 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
21751 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
21752 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
21753 after visiting single user mode.</p>
21754
21755 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
21756 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
21757 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
21758 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
21759 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
21760 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
21761 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
21762 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
21763
21764 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
21765 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
21766 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
21767
21768       </div>
21769       <div class="tags">
21770
21771
21772         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>.
21773
21774
21775       </div>
21776     </div>
21777     <div class="padding"></div>
21778
21779     <div class="entry">
21780       <div class="title">
21781         <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>
21782       </div>
21783       <div class="date">
21784         30th July 2011
21785       </div>
21786       <div class="body">
21787         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
21788 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
21789 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
21790 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
21791 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
21792 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
21793 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
21794 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
21795 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
21796 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
21797 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
21798 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
21799 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
21800
21801 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
21802 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
21803 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
21804 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
21805 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
21806 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
21807 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
21808 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
21809 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
21810
21811 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
21812 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
21813 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
21814 is presented.</p>
21815
21816 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
21817 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
21818 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
21819 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
21820 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
21821 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
21822 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
21823 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
21824 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
21825 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
21826 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
21827 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
21828 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
21829 find time to push this forward.</p>
21830
21831       </div>
21832       <div class="tags">
21833
21834
21835         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>.
21836
21837
21838       </div>
21839     </div>
21840     <div class="padding"></div>
21841
21842     <div class="entry">
21843       <div class="title">
21844         <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>
21845       </div>
21846       <div class="date">
21847         29th July 2011
21848       </div>
21849       <div class="body">
21850         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
21851 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
21852 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
21853 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
21854 issues.</p>
21855
21856 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
21857 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
21858 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
21859
21860 <ol>
21861
21862 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
21863 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
21864 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
21865 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
21866 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
21867 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
21868 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
21869 Debian.</li>
21870
21871 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
21872 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
21873 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
21874 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
21875 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
21876 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
21877 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
21878 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
21879 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
21880 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
21881 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
21882 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
21883 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
21884
21885 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
21886 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
21887 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
21888 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
21889 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
21890 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
21891 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
21892 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
21893 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
21894 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
21895
21896 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
21897 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
21898 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
21899 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
21900 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
21901 latter behaviour.</li>
21902
21903 </ol>
21904
21905 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
21906 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
21907 it do not matter much.</p>
21908
21909 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
21910 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
21911 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
21912
21913       </div>
21914       <div class="tags">
21915
21916
21917         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/h264">h264</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>.
21918
21919
21920       </div>
21921     </div>
21922     <div class="padding"></div>
21923
21924     <div class="entry">
21925       <div class="title">
21926         <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>
21927       </div>
21928       <div class="date">
21929         26th July 2011
21930       </div>
21931       <div class="body">
21932         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
21933 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
21934 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
21935 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
21936 security support for a few years.</p>
21937
21938 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
21939 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
21940 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
21941 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
21942 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
21943 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
21944 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
21945 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
21946 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
21947 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
21948 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
21949 easier in the future.</p>
21950
21951 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
21952 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
21953 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
21954 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
21955 do not have time for.</p>
21956
21957       </div>
21958       <div class="tags">
21959
21960
21961         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>.
21962
21963
21964       </div>
21965     </div>
21966     <div class="padding"></div>
21967
21968     <div class="entry">
21969       <div class="title">
21970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
21971       </div>
21972       <div class="date">
21973         20th June 2011
21974       </div>
21975       <div class="body">
21976         <p>Reading
21977 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
21978 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
21979 parts of the
21980 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
21981 and
21982 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
21983 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
21984 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
21985 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
21986
21987       </div>
21988       <div class="tags">
21989
21990
21991         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
21992
21993
21994       </div>
21995     </div>
21996     <div class="padding"></div>
21997
21998     <div class="entry">
21999       <div class="title">
22000         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
22001       </div>
22002       <div class="date">
22003         30th April 2011
22004       </div>
22005       <div class="body">
22006         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
22007 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
22008 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
22009 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
22010 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
22011 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
22012 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
22013 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
22014 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
22015 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
22016
22017 <p>Where is it?  Visit
22018 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
22019 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
22020 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
22021 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
22022
22023       </div>
22024       <div class="tags">
22025
22026
22027         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
22028
22029
22030       </div>
22031     </div>
22032     <div class="padding"></div>
22033
22034     <div class="entry">
22035       <div class="title">
22036         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
22037       </div>
22038       <div class="date">
22039         29th April 2011
22040       </div>
22041       <div class="body">
22042         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
22043 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
22044 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
22045 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
22046 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
22047 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
22048 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
22049 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
22050 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
22051 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
22052 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
22053 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
22054 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
22055
22056 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
22057 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
22058 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
22059 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
22060 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
22061 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
22062 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
22063 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
22064 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
22065 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
22066 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
22067 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
22068 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
22069
22070 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
22071 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
22072 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
22073 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
22074 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
22075 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
22076 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
22077 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
22078 it.</p>
22079
22080 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
22081 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
22082 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
22083 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
22084 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
22085 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
22086 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
22087
22088 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
22089 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
22090 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
22091 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
22092 and range= options.</p>
22093
22094 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
22095 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
22096 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
22097 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
22098 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
22099 to best handle this.  I've noticed
22100 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
22101 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
22102 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
22103 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
22104
22105 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
22106 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
22107 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
22108 discussions instead of only
22109 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
22110 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
22111 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
22112 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
22113 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
22114 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
22115
22116       </div>
22117       <div class="tags">
22118
22119
22120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
22121
22122
22123       </div>
22124     </div>
22125     <div class="padding"></div>
22126
22127     <div class="entry">
22128       <div class="title">
22129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
22130       </div>
22131       <div class="date">
22132          6th April 2011
22133       </div>
22134       <div class="body">
22135         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
22136 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
22137 A few days ago the project
22138 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
22139 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
22140 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
22141 into Gnash.</p>
22142
22143       </div>
22144       <div class="tags">
22145
22146
22147         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
22148
22149
22150       </div>
22151     </div>
22152     <div class="padding"></div>
22153
22154     <div class="entry">
22155       <div class="title">
22156         <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>
22157       </div>
22158       <div class="date">
22159          3rd April 2011
22160       </div>
22161       <div class="body">
22162         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
22163 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
22164 update in English.</p>
22165
22166 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
22167 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
22168 of the British service
22169 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
22170 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
22171 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
22172 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
22173 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
22174 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
22175 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
22176 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
22177 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
22178 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
22179 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
22180 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
22181 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
22182
22183 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
22184 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
22185 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
22186 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
22187 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
22188 public infrastructure.</p>
22189
22190 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
22191 such service?</p>
22192
22193       </div>
22194       <div class="tags">
22195
22196
22197         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>.
22198
22199
22200       </div>
22201     </div>
22202     <div class="padding"></div>
22203
22204     <div class="entry">
22205       <div class="title">
22206         <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>
22207       </div>
22208       <div class="date">
22209         28th January 2011
22210       </div>
22211       <div class="body">
22212         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
22213 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
22214 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
22215 available on the Internet, and check our locally
22216 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
22217 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
22218 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
22219 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
22220 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
22221 out which security holes were present in our free software
22222 collection.</p>
22223
22224 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
22225 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
22226 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
22227 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
22228 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
22229 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
22230 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
22231 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
22232 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
22233 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
22234 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
22235 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
22236 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
22237 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
22238 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
22239 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
22240
22241 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
22242 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
22243 check out, one could look up
22244 <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
22245 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
22246 The most recent one is
22247 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
22248 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
22249 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
22250
22251 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
22252 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
22253 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
22254 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
22255 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
22256 security issues out.</p>
22257
22258 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
22259 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
22260 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
22261 RHEL is providing
22262 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
22263 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
22264 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
22265
22266 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
22267 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
22268 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
22269 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
22270 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
22271 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
22272 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
22273 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
22274 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
22275 established soon.</p>
22276
22277 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
22278 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
22279 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
22280 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
22281 for their packages.</p>
22282
22283       </div>
22284       <div class="tags">
22285
22286
22287         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>.
22288
22289
22290       </div>
22291     </div>
22292     <div class="padding"></div>
22293
22294     <div class="entry">
22295       <div class="title">
22296         <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>
22297       </div>
22298       <div class="date">
22299         23rd January 2011
22300       </div>
22301       <div class="body">
22302         <p>In the
22303 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
22304 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
22305 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
22306 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
22307 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
22308 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
22309 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
22310 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
22311 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
22312 one of my machines like this:</p>
22313
22314 <pre>
22315 loaded modules:
22316 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
22317 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
22318 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
22319 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
22320 10de:03ec pata_amd
22321 10de:03f6 sata_nv
22322 1022:1103 k8temp
22323 109e:036e bttv
22324 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
22325 11ab:4364 sky2
22326 </pre>
22327
22328 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
22329 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
22330
22331 <pre>
22332 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
22333     echo loaded pci modules:
22334     (
22335         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
22336         for address in * ; do
22337             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
22338                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
22339                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
22340                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
22341                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
22342                     echo "$id $module"
22343                 fi
22344             fi
22345         done
22346     )
22347     echo
22348 fi
22349 </pre>
22350
22351 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
22352 mappings:</p>
22353
22354 <pre>
22355 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
22356     echo loaded usb modules:
22357     (
22358         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
22359         for address in * ; do
22360             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
22361                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
22362                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
22363                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
22364                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
22365                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
22366                         echo "$id $module"
22367                     fi
22368                 fi
22369             fi
22370         done
22371     )
22372     echo
22373 fi
22374 </pre>
22375
22376 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
22377 well.</p>
22378
22379       </div>
22380       <div class="tags">
22381
22382
22383         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>.
22384
22385
22386       </div>
22387     </div>
22388     <div class="padding"></div>
22389
22390     <div class="entry">
22391       <div class="title">
22392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
22393       </div>
22394       <div class="date">
22395         16th January 2011
22396       </div>
22397       <div class="body">
22398         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
22399 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
22400 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
22401 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
22402 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
22403 the Wikipedia article on
22404 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
22405 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
22406 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
22407 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
22408 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
22409 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
22410 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
22411 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
22412 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
22413 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
22414 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
22415 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
22416
22417 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
22418 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
22419 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
22420 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
22421 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
22422 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
22423 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
22424 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
22425 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
22426 from last week</a>.</p>
22427
22428 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
22429 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
22430 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
22431 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
22432 was without royalties and license terms, check out
22433 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
22434 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
22435
22436 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
22437 available from
22438 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
22439 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
22440 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
22441
22442 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
22443 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
22444 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
22445 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
22446
22447       </div>
22448       <div class="tags">
22449
22450
22451         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
22452
22453
22454       </div>
22455     </div>
22456     <div class="padding"></div>
22457
22458     <div class="entry">
22459       <div class="title">
22460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
22461       </div>
22462       <div class="date">
22463         12th January 2011
22464       </div>
22465       <div class="body">
22466         <p>Today I discovered
22467 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
22468 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
22469 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
22470 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
22471 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
22472 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
22473 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
22474 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
22475 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
22476 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
22477 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
22478 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
22479 on the Google announcement is available from
22480 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
22481 A good read. :)</p>
22482
22483 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
22484 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
22485 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
22486 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
22487 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
22488 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
22489 browsers support H.264, and others support
22490 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
22491 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
22492 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
22493 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
22494 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
22495 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
22496 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
22497 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
22498
22499 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
22500 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
22501 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
22502 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
22503 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
22504 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
22505 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
22506
22507 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
22508 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
22509 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
22510 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
22511 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
22512 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
22513 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
22514
22515 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
22516 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
22517 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
22518 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
22519 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
22520 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
22521 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
22522
22523 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
22524 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
22525 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
22526 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
22527 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
22528 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
22529 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
22530 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
22531 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
22532 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
22533 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
22534 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
22535 I guess time will tell.</p>
22536
22537 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
22538 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
22539 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
22540
22541       </div>
22542       <div class="tags">
22543
22544
22545         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
22546
22547
22548       </div>
22549     </div>
22550     <div class="padding"></div>
22551
22552     <div class="entry">
22553       <div class="title">
22554         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
22555       </div>
22556       <div class="date">
22557         30th December 2010
22558       </div>
22559       <div class="body">
22560         <p>After trying to
22561 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
22562 Ogg Theora</a> to
22563 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
22564 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
22565 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
22566 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
22567 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
22568 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
22569 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
22570
22571 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
22572 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
22573 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
22574 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
22575 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
22576 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
22577 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
22578
22579 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
22580 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
22581
22582       </div>
22583       <div class="tags">
22584
22585
22586         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
22587
22588
22589       </div>
22590     </div>
22591     <div class="padding"></div>
22592
22593     <div class="entry">
22594       <div class="title">
22595         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
22596       </div>
22597       <div class="date">
22598         27th December 2010
22599       </div>
22600       <div class="body">
22601         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
22602 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
22603 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
22604 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
22605 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
22606 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
22607 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
22608 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
22609
22610 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
22611 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
22612 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
22613 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
22614 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
22615 page</a>.</p>
22616
22617 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
22618 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
22619 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
22620 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
22621 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
22622 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
22623 specification on equal terms.</p>
22624
22625 <blockquote>
22626
22627 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
22628 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
22629 open standard:</p>
22630
22631 <ul>
22632
22633 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
22634 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
22635 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
22636 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
22637
22638 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
22639 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
22640 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
22641 nominal fee.</li>
22642
22643 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
22644 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
22645 free basis.</li>
22646
22647 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
22648
22649 </ul>
22650 </blockquote>
22651
22652 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
22653 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
22654 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
22655 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
22656 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
22657 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
22658 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
22659
22660 <blockquote>
22661
22662 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
22663
22664 <ol>
22665
22666 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
22667 tilgængelig.</li>
22668
22669 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
22670 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
22671
22672 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
22673 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
22674
22675 </ol>
22676
22677 </blockquote>
22678
22679 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
22680 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
22681
22682 <blockquote>
22683
22684 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
22685
22686 <ol>
22687
22688 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
22689 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
22690
22691 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
22692 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
22693 Standard themselves;</li>
22694
22695 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
22696 any party or in any business model;</li>
22697
22698 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
22699 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
22700 parties;</li>
22701
22702 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
22703 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
22704 parties.</li>
22705
22706 </ol>
22707
22708 </blockquote>
22709
22710 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
22711 its
22712 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
22713 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
22714
22715 <blockquote>
22716 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
22717
22718 <ul>
22719
22720 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
22721   democratic:
22722
22723          <ul>
22724
22725          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
22726             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
22727             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
22728             and managed.</li>
22729
22730          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
22731             method, can be changed through input from all
22732             participants.</li>
22733
22734          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
22735             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
22736
22737          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
22738             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
22739
22740          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
22741             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
22742             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
22743
22744          </ul>
22745
22746 </li>
22747
22748 </ul>
22749
22750 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
22751 <ul>
22752
22753 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
22754   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
22755   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
22756   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
22757   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
22758
22759 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
22760   a technical or economic barriers</li>
22761
22762 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
22763   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
22764   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
22765   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
22766   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
22767   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
22768   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
22769   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
22770   intended to function.</li>
22771
22772 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
22773   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
22774   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
22775
22776 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
22777   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
22778   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
22779   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
22780   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
22781   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
22782   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
22783   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
22784
22785       <ul>
22786
22787       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
22788         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
22789         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
22790
22791       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
22792         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
22793         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
22794         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
22795
22796       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
22797         licensor</li>
22798
22799       </ul>
22800 </li>
22801
22802 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
22803   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
22804   or restricted licensing terms</li>
22805
22806 </ul>
22807
22808 </blockquote>
22809
22810 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
22811 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
22812 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
22813 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
22814 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
22815 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
22816 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
22817 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
22818 Standards.</p>
22819
22820       </div>
22821       <div class="tags">
22822
22823
22824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
22825
22826
22827       </div>
22828     </div>
22829     <div class="padding"></div>
22830
22831     <div class="entry">
22832       <div class="title">
22833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
22834       </div>
22835       <div class="date">
22836         25th December 2010
22837       </div>
22838       <div class="body">
22839         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
22840 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
22841
22842 <blockquote>
22843
22844 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
22845 as follows:</p>
22846
22847 <ol>
22848
22849 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
22850 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
22851 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
22852
22853 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
22854 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
22855 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
22856 parties.</li>
22857
22858 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
22859 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
22860 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
22861
22862 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
22863 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
22864
22865 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
22866
22867 </ol>
22868
22869 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
22870 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
22871 products based on the standard.</p>
22872 </blockquote>
22873
22874 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
22875 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
22876 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
22877 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
22878 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
22879 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
22880 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
22881 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
22882
22883 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
22884
22885 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
22886 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
22887 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
22888 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
22889 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
22890 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
22891 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
22892 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
22893 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
22894 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
22895 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
22896 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
22897 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
22898 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
22899
22900 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
22901
22902 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
22903 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
22904 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
22905 documentation indicating this.</p>
22906
22907 <p>According to
22908 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
22909 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
22910 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
22911 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
22912 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
22913 report is correct.</p>
22914
22915 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
22916
22917 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
22918 container format</a> and both the
22919 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
22920 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
22921 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
22922
22923 <blockquote>
22924
22925 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
22926 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
22927 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
22928 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
22929 specification compliance.
22930
22931 </blockquote>
22932
22933 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
22934 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
22935 this is the term:<p>
22936
22937 <blockquote>
22938
22939 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
22940 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
22941 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
22942 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
22943 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
22944 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
22945 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
22946 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
22947 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
22948 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
22949 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
22950 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
22951
22952 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
22953 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
22954 </blockquote>
22955
22956 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
22957 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
22958 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
22959 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
22960 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
22961
22962 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
22963
22964 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
22965 Theora format.
22966 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
22967 and
22968 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
22969 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
22970 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
22971 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
22972 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
22973 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
22974 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
22975 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
22976
22977 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
22978
22979 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
22980
22981 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
22982
22983 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
22984 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
22985 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
22986 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
22987 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
22988 this.</p>
22989
22990 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
22991 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
22992
22993       </div>
22994       <div class="tags">
22995
22996
22997         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
22998
22999
23000       </div>
23001     </div>
23002     <div class="padding"></div>
23003
23004     <div class="entry">
23005       <div class="title">
23006         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
23007       </div>
23008       <div class="date">
23009         25th December 2010
23010       </div>
23011       <div class="body">
23012         <p>A few days ago
23013 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
23014 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
23015 2.0 of
23016 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
23017 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
23018 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
23019 Nothing very surprising there, given
23020 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
23021 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
23022 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
23023 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
23024 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
23025 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
23026 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
23027 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
23028 standard definition from its content.</p>
23029
23030 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
23031 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
23032 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
23033 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
23034 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
23035 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
23036 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
23037 background information about that story is available in
23038 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
23039 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
23040
23041 <blockquote>
23042 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
23043 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
23044 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
23045
23046 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
23047
23048 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
23049
23050 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
23051
23052 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
23053
23054 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
23055
23056 <p>
23057 <ul>
23058 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
23059 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
23060 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
23061 </ul>
23062 </p>
23063
23064 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
23065
23066 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
23067
23068 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
23069
23070 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
23071
23072 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
23073
23074
23075 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
23076 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
23077 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
23078 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
23079 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
23080 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
23081
23082 </p>
23083
23084 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
23085
23086 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
23087
23088 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
23089
23090 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
23091
23092 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
23093
23094 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
23095
23096 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
23097
23098 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
23099
23100 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
23101
23102 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
23103
23104 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
23105
23106 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
23107
23108 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
23109
23110 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
23111
23112 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
23113
23114 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
23115
23116 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
23117
23118 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
23119
23120 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
23121
23122 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
23123
23124 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
23125
23126 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
23127
23128 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
23129
23130 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
23131
23132 <p>On security:</p>
23133
23134 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
23135
23136 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
23137
23138 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
23139
23140 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
23141
23142 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
23143
23144 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
23145
23146 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
23147
23148 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
23149
23150 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
23151
23152 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
23153
23154 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
23155
23156 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
23157
23158 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
23159
23160 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
23161
23162 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
23163
23164 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
23165
23166 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
23167
23168 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
23169
23170 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
23171
23172 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
23173
23174 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
23175
23176 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
23177
23178 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
23179
23180 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
23181
23182 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
23183
23184 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
23185
23186 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
23187
23188 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
23189
23190 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
23191
23192 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
23193
23194 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
23195
23196 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
23197
23198 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
23199
23200 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
23201
23202 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
23203
23204 <p>Cordially,<br>
23205 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
23206 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
23207 </blockquote>
23208
23209       </div>
23210       <div class="tags">
23211
23212
23213         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
23214
23215
23216       </div>
23217     </div>
23218     <div class="padding"></div>
23219
23220     <div class="entry">
23221       <div class="title">
23222         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
23223       </div>
23224       <div class="date">
23225         25th December 2010
23226       </div>
23227       <div class="body">
23228         <p>Half a year ago I
23229 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
23230 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
23231 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
23232 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
23233
23234 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
23235 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
23236 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
23237 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
23238 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
23239 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
23240 got such a great test tool available.</p>
23241
23242       </div>
23243       <div class="tags">
23244
23245
23246         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
23247
23248
23249       </div>
23250     </div>
23251     <div class="padding"></div>
23252
23253     <div class="entry">
23254       <div class="title">
23255         <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>
23256       </div>
23257       <div class="date">
23258         22nd December 2010
23259       </div>
23260       <div class="body">
23261         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
23262 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
23263 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
23264 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
23265 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
23266 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
23267 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
23268 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
23269 university.</p>
23270
23271 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
23272 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
23273 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
23274 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
23275 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
23276 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
23277 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
23278 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
23279
23280 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
23281 I perform on a new model.</p>
23282
23283 <ul>
23284
23285 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
23286 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
23287 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
23288
23289 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
23290 installation, X.org is working.</li>
23291
23292 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
23293 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
23294 reported by the program.</li>
23295
23296 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
23297 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
23298 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
23299 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
23300 normally test this by playing
23301 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
23302 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
23303
23304 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
23305 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
23306
23307 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
23308 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
23309
23310 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
23311 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
23312
23313 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
23314 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
23315 few.</li>
23316
23317 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
23318 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
23319 notice this.</li>
23320
23321 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
23322 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
23323 resume.</li>
23324
23325 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
23326 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
23327 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
23328 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
23329 not.</li>
23330
23331 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
23332 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
23333 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
23334 existence.</li>
23335
23336 </ul>
23337
23338 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
23339 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
23340 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
23341 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
23342 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
23343 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
23344 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
23345 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
23346
23347       </div>
23348       <div class="tags">
23349
23350
23351         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>.
23352
23353
23354       </div>
23355     </div>
23356     <div class="padding"></div>
23357
23358     <div class="entry">
23359       <div class="title">
23360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
23361       </div>
23362       <div class="date">
23363         11th December 2010
23364       </div>
23365       <div class="body">
23366         <p>As I continue to explore
23367 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
23368 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
23369 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
23370
23371 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
23372 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
23373 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
23374 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
23375 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
23376 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
23377 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
23378 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
23379 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
23380 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
23381 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
23382 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
23383 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
23384 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
23385 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
23386 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
23387 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
23388 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
23389 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
23390 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
23391
23392 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
23393 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
23394 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
23395 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
23396 If the Skolelinux foundation
23397 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
23398 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
23399 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
23400 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
23401 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
23402 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
23403 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
23404 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
23405
23406 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
23407 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
23408 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
23409 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
23410 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
23411 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
23412 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
23413 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
23414 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
23415 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
23416 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
23417 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
23418 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
23419 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
23420 currencies.</p>
23421
23422 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
23423 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
23424 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
23425 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
23426 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
23427 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
23428 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
23429 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
23430 BitCoins.  Check out
23431 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
23432 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
23433 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
23434 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
23435 yet.</p>
23436
23437 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
23438 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
23439 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
23440 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
23441 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
23442
23443       </div>
23444       <div class="tags">
23445
23446
23447         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>.
23448
23449
23450       </div>
23451     </div>
23452     <div class="padding"></div>
23453
23454     <div class="entry">
23455       <div class="title">
23456         <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>
23457       </div>
23458       <div class="date">
23459         10th December 2010
23460       </div>
23461       <div class="body">
23462         <p>With this weeks lawless
23463 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
23464 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
23465 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
23466 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
23467 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
23468 A blog post from
23469 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
23470 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
23471 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
23472 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
23473 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
23474 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
23475 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
23476
23477 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
23478 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
23479 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
23480 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
23481 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
23482 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
23483 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
23484 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
23485 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
23486 Debian</a> soon.</p>
23487
23488 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
23489 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
23490 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
23491 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
23492 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
23493 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
23494 you can even get
23495 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
23496 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
23497 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
23498 on the current exchange rates.</p>
23499
23500 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
23501 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
23502 donations to the address
23503 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
23504
23505       </div>
23506       <div class="tags">
23507
23508
23509         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>.
23510
23511
23512       </div>
23513     </div>
23514     <div class="padding"></div>
23515
23516     <div class="entry">
23517       <div class="title">
23518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
23519       </div>
23520       <div class="date">
23521          9th December 2010
23522       </div>
23523       <div class="body">
23524         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
23525 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
23526 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
23527 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
23528 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
23529 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
23530 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
23531 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
23532 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
23533 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
23534 operational.</p>
23535
23536 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
23537 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
23538 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
23539 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
23540 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
23541 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
23542 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
23543
23544       </div>
23545       <div class="tags">
23546
23547
23548         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
23549
23550
23551       </div>
23552     </div>
23553     <div class="padding"></div>
23554
23555     <div class="entry">
23556       <div class="title">
23557         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
23558       </div>
23559       <div class="date">
23560         29th November 2010
23561       </div>
23562       <div class="body">
23563         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
23564 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
23565 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
23566 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
23567 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
23568 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
23569
23570 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
23571 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
23572 will hold its
23573 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
23574 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
23575 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
23576 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
23577 vote this year.</p>
23578
23579       </div>
23580       <div class="tags">
23581
23582
23583         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
23584
23585
23586       </div>
23587     </div>
23588     <div class="padding"></div>
23589
23590     <div class="entry">
23591       <div class="title">
23592         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
23593       </div>
23594       <div class="date">
23595         27th November 2010
23596       </div>
23597       <div class="body">
23598         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
23599 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
23600 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
23601 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
23602 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
23603 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
23604 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
23605 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
23606
23607 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
23608 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
23609 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
23610 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
23611 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
23612 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
23613 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
23614 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
23615 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
23616 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
23617 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
23618
23619 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
23620 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
23621 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
23622 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
23623 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
23624 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
23625 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
23626 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
23627 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
23628 what is going on.</p>
23629
23630       </div>
23631       <div class="tags">
23632
23633
23634         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>.
23635
23636
23637       </div>
23638     </div>
23639     <div class="padding"></div>
23640
23641     <div class="entry">
23642       <div class="title">
23643         <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>
23644       </div>
23645       <div class="date">
23646         22nd November 2010
23647       </div>
23648       <div class="body">
23649         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
23650 upgrade testing of the
23651 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
23652 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
23653 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
23654 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
23655
23656 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
23657
23658 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
23659
23660 <blockquote><p>
23661   apache2.2-bin
23662   aptdaemon
23663   baobab
23664   binfmt-support
23665   browser-plugin-gnash
23666   cheese-common
23667   cli-common
23668   cups-pk-helper
23669   dmz-cursor-theme
23670   empathy
23671   empathy-common
23672   freedesktop-sound-theme
23673   freeglut3
23674   gconf-defaults-service
23675   gdm-themes
23676   gedit-plugins
23677   geoclue
23678   geoclue-hostip
23679   geoclue-localnet
23680   geoclue-manual
23681   geoclue-yahoo
23682   gnash
23683   gnash-common
23684   gnome
23685   gnome-backgrounds
23686   gnome-cards-data
23687   gnome-codec-install
23688   gnome-core
23689   gnome-desktop-environment
23690   gnome-disk-utility
23691   gnome-screenshot
23692   gnome-search-tool
23693   gnome-session-canberra
23694   gnome-system-log
23695   gnome-themes-extras
23696   gnome-themes-more
23697   gnome-user-share
23698   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
23699   gstreamer0.10-tools
23700   gtk2-engines
23701   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
23702   gtk2-engines-smooth
23703   hamster-applet
23704   libapache2-mod-dnssd
23705   libapr1
23706   libaprutil1
23707   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
23708   libaprutil1-ldap
23709   libart2.0-cil
23710   libboost-date-time1.42.0
23711   libboost-python1.42.0
23712   libboost-thread1.42.0
23713   libchamplain-0.4-0
23714   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
23715   libcheese-gtk18
23716   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
23717   libcryptui0
23718   libdiscid0
23719   libelf1
23720   libepc-1.0-2
23721   libepc-common
23722   libepc-ui-1.0-2
23723   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
23724   libfreerdp0
23725   libgconf2.0-cil
23726   libgdata-common
23727   libgdata7
23728   libgdu-gtk0
23729   libgee2
23730   libgeoclue0
23731   libgexiv2-0
23732   libgif4
23733   libglade2.0-cil
23734   libglib2.0-cil
23735   libgmime2.4-cil
23736   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
23737   libgnome2.24-cil
23738   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
23739   libgpod-common
23740   libgpod4
23741   libgtk2.0-cil
23742   libgtkglext1
23743   libgtksourceview2.0-common
23744   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
23745   libmono-addins0.2-cil
23746   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
23747   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
23748   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
23749   libmono-posix2.0-cil
23750   libmono-security2.0-cil
23751   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
23752   libmono-system2.0-cil
23753   libmtp8
23754   libmusicbrainz3-6
23755   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
23756   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
23757   libopal3.6.8
23758   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
23759   libpt2.6.7
23760   libpython2.6
23761   librpm1
23762   librpmio1
23763   libsdl1.2debian
23764   libsrtp0
23765   libssh-4
23766   libtelepathy-farsight0
23767   libtelepathy-glib0
23768   libtidy-0.99-0
23769   media-player-info
23770   mesa-utils
23771   mono-2.0-gac
23772   mono-gac
23773   mono-runtime
23774   nautilus-sendto
23775   nautilus-sendto-empathy
23776   p7zip-full
23777   pkg-config
23778   python-aptdaemon
23779   python-aptdaemon-gtk
23780   python-axiom
23781   python-beautifulsoup
23782   python-bugbuddy
23783   python-clientform
23784   python-coherence
23785   python-configobj
23786   python-crypto
23787   python-cupshelpers
23788   python-elementtree
23789   python-epsilon
23790   python-evolution
23791   python-feedparser
23792   python-gdata
23793   python-gdbm
23794   python-gst0.10
23795   python-gtkglext1
23796   python-gtksourceview2
23797   python-httplib2
23798   python-louie
23799   python-mako
23800   python-markupsafe
23801   python-mechanize
23802   python-nevow
23803   python-notify
23804   python-opengl
23805   python-openssl
23806   python-pam
23807   python-pkg-resources
23808   python-pyasn1
23809   python-pysqlite2
23810   python-rdflib
23811   python-serial
23812   python-tagpy
23813   python-twisted-bin
23814   python-twisted-conch
23815   python-twisted-core
23816   python-twisted-web
23817   python-utidylib
23818   python-webkit
23819   python-xdg
23820   python-zope.interface
23821   remmina
23822   remmina-plugin-data
23823   remmina-plugin-rdp
23824   remmina-plugin-vnc
23825   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
23826   rhythmbox-plugins
23827   rpm-common
23828   rpm2cpio
23829   seahorse-plugins
23830   shotwell
23831   software-center
23832   system-config-printer-udev
23833   telepathy-gabble
23834   telepathy-mission-control-5
23835   telepathy-salut
23836   tomboy
23837   totem
23838   totem-coherence
23839   totem-mozilla
23840   totem-plugins
23841   transmission-common
23842   xdg-user-dirs
23843   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
23844   xserver-xephyr
23845 </p></blockquote>
23846
23847 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
23848
23849 <blockquote><p>
23850   cheese
23851   ekiga
23852   eog
23853   epiphany-extensions
23854   evolution-exchange
23855   fast-user-switch-applet
23856   file-roller
23857   gcalctool
23858   gconf-editor
23859   gdm
23860   gedit
23861   gedit-common
23862   gnome-games
23863   gnome-games-data
23864   gnome-nettool
23865   gnome-system-tools
23866   gnome-themes
23867   gnuchess
23868   gucharmap
23869   guile-1.8-libs
23870   libavahi-ui0
23871   libdmx1
23872   libgalago3
23873   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
23874   libgtksourceview2.0-0
23875   liblircclient0
23876   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
23877   libspeexdsp1
23878   libsvga1
23879   rhythmbox
23880   seahorse
23881   sound-juicer
23882   system-config-printer
23883   totem-common
23884   transmission-gtk
23885   vinagre
23886   vino
23887 </p></blockquote>
23888
23889 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
23890
23891 <blockquote><p>
23892   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
23893 </p></blockquote>
23894
23895 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
23896
23897 <blockquote><p>
23898 [nothing]
23899 </p></blockquote>
23900
23901 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
23902
23903 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
23904
23905 <blockquote><p>
23906   ksmserver
23907 </p></blockquote>
23908
23909 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
23910
23911 <blockquote><p>
23912   kwin
23913   network-manager-kde
23914 </p></blockquote>
23915
23916 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
23917
23918 <blockquote><p>
23919   arts
23920   dolphin
23921   freespacenotifier
23922   google-gadgets-gst
23923   google-gadgets-xul
23924   kappfinder
23925   kcalc
23926   kcharselect
23927   kde-core
23928   kde-plasma-desktop
23929   kde-standard
23930   kde-window-manager
23931   kdeartwork
23932   kdeartwork-emoticons
23933   kdeartwork-style
23934   kdeartwork-theme-icon
23935   kdebase
23936   kdebase-apps
23937   kdebase-workspace
23938   kdebase-workspace-bin
23939   kdebase-workspace-data
23940   kdeeject
23941   kdelibs
23942   kdeplasma-addons
23943   kdeutils
23944   kdewallpapers
23945   kdf
23946   kfloppy
23947   kgpg
23948   khelpcenter4
23949   kinfocenter
23950   konq-plugins-l10n
23951   konqueror-nsplugins
23952   kscreensaver
23953   kscreensaver-xsavers
23954   ktimer
23955   kwrite
23956   libgle3
23957   libkde4-ruby1.8
23958   libkonq5
23959   libkonq5-templates
23960   libnetpbm10
23961   libplasma-ruby
23962   libplasma-ruby1.8
23963   libqt4-ruby1.8
23964   marble-data
23965   marble-plugins
23966   netpbm
23967   nuvola-icon-theme
23968   plasma-dataengines-workspace
23969   plasma-desktop
23970   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
23971   plasma-runners-addons
23972   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
23973   plasma-scriptengine-python
23974   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
23975   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
23976   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
23977   plasma-scriptengines
23978   plasma-wallpapers-addons
23979   plasma-widget-folderview
23980   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
23981   ruby
23982   sweeper
23983   update-notifier-kde
23984   xscreensaver-data-extra
23985   xscreensaver-gl
23986   xscreensaver-gl-extra
23987   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
23988 </p></blockquote>
23989
23990 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
23991
23992 <blockquote><p>
23993   ark
23994   google-gadgets-common
23995   google-gadgets-qt
23996   htdig
23997   kate
23998   kdebase-bin
23999   kdebase-data
24000   kdepasswd
24001   kfind
24002   klipper
24003   konq-plugins
24004   konqueror
24005   ksysguard
24006   ksysguardd
24007   libarchive1
24008   libcln6
24009   libeet1
24010   libeina-svn-06
24011   libggadget-1.0-0b
24012   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
24013   libgps19
24014   libkdecorations4
24015   libkephal4
24016   libkonq4
24017   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
24018   libkscreensaver5
24019   libksgrd4
24020   libksignalplotter4
24021   libkunitconversion4
24022   libkwineffects1a
24023   libmarblewidget4
24024   libntrack-qt4-1
24025   libntrack0
24026   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
24027   libplasmaclock4a
24028   libplasmagenericshell4
24029   libprocesscore4a
24030   libprocessui4a
24031   libqalculate5
24032   libqedje0a
24033   libqtruby4shared2
24034   libqzion0a
24035   libruby1.8
24036   libscim8c2a
24037   libsmokekdecore4-3
24038   libsmokekdeui4-3
24039   libsmokekfile3
24040   libsmokekhtml3
24041   libsmokekio3
24042   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
24043   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
24044   libsmokekparts3
24045   libsmokektexteditor3
24046   libsmokekutils3
24047   libsmokenepomuk3
24048   libsmokephonon3
24049   libsmokeplasma3
24050   libsmokeqtcore4-3
24051   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
24052   libsmokeqtgui4-3
24053   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
24054   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
24055   libsmokeqtscript4-3
24056   libsmokeqtsql4-3
24057   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
24058   libsmokeqttest4-3
24059   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
24060   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
24061   libsmokeqtxml4-3
24062   libsmokesolid3
24063   libsmokesoprano3
24064   libtaskmanager4a
24065   libtidy-0.99-0
24066   libweather-ion4a
24067   libxklavier16
24068   libxxf86misc1
24069   okteta
24070   oxygencursors
24071   plasma-dataengines-addons
24072   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
24073   plasma-widget-lancelot
24074   plasma-widgets-addons
24075   plasma-widgets-workspace
24076   polkit-kde-1
24077   ruby1.8
24078   systemsettings
24079   update-notifier-common
24080 </p></blockquote>
24081
24082 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
24083 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
24084 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
24085 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
24086
24087       </div>
24088       <div class="tags">
24089
24090
24091         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>.
24092
24093
24094       </div>
24095     </div>
24096     <div class="padding"></div>
24097
24098     <div class="entry">
24099       <div class="title">
24100         <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>
24101       </div>
24102       <div class="date">
24103         22nd November 2010
24104       </div>
24105       <div class="body">
24106         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
24107 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
24108 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
24109 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
24110 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
24111 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
24112 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
24113 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
24114 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
24115
24116 <p>I found
24117 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
24118 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
24119 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
24120 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
24121 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
24122 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
24123
24124 <pre>
24125 #!/bin/sh
24126
24127 # Based on
24128 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
24129
24130 set -e
24131 set -x
24132
24133 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
24134     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
24135     exit 1
24136 else
24137     host="$1"
24138 fi
24139
24140 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
24141     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
24142     exit 1
24143 fi
24144
24145 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
24146 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
24147 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
24148 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
24149
24150 img=$host.img
24151 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
24152 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
24153
24154 parted $img mklabel msdos
24155 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
24156 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
24157 parted $img set 1 boot on
24158
24159 modprobe dm-mod
24160 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
24161 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
24162
24163 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
24164 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
24165 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
24166
24167 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
24168 losetup -d /dev/loop0
24169 </pre>
24170
24171 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
24172 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
24173
24174 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
24175 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
24176 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
24177 seem to work just fine.</p>
24178
24179       </div>
24180       <div class="tags">
24181
24182
24183         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>.
24184
24185
24186       </div>
24187     </div>
24188     <div class="padding"></div>
24189
24190     <div class="entry">
24191       <div class="title">
24192         <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>
24193       </div>
24194       <div class="date">
24195         20th November 2010
24196       </div>
24197       <div class="body">
24198         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
24199 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
24200 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
24201 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
24202
24203 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
24204 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
24205 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
24206
24207 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
24208
24209 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
24210
24211 <blockquote><p>
24212   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
24213   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
24214   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
24215   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
24216   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
24217   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
24218   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
24219   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
24220   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
24221   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
24222   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
24223   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
24224   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
24225   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
24226   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
24227   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
24228   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
24229   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
24230   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
24231   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
24232   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
24233   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
24234   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
24235   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
24236   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
24237   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
24238   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
24239   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
24240   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
24241   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
24242   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
24243   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
24244   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
24245   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
24246   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
24247   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
24248   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
24249   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
24250   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
24251   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
24252   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
24253   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
24254   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
24255   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
24256   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
24257   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
24258   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
24259   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
24260   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
24261   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
24262   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
24263   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
24264   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
24265   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
24266   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
24267   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
24268   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
24269   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
24270   zip
24271 </p></blockquote>
24272
24273 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
24274
24275 <blockquote><p>
24276   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
24277   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
24278   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
24279   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
24280   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
24281   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
24282   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
24283   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
24284   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
24285   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
24286   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
24287   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
24288   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
24289   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
24290   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
24291   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
24292   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
24293   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
24294   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
24295   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
24296   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
24297   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
24298   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
24299   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
24300   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
24301   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
24302   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
24303   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
24304   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
24305 </p></blockquote>
24306
24307 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
24308
24309 <blockquote><p>
24310   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
24311 </p></blockquote>
24312
24313 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
24314
24315 <blockquote><p>
24316 [nothing]
24317 </p></blockquote>
24318
24319 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
24320
24321 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
24322
24323 <blockquote><p>
24324   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
24325   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
24326   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
24327   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
24328   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
24329   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
24330   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
24331   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
24332   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
24333   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
24334   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
24335   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
24336   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
24337   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
24338   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
24339   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
24340   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
24341   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
24342   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
24343   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
24344   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
24345   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
24346   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
24347   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
24348   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
24349   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
24350   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
24351   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
24352   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
24353   ttf-sazanami-gothic
24354 </p></blockquote>
24355
24356 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
24357
24358 <blockquote><p>
24359   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
24360   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
24361   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
24362   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
24363   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
24364   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
24365   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
24366   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
24367   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
24368   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
24369   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
24370   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
24371   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
24372   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
24373   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
24374   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
24375   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
24376   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
24377   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
24378   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
24379   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
24380   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
24381   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
24382   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
24383   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
24384   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
24385   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
24386   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
24387   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
24388   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
24389   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
24390   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
24391   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
24392 </p></blockquote>
24393
24394 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
24395
24396 <blockquote><p>
24397   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
24398   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
24399   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
24400   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
24401   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
24402   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
24403   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
24404 </p></blockquote>
24405
24406 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
24407
24408 <blockquote><p>
24409   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
24410 </p></blockquote>
24411
24412       </div>
24413       <div class="tags">
24414
24415
24416         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>.
24417
24418
24419       </div>
24420     </div>
24421     <div class="padding"></div>
24422
24423     <div class="entry">
24424       <div class="title">
24425         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
24426       </div>
24427       <div class="date">
24428         20th November 2010
24429       </div>
24430       <div class="body">
24431         <p>Answering
24432 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
24433 call from the Gnash project</a> for
24434 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
24435 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
24436 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
24437 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
24438 releases out more often.</p>
24439
24440 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
24441 I have considered setting up a <a
24442 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
24443 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
24444 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
24445 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
24446 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
24447 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
24448 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
24449 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
24450 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
24451 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
24452 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
24453 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
24454
24455       </div>
24456       <div class="tags">
24457
24458
24459         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>.
24460
24461
24462       </div>
24463     </div>
24464     <div class="padding"></div>
24465
24466     <div class="entry">
24467       <div class="title">
24468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
24469       </div>
24470       <div class="date">
24471          9th November 2010
24472       </div>
24473       <div class="body">
24474         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
24475
24476 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
24477 3D linked in from
24478 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
24479 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
24480
24481       </div>
24482       <div class="tags">
24483
24484
24485         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>.
24486
24487
24488       </div>
24489     </div>
24490     <div class="padding"></div>
24491
24492     <div class="entry">
24493       <div class="title">
24494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
24495       </div>
24496       <div class="date">
24497          7th November 2010
24498       </div>
24499       <div class="body">
24500         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
24501 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
24502 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
24503 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
24504 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
24505 working using this DVD.</p>
24506
24507 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
24508 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
24509 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
24510 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
24511 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
24512 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
24513 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
24514
24515 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
24516 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
24517 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
24518 Debian archive.</p>
24519
24520 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
24521 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
24522 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
24523 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
24524 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
24525 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
24526 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
24527 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
24528 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
24529 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
24530 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
24531 free X driver should work.</p>
24532
24533 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
24534 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
24535 DVD more useful again.</p>
24536
24537       </div>
24538       <div class="tags">
24539
24540
24541         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
24542
24543
24544       </div>
24545     </div>
24546     <div class="padding"></div>
24547
24548     <div class="entry">
24549       <div class="title">
24550         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
24551       </div>
24552       <div class="date">
24553         24th October 2010
24554       </div>
24555       <div class="body">
24556         <p>Some updates.</p>
24557
24558 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
24559 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
24560 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
24561 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
24562 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
24563 :)</p>
24564
24565 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
24566 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
24567 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
24568 It is called
24569 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
24570 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
24571 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
24572 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
24573 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
24574 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
24575
24576 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
24577 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
24578 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
24579 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
24580 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
24581 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
24582 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
24583 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
24584 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
24585 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
24586
24587       </div>
24588       <div class="tags">
24589
24590
24591         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>.
24592
24593
24594       </div>
24595     </div>
24596     <div class="padding"></div>
24597
24598     <div class="entry">
24599       <div class="title">
24600         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
24601       </div>
24602       <div class="date">
24603         19th October 2010
24604       </div>
24605       <div class="body">
24606         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
24607 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
24608 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
24609 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
24610 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
24611 AVM2 flash files.</p>
24612
24613 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
24614 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
24615 following text:</P>
24616
24617 <p><blockquote>
24618
24619   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
24620   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
24621
24622   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
24623
24624   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
24625
24626   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
24627   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
24628   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
24629   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
24630   days. The project web page is available from
24631   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
24632   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
24633   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
24634
24635   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
24636   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
24637   to get this to happen.</p>
24638
24639   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
24640   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
24641
24642 </blockquote></p>
24643
24644 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
24645 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
24646 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
24647 :)</p>
24648
24649       </div>
24650       <div class="tags">
24651
24652
24653         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
24654
24655
24656       </div>
24657     </div>
24658     <div class="padding"></div>
24659
24660     <div class="entry">
24661       <div class="title">
24662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
24663       </div>
24664       <div class="date">
24665          9th October 2010
24666       </div>
24667       <div class="body">
24668         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
24669 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
24670 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
24671 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
24672 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
24673 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
24674 robots.</p>
24675
24676 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
24677 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
24678 a few less important features too.</p>
24679
24680 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
24681 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
24682 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
24683 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
24684
24685 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
24686 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
24687 source or binary package:</p>
24688
24689 <p><ul>
24690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
24691 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
24692 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
24693 </ul></p>
24694
24695 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
24696 please let me know.</p>
24697
24698       </div>
24699       <div class="tags">
24700
24701
24702         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
24703
24704
24705       </div>
24706     </div>
24707     <div class="padding"></div>
24708
24709     <div class="entry">
24710       <div class="title">
24711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
24712       </div>
24713       <div class="date">
24714          3rd October 2010
24715       </div>
24716       <div class="body">
24717         <p><ul>
24718
24719 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
24720 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
24721
24722 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
24723 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
24724 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
24725
24726 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
24727 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
24728 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
24729 simple setup.
24730
24731 </ul></p>
24732
24733       </div>
24734       <div class="tags">
24735
24736
24737         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
24738
24739
24740       </div>
24741     </div>
24742     <div class="padding"></div>
24743
24744     <div class="entry">
24745       <div class="title">
24746         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
24747       </div>
24748       <div class="date">
24749          9th September 2010
24750       </div>
24751       <div class="body">
24752         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
24753 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
24754 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
24755 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
24756 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
24757 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
24758 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
24759 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
24760 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
24761
24762 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
24763 written:</p>
24764
24765 <blockquote>
24766 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
24767 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
24768 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
24769 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
24770 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
24771
24772 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
24773 standard.</p>
24774 </blockquote>
24775
24776 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
24777 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
24778 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
24779 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
24780
24781 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
24782 read
24783 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
24784 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
24785 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
24786 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
24787 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
24788 the issue.  The solution is to support the
24789 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
24790 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
24791 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
24792
24793       </div>
24794       <div class="tags">
24795
24796
24797         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
24798
24799
24800       </div>
24801     </div>
24802     <div class="padding"></div>
24803
24804     <div class="entry">
24805       <div class="title">
24806         <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>
24807       </div>
24808       <div class="date">
24809          4th September 2010
24810       </div>
24811       <div class="body">
24812         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
24813 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
24814 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
24815 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
24816 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
24817 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
24818 installed.</p>
24819
24820 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
24821 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
24822 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
24823 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
24824 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
24825 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
24826 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
24827 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
24828 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
24829
24830 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
24831 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
24832 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
24833 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
24834 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
24835 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
24836 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
24837 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
24838 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
24839 pages they want to visit.</p>
24840
24841 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
24842 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
24843 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
24844 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
24845 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
24846 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
24847 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
24848 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
24849 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
24850 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
24851 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
24852
24853       </div>
24854       <div class="tags">
24855
24856
24857         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>.
24858
24859
24860       </div>
24861     </div>
24862     <div class="padding"></div>
24863
24864     <div class="entry">
24865       <div class="title">
24866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
24867       </div>
24868       <div class="date">
24869          1st September 2010
24870       </div>
24871       <div class="body">
24872         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
24873 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
24874 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
24875 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
24876 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
24877 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
24878 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
24879 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
24880 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
24881 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
24882 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
24883 drive around.</p>
24884
24885 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
24886 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
24887
24888 <p><pre>
24889 use Spykee;
24890 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
24891 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
24892 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
24893 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
24894 $spykee->left();
24895 sleep 2;
24896 $spykee->right();
24897 sleep 2;
24898 $spykee->forward();
24899 sleep 2;
24900 $spykee->back();
24901 sleep 2;
24902 $spykee->stop();
24903 </pre></p>
24904
24905 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
24906 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
24907 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
24908 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
24909 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
24910 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
24911 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
24912 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
24913 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
24914 going. :).</p>
24915
24916 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
24917 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
24918 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
24919 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
24920
24921       </div>
24922       <div class="tags">
24923
24924
24925         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
24926
24927
24928       </div>
24929     </div>
24930     <div class="padding"></div>
24931
24932     <div class="entry">
24933       <div class="title">
24934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
24935       </div>
24936       <div class="date">
24937         30th August 2010
24938       </div>
24939       <div class="body">
24940         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
24941 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
24942 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
24943 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
24944 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
24945 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
24946 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
24947
24948 <pre>
24949 % ln foo bar
24950 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
24951 %
24952 </pre>
24953
24954 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
24955 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
24956 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
24957 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
24958 nevertheless. :)</p>
24959
24960 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
24961 git from
24962 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
24963
24964       </div>
24965       <div class="tags">
24966
24967
24968         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
24969
24970
24971       </div>
24972     </div>
24973     <div class="padding"></div>
24974
24975     <div class="entry">
24976       <div class="title">
24977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
24978       </div>
24979       <div class="date">
24980         26th August 2010
24981       </div>
24982       <div class="body">
24983         <p>My file system sematics program
24984 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
24985 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
24986 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
24987 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
24988 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
24989 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
24990 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
24991 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
24992 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
24993 script:</p>
24994
24995 <pre>
24996 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
24997   mode_t retval = 0;
24998   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
24999   if (-1 != fd) {
25000     unlink(name);
25001     struct stat statbuf;
25002     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
25003       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
25004     }
25005     close(fd);
25006   }
25007   return retval;
25008 }
25009
25010 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
25011 int test_umask(void) {
25012   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
25013
25014   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
25015   mode_t newmode;
25016   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
25017     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
25018            newmode);
25019   }
25020   umask(007);
25021   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
25022     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
25023            newmode);
25024   }
25025
25026   umask (orig_umask);
25027   return 0;
25028 }
25029
25030 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
25031   [...]
25032   test_umask();
25033   return 0;
25034 }
25035 </pre>
25036
25037 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
25038
25039 <pre>
25040 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
25041 info: testing symlink creation
25042 info: testing subdirectory creation
25043 info: testing fcntl locking
25044   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25045   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25046   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
25047   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25048   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25049   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
25050 info: testing umask effect on file creation
25051 </pre>
25052
25053 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
25054 result:</p>
25055
25056 <pre>
25057 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
25058 info: testing symlink creation
25059 info: testing subdirectory creation
25060 info: testing fcntl locking
25061   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25062   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25063   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
25064   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25065   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25066   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
25067 info: testing umask effect on file creation
25068   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
25069   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
25070 </pre>
25071
25072 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
25073 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
25074 directory.</p>
25075
25076 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
25077 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
25078
25079 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
25080 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
25081 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
25082
25083       </div>
25084       <div class="tags">
25085
25086
25087         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
25088
25089
25090       </div>
25091     </div>
25092     <div class="padding"></div>
25093
25094     <div class="entry">
25095       <div class="title">
25096         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
25097       </div>
25098       <div class="date">
25099         15th August 2010
25100       </div>
25101       <div class="body">
25102         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
25103 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
25104 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
25105 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
25106 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
25107 long time.</p>
25108
25109       </div>
25110       <div class="tags">
25111
25112
25113         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
25114
25115
25116       </div>
25117     </div>
25118     <div class="padding"></div>
25119
25120     <div class="entry">
25121       <div class="title">
25122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
25123       </div>
25124       <div class="date">
25125          9th August 2010
25126       </div>
25127       <div class="body">
25128         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
25129 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
25130 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
25131 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
25132 generated configuration.</p>
25133
25134 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
25135 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
25136 without any manual configuration.</p>
25137
25138 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
25139 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
25140 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
25141 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
25142 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
25143 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
25144 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
25145 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
25146 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
25147 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
25148 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
25149 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
25150 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
25151 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
25152 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
25153 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
25154 use.</p>
25155
25156 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
25157 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
25158 working properly out of the box:</p>
25159
25160 <ul>
25161 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
25162 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
25163 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
25164 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
25165 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
25166 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
25167 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
25168 </ul>
25169
25170 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
25171
25172 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
25173 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
25174 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
25175 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
25176 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
25177
25178 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
25179 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
25180 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
25181 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
25182 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
25183 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
25184 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
25185 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
25186
25187 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
25188 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
25189 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
25190 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
25191 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
25192 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
25193 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
25194 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
25195 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
25196 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
25197 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
25198 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
25199 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
25200 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
25201 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
25202 current DNS domain is used.</p>
25203
25204 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
25205 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
25206 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
25207 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
25208 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
25209 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
25210 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
25211 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
25212 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
25213 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
25214 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
25215 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
25216 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
25217
25218 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
25219 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
25220 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
25221 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
25222 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
25223 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
25224 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
25225 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
25226 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
25227 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
25228 do for now. :)</p>
25229
25230 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
25231 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
25232 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
25233 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
25234 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
25235 yet.</p>
25236
25237 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
25238 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25239
25240 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
25241 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
25242 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
25243 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
25244
25245       </div>
25246       <div class="tags">
25247
25248
25249         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
25250
25251
25252       </div>
25253     </div>
25254     <div class="padding"></div>
25255
25256     <div class="entry">
25257       <div class="title">
25258         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
25259       </div>
25260       <div class="date">
25261          8th August 2010
25262       </div>
25263       <div class="body">
25264         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
25265 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
25266 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
25267 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
25268 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
25269 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
25270 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
25271
25272 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
25273 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
25274 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
25275 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
25276 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
25277 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
25278 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
25279
25280 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
25281 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
25282 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
25283 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
25284 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
25285
25286 <pre>
25287 /*
25288  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
25289  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
25290  * directory.
25291  * License: GPL v2 or later
25292  *
25293  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
25294  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
25295 */
25296
25297 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
25298 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
25299 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
25300
25301 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
25302
25303 #include &lt;errno.h>
25304 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
25305 #include &lt;stdio.h>
25306 #include &lt;string.h>
25307 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
25308 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
25309 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
25310 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
25311 #include &lt;unistd.h>
25312
25313 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
25314 /*
25315  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
25316  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
25317  * below.
25318  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
25319  */
25320 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
25321 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
25322   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
25323 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
25324   char *zErrMsg;
25325   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
25326   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
25327   unlink(name);
25328   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
25329   if( rc ){
25330     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
25331     sqlite3_close(db);
25332     return -1;
25333   }
25334
25335   /* create tables */
25336   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
25337   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
25338     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
25339     sqlite3_close(db);
25340     return -1;
25341   }
25342   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
25343   sqlite3_close(db);
25344   return 0;
25345 }
25346 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
25347
25348 /*
25349  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
25350  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
25351  * done in the sqlite3 library.
25352  * See also
25353  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
25354  * POSIX specification
25355  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
25356  */
25357 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
25358   struct flock fl;
25359   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
25360   unlink(name);
25361   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
25362   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
25363
25364   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
25365   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
25366   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
25367   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
25368   fl.l_len    = 1;
25369   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
25370   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25371
25372   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
25373   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
25374   fl.l_len    = 510;
25375   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
25376   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25377
25378   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
25379   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
25380   fl.l_len    = 1;
25381   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
25382   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25383
25384   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
25385   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
25386   fl.l_len    = 1;
25387   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
25388   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25389
25390   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
25391   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
25392   fl.l_len    = 510;
25393   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25394
25395   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
25396   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
25397   fl.l_len    = 2;
25398   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
25399   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
25400
25401   close(fd);
25402   return 0;
25403 }
25404
25405 /*
25406  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
25407  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
25408  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
25409  * slowing down file operations.
25410  */
25411 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
25412 #define LEVELS 5
25413   char *path = strdup("test");
25414   char *dirs[LEVELS];
25415   int level;
25416   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
25417   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
25418     char *newpath = NULL;
25419     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
25420       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
25421              path, strerror(errno));
25422       break;
25423     }
25424     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
25425     free(path);
25426     path = newpath;
25427   }
25428   return 0;
25429 }
25430
25431 /*
25432  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
25433  * KDE.
25434  */
25435 int test_symlinks(void) {
25436   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
25437   unlink("symlink");
25438   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
25439     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
25440   return 0;
25441 }
25442
25443 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
25444   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
25445   test_symlinks();
25446   test_subdirectory_creation();
25447 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
25448   test_sqlite_open();
25449 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
25450   test_gcompris_locking();
25451   return 0;
25452 }
25453 </pre>
25454
25455 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
25456 this:</p>
25457
25458 <pre>
25459 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
25460 info: testing symlink creation
25461 info: testing subdirectory creation
25462 info: sqlite worked
25463 info: testing fcntl locking
25464   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25465   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25466   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
25467   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
25468   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
25469   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
25470 </pre>
25471
25472 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
25473 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
25474 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
25475 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
25476 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
25477 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
25478 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
25479 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
25480
25481 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
25482 it. :)</p>
25483
25484 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
25485 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
25486 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
25487
25488       </div>
25489       <div class="tags">
25490
25491
25492         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
25493
25494
25495       </div>
25496     </div>
25497     <div class="padding"></div>
25498
25499     <div class="entry">
25500       <div class="title">
25501         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
25502       </div>
25503       <div class="date">
25504          7th August 2010
25505       </div>
25506       <div class="body">
25507         <p>A few days ago, I
25508 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
25509 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
25510 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
25511 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
25512 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
25513 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
25514 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
25515 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
25516 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
25517
25518 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
25519 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
25520 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
25521 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
25522 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
25523 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
25524 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
25525 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
25526 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
25527 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
25528 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
25529 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
25530 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
25531 gave it a IP address.</p>
25532
25533 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
25534 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
25535 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
25536 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
25537 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
25538 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
25539 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
25540 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
25541
25542 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
25543 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
25544 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
25545 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
25546 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
25547 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
25548
25549 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
25550 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
25551 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
25552 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
25553 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
25554 with UID and GID values.</p>
25555
25556 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
25557 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25558
25559       </div>
25560       <div class="tags">
25561
25562
25563         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
25564
25565
25566       </div>
25567     </div>
25568     <div class="padding"></div>
25569
25570     <div class="entry">
25571       <div class="title">
25572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
25573       </div>
25574       <div class="date">
25575          3rd August 2010
25576       </div>
25577       <div class="body">
25578         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
25579 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
25580 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
25581 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
25582 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
25583 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
25584 servers.</p>
25585
25586 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
25587 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
25588 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
25589 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
25590 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
25591 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
25592 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
25593 .uio.no.</p>
25594
25595 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
25596 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
25597 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
25598 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
25599 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
25600 university servers.</p>
25601
25602 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
25603 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
25604 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
25605 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
25606 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
25607 uses.</p>
25608
25609       </div>
25610       <div class="tags">
25611
25612
25613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
25614
25615
25616       </div>
25617     </div>
25618     <div class="padding"></div>
25619
25620     <div class="entry">
25621       <div class="title">
25622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
25623       </div>
25624       <div class="date">
25625         27th July 2010
25626       </div>
25627       <div class="body">
25628         <p>I discovered this while doing
25629 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
25630 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
25631 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
25632 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
25633 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
25634
25635 <p>An example is from todays
25636 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
25637 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
25638 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
25639 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
25640 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
25641 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
25642 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
25643
25644 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
25645
25646 <blockquote><pre>
25647 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
25648  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
25649   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
25650 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
25651  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
25652 </pre></blockquote>
25653
25654 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
25655 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
25656 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
25657 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
25658 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
25659 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
25660 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
25661 of dependency loops.</p>
25662
25663 <p>Thanks to
25664 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
25665 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
25666 dependencies
25667 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
25668 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
25669
25670 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
25671 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
25672 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
25673 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
25674 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
25675 it.</p>
25676
25677       </div>
25678       <div class="tags">
25679
25680
25681         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>.
25682
25683
25684       </div>
25685     </div>
25686     <div class="padding"></div>
25687
25688     <div class="entry">
25689       <div class="title">
25690         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
25691       </div>
25692       <div class="date">
25693         27th July 2010
25694       </div>
25695       <div class="body">
25696         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
25697 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
25698 completed.</p>
25699
25700 <blockquote>
25701 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
25702 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
25703 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
25704 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
25705 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
25706 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
25707 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
25708 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
25709
25710 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
25711 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
25712 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
25713
25714 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
25715 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
25716 much.</p>
25717
25718 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
25719
25720 <ul>
25721 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
25722 <ul>
25723   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
25724          combination with some new artwork
25725   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
25726   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
25727   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
25728   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
25729   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
25730   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
25731   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
25732   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
25733   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
25734 </ul></li>
25735 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
25736     Enabled for:
25737 <ul>
25738   <li>PAM
25739   <li>LDAP
25740   <li>IMAP
25741   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
25742 </ul>
25743 </li>
25744 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
25745 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
25746     fetched from LDAP.</li>
25747 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
25748 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
25749 </ul>
25750 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
25751
25752 <ul>
25753 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
25754     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
25755     for testing.</li>
25756 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
25757     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
25758     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
25759 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
25760 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
25761 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
25762 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
25763     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
25764 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
25765     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
25766     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
25767 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
25768     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
25769     and help out with translations.</li>
25770 </ul>
25771
25772 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
25773
25774 <ul>
25775 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
25776 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
25777 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
25778 </ul>
25779 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
25780
25781 <ul>
25782 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
25783 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
25784 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
25785 </ul>
25786
25787 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
25788 get closer to the final release.</p>
25789
25790 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
25791
25792 <ul>
25793 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
25794 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
25795 </ul>
25796
25797 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
25798 <ul>
25799 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
25800 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
25801 </ul>
25802 <p>How to report bugs:
25803 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
25804
25805 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
25806 </blockquote>
25807
25808       </div>
25809       <div class="tags">
25810
25811
25812         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
25813
25814
25815       </div>
25816     </div>
25817     <div class="padding"></div>
25818
25819     <div class="entry">
25820       <div class="title">
25821         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
25822       </div>
25823       <div class="date">
25824         25th July 2010
25825       </div>
25826       <div class="body">
25827         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
25828 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
25829 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
25830 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
25831 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
25832
25833 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
25834 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
25835 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
25836 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
25837 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
25838 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
25839 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
25840
25841 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
25842 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
25843 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
25844 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
25845 up. :)</p>
25846
25847 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
25848 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
25849 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
25850
25851 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
25852 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
25853 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
25854 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
25855 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
25856 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
25857 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
25858 release another day.</p>
25859
25860 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
25861 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25862
25863       </div>
25864       <div class="tags">
25865
25866
25867         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
25868
25869
25870       </div>
25871     </div>
25872     <div class="padding"></div>
25873
25874     <div class="entry">
25875       <div class="title">
25876         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
25877       </div>
25878       <div class="date">
25879         18th July 2010
25880       </div>
25881       <div class="body">
25882         <p>Thanks to
25883 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
25884 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
25885 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
25886 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
25887 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
25888 only available from the development server, until more experience is
25889 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
25890
25891 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
25892 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
25893 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
25894 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
25895 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
25896 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
25897 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
25898
25899       </div>
25900       <div class="tags">
25901
25902
25903         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
25904
25905
25906       </div>
25907     </div>
25908     <div class="padding"></div>
25909
25910     <div class="entry">
25911       <div class="title">
25912         <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>
25913       </div>
25914       <div class="date">
25915         17th July 2010
25916       </div>
25917       <div class="body">
25918         <p>This is a
25919 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
25920 on my
25921 <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
25922 work</a> on
25923 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
25924 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
25925
25926 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
25927 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
25928 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
25929 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
25930
25931 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
25932 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
25933 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
25934
25935 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
25936
25937 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
25938 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
25939 the web.
25940
25941 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
25942 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
25943 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
25944 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
25945 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
25946 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
25947
25948 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
25949 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
25950 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
25951 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
25952 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
25953 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
25954 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
25955 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
25956 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
25957 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
25958 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
25959 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
25960 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
25961 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
25962 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
25963 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
25964
25965 <blockquote><pre>
25966 ldapsearch -h ldap \
25967   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
25968   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
25969   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
25970   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
25971   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
25972   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
25973
25974 ldapsearch -h ldap \
25975   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
25976   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
25977   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
25978   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
25979   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
25980 </pre></blockquote>
25981
25982 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
25983 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
25984 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
25985 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
25986 also exist.</p>
25987
25988 <blockquote><pre>
25989 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
25990 objectclass: top
25991 objectclass: dnsdomain
25992 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
25993 dc: tjener
25994 arecord: 10.0.2.2
25995 associateddomain: tjener.intern
25996
25997 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
25998 objectclass: top
25999 objectclass: dnsdomain2
26000 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
26001 dc: 2
26002 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
26003 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
26004 </pre></blockquote>
26005
26006 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
26007 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
26008 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
26009 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
26010 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
26011 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
26012 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
26013 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
26014 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
26015 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
26016 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
26017 instead.</p>
26018
26019 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
26020 like this:</p>
26021
26022 <blockquote><pre>
26023 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
26024   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
26025   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
26026   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
26027   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
26028   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
26029
26030 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
26031   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
26032 </pre></blockquote>
26033
26034 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
26035 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
26036 reverse lookups.</p>
26037
26038 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
26039 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
26040 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
26041 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
26042
26043 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
26044 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
26045 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
26046
26047 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
26048 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
26049 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
26050 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
26051 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
26052
26053 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
26054 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
26055 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
26056 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
26057 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
26058
26059 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
26060 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
26061 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
26062 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
26063 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
26064 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
26065
26066 <blockquote><pre>
26067 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
26068     SUP top
26069     AUXILIARY
26070     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
26071           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
26072           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
26073           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
26074           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
26075     ))
26076 </pre></blockquote>
26077
26078 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
26079 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
26080 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
26081 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
26082 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
26083 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
26084
26085 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
26086
26087 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
26088 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
26089 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
26090 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
26091 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
26092
26093 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
26094 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
26095 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
26096 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
26097
26098 <blockquote><pre>
26099 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
26100 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
26101 </pre></blockquote>
26102
26103 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
26104 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
26105 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
26106 search result is this entry:</p>
26107
26108 <blockquote><pre>
26109 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26110 cn: dhcp
26111 objectClass: top
26112 objectClass: dhcpServer
26113 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26114 </pre></blockquote>
26115
26116 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
26117 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
26118 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
26119 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
26120 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
26121 The search result is this entry:</p>
26122
26123 <blockquote><pre>
26124 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26125 cn: DHCP Config
26126 objectClass: top
26127 objectClass: dhcpService
26128 objectClass: dhcpOptions
26129 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26130 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
26131 dhcpStatements: authoritative
26132 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
26133 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
26134 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
26135 </pre></blockquote>
26136
26137 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
26138 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
26139 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
26140 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
26141 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
26142 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
26143 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
26144 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
26145 related computer objects.</p>
26146
26147 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
26148 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
26149 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
26150 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
26151 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
26152 like:</p>
26153
26154 <blockquote><pre>
26155 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26156 cn: hostname
26157 objectClass: top
26158 objectClass: dhcpHost
26159 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
26160 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
26161 </pre></blockquote>
26162
26163 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
26164 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
26165 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
26166 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
26167 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
26168 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
26169 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
26170 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
26171 structural object class.
26172
26173 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
26174
26175 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
26176 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
26177 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
26178 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
26179 in the configuration.</p>
26180
26181 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
26182 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
26183 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
26184 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
26185 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
26186 structure.</p>
26187
26188 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
26189 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
26190
26191 <blockquote><pre>
26192 ou=services
26193   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
26194     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
26195     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
26196       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
26197         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
26198     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
26199       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
26200         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
26201     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
26202       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
26203 </pre></blockquote>
26204
26205 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
26206 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
26207 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
26208 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
26209
26210 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
26211 like this:</p>
26212
26213 <blockquote><pre>
26214 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26215 dc: hostname
26216 objectClass: top
26217 objectClass: dhcpHost
26218 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
26219 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
26220 associateddomain: hostname.intern
26221 arecord: 10.11.12.13
26222 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
26223 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
26224 </pre></blockquote>
26225
26226 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
26227 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
26228 auxiliary object class.</p>
26229
26230       </div>
26231       <div class="tags">
26232
26233
26234         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>.
26235
26236
26237       </div>
26238     </div>
26239     <div class="padding"></div>
26240
26241     <div class="entry">
26242       <div class="title">
26243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
26244       </div>
26245       <div class="date">
26246         14th July 2010
26247       </div>
26248       <div class="body">
26249         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
26250 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
26251 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
26252 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
26253 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
26254
26255 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
26256 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
26257
26258 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
26259 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
26260 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
26261 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
26262 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
26263 to a slave DNS server.</p>
26264
26265 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
26266 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
26267 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
26268 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
26269 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
26270 seem to work.</p>
26271
26272 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
26273 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
26274 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
26275 this:</p>
26276
26277 <blockquote><pre>
26278   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26279   cn: hostname
26280   objectClass: dhcphost
26281   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
26282   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
26283   associateddomain: hostname.intern
26284   arecord: 10.11.12.13
26285   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
26286   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
26287   ldapconfigsound: Y
26288 </pre></blockquote>
26289
26290 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
26291 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
26292 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
26293 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
26294
26295 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
26296 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
26297 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
26298 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
26299 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
26300 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
26301 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
26302 might be a good place to put it.</p>
26303
26304 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
26305 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26306
26307       </div>
26308       <div class="tags">
26309
26310
26311         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>.
26312
26313
26314       </div>
26315     </div>
26316     <div class="padding"></div>
26317
26318     <div class="entry">
26319       <div class="title">
26320         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
26321       </div>
26322       <div class="date">
26323         11th July 2010
26324       </div>
26325       <div class="body">
26326         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
26327 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
26328 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
26329 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
26330
26331 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
26332 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
26333 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
26334 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
26335 LTSP clients.</p>
26336
26337 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
26338 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
26339 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
26340
26341 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
26342 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
26343 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
26344
26345 <blockquote><pre>
26346 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
26347 #
26348 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
26349 #
26350 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
26351 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
26352 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
26353 #
26354 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
26355 # existence of attribute names.
26356 #
26357 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
26358 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
26359 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
26360 #
26361 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
26362 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
26363 #
26364 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
26365 #     SUP top
26366 #     AUXILIARY
26367 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
26368
26369 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
26370 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
26371     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
26372     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
26373         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
26374         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
26375             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
26376             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
26377             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
26378             # bass value on to clients
26379             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
26380         done
26381     done
26382 fi
26383 </pre></blockquote>
26384
26385 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
26386 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
26387 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
26388 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
26389 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
26390
26391 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
26392 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26393
26394 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
26395 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
26396 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
26397 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
26398 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
26399 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
26400
26401       </div>
26402       <div class="tags">
26403
26404
26405         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>.
26406
26407
26408       </div>
26409     </div>
26410     <div class="padding"></div>
26411
26412     <div class="entry">
26413       <div class="title">
26414         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
26415       </div>
26416       <div class="date">
26417          9th July 2010
26418       </div>
26419       <div class="body">
26420         <p>Since
26421 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
26422 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
26423 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
26424 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
26425 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
26426 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
26427 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
26428 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
26429 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
26430 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
26431 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
26432 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
26433 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
26434
26435       </div>
26436       <div class="tags">
26437
26438
26439         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>.
26440
26441
26442       </div>
26443     </div>
26444     <div class="padding"></div>
26445
26446     <div class="entry">
26447       <div class="title">
26448         <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>
26449       </div>
26450       <div class="date">
26451          3rd July 2010
26452       </div>
26453       <div class="body">
26454         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
26455 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
26456 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
26457 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
26458 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
26459 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
26460 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
26461 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
26462
26463 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
26464 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
26465 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
26466 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
26467 publish the difference.</p>
26468
26469 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
26470
26471 <blockquote><p>
26472   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
26473   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
26474   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
26475   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
26476   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
26477   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
26478   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
26479   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
26480 </p></blockquote>
26481
26482 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
26483
26484 <blockquote><p>
26485   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
26486   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
26487   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
26488   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
26489   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
26490   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
26491   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
26492   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
26493   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
26494   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
26495   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
26496   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
26497   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
26498   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
26499   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
26500   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
26501   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
26502   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
26503   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
26504   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
26505 </p></blockquote>
26506
26507 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
26508
26509 <blockquote><p>
26510   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
26511   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
26512   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
26513   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
26514   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
26515   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
26516   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
26517   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
26518   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
26519   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
26520   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
26521   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
26522   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
26523   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
26524   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
26525   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
26526   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
26527   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
26528   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
26529   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
26530   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
26531 </p></blockquote>
26532
26533 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
26534
26535 <blockquote><p>
26536   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
26537   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
26538   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
26539 </p></blockquote>
26540
26541 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
26542 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
26543 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
26544 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
26545 the difference somewhat.
26546
26547       </div>
26548       <div class="tags">
26549
26550
26551         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>.
26552
26553
26554       </div>
26555     </div>
26556     <div class="padding"></div>
26557
26558     <div class="entry">
26559       <div class="title">
26560         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
26561       </div>
26562       <div class="date">
26563          1st July 2010
26564       </div>
26565       <div class="body">
26566         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
26567 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
26568 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
26569 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
26570 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
26571 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
26572 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
26573 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
26574 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
26575
26576 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
26577
26578 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
26579 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
26580 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
26581 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
26582 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
26583 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
26584 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
26585 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
26586 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
26587 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
26588 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
26589 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
26590 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
26591 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
26592 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
26593
26594 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
26595
26596 <blockquote><pre>
26597 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
26598 </pre></blockquote>
26599
26600 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
26601 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
26602 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
26603 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
26604 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
26605 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
26606 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
26607 on how to get this working.</p>
26608
26609 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
26610 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
26611 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
26612 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
26613 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
26614 instructions I found in the
26615 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
26616 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
26617
26618 <blockquote><pre>
26619         debug-level             0
26620         reload-count            unlimited
26621         paranoia                no
26622
26623         enable-cache            passwd          yes
26624         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
26625         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
26626         suggested-size          passwd          211
26627         check-files             passwd          yes
26628         persistent              passwd          yes
26629         shared                  passwd          yes
26630         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
26631         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
26632
26633         enable-cache            group           yes
26634         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
26635         negative-time-to-live   group           20
26636         suggested-size          group           211
26637         check-files             group           yes
26638         persistent              group           yes
26639         shared                  group           yes
26640         max-db-size             group           33554432
26641         auto-propagate          group           yes
26642
26643         enable-cache            hosts           no
26644         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
26645         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
26646         suggested-size          hosts           211
26647         check-files             hosts           yes
26648         persistent              hosts           yes
26649         shared                  hosts           yes
26650         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
26651
26652         enable-cache            services        yes
26653         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
26654         negative-time-to-live   services        20
26655         suggested-size          services        211
26656         check-files             services        yes
26657         persistent              services        yes
26658         shared                  services        yes
26659         max-db-size             services        33554432
26660 </pre></blockquote>
26661
26662 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
26663 automatically like the one provided in
26664 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
26665 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
26666 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
26667 look like this:</p>
26668
26669 <blockquote><pre>
26670 passwd:         files ldap
26671 group:          files ldap
26672 shadow:         files ldap
26673 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
26674 networks:       files
26675 protocols:      files
26676 services:       files
26677 ethers:         files
26678 rpc:            files
26679 netgroup:       files ldap
26680 </pre></blockquote>
26681
26682 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
26683 shadow and netgroup.</p>
26684
26685 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
26686 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
26687 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
26688 attributes cached.
26689
26690 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
26691   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
26692
26693 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
26694 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
26695 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
26696 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
26697 discovered sssd.</p>
26698
26699 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
26700
26701 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
26702 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
26703 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
26704 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
26705 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
26706 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
26707 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
26708 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
26709 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
26710 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
26711 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
26712 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
26713 version 1.2 is now in testing.
26714
26715 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
26716 roaming setup I want</p>
26717
26718 <blockquote><pre>
26719 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
26720 </pre></blockquote>
26721
26722 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
26723 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
26724
26725 <blockquote><pre>
26726 [sssd]
26727 config_file_version = 2
26728 reconnection_retries = 3
26729 sbus_timeout = 30
26730 services = nss, pam
26731 domains = INTERN
26732
26733 [nss]
26734 filter_groups = root
26735 filter_users = root
26736 reconnection_retries = 3
26737
26738 [pam]
26739 reconnection_retries = 3
26740
26741 [domain/INTERN]
26742 enumerate = false
26743 cache_credentials = true
26744
26745 id_provider = ldap
26746 auth_provider = ldap
26747 chpass_provider = ldap
26748
26749 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
26750 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
26751 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
26752 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
26753 </pre></blockquote>
26754
26755 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
26756 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
26757
26758 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
26759 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
26760 modify it manually.</p>
26761
26762 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
26763 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26764
26765       </div>
26766       <div class="tags">
26767
26768
26769         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
26770
26771
26772       </div>
26773     </div>
26774     <div class="padding"></div>
26775
26776     <div class="entry">
26777       <div class="title">
26778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
26779       </div>
26780       <div class="date">
26781         28th June 2010
26782       </div>
26783       <div class="body">
26784         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
26785 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
26786 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
26787 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
26788 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
26789 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
26790 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
26791 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
26792 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
26793 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
26794
26795 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
26796 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
26797 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
26798 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
26799 released.</p>
26800
26801 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
26802 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
26803 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
26804 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
26805
26806 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
26807 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26808
26809 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
26810 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
26811 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
26812 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
26813 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
26814
26815       </div>
26816       <div class="tags">
26817
26818
26819         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>.
26820
26821
26822       </div>
26823     </div>
26824     <div class="padding"></div>
26825
26826     <div class="entry">
26827       <div class="title">
26828         <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>
26829       </div>
26830       <div class="date">
26831         24th June 2010
26832       </div>
26833       <div class="body">
26834         <p>A while back, I
26835 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
26836 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
26837 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
26838 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
26839
26840 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
26841 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
26842 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
26843 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
26844
26845 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
26846 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
26847 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
26848 Debian Edu.</p>
26849
26850 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
26851 the
26852 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
26853 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
26854 available today from IETF.</p>
26855
26856 <pre>
26857 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
26858 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
26859 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
26860  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
26861         NAME 'dhcpHost'
26862         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
26863 -       SUP top
26864 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
26865         MUST cn
26866         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
26867         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
26868 </pre>
26869
26870 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
26871 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
26872 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
26873
26874 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
26875 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26876
26877       </div>
26878       <div class="tags">
26879
26880
26881         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>.
26882
26883
26884       </div>
26885     </div>
26886     <div class="padding"></div>
26887
26888     <div class="entry">
26889       <div class="title">
26890         <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>
26891       </div>
26892       <div class="date">
26893         16th June 2010
26894       </div>
26895       <div class="body">
26896         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
26897 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
26898 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
26899 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
26900 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
26901 this:
26902
26903 <blockquote><pre>
26904 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
26905 tasksel --new-install
26906 </pre></blockquote>
26907
26908 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
26909 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
26910 any output what so ever.
26911
26912 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
26913 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
26914 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
26915 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
26916 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
26917 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
26918 code like this:
26919
26920 <blockquote><pre>
26921 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
26922 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
26923 $cmd
26924 </pre></blockquote>
26925
26926 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
26927 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
26928 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
26929 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
26930 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
26931 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
26932 installation.</p>
26933
26934 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
26935 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
26936 like this.</p>
26937
26938       </div>
26939       <div class="tags">
26940
26941
26942         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>.
26943
26944
26945       </div>
26946     </div>
26947     <div class="padding"></div>
26948
26949     <div class="entry">
26950       <div class="title">
26951         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
26952       </div>
26953       <div class="date">
26954         13th June 2010
26955       </div>
26956       <div class="body">
26957         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
26958 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
26959 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
26960 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
26961 pages.</p>
26962
26963 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
26964 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
26965 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
26966 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
26967 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
26968 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
26969 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
26970 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
26971 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
26972 see how the project is doing.</p>
26973
26974 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
26975 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
26976 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
26977 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
26978 Windows.  This is great.</p>
26979
26980       </div>
26981       <div class="tags">
26982
26983
26984         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
26985
26986
26987       </div>
26988     </div>
26989     <div class="padding"></div>
26990
26991     <div class="entry">
26992       <div class="title">
26993         <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>
26994       </div>
26995       <div class="date">
26996         13th June 2010
26997       </div>
26998       <div class="body">
26999         <p>My
27000 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
27001 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
27002 finally made the upgrade logs available from
27003 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
27004 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
27005 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
27006 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
27007
27008 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
27009 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
27010 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
27011 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
27012 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
27013 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
27014 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
27015 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
27016
27017 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
27018 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
27019 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
27020 too surprising.</p>
27021
27022 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
27023 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
27024 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
27025 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
27026 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
27027 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
27028 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
27029 continue.</p>
27030
27031 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
27032 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
27033   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
27034   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
27035   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
27036   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
27037   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
27038   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
27039   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
27040   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
27041   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
27042   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
27043   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
27044   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
27045   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
27046   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
27047   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
27048   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
27049   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
27050   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
27051   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
27052   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
27053   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
27054   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
27055   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
27056   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
27057   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
27058   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
27059   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
27060   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
27061
27062 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
27063
27064 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
27065   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
27066   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
27067   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
27068   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
27069   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
27070   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
27071   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
27072   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
27073   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
27074   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
27075   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
27076   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
27077   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
27078   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
27079   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
27080   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
27081   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
27082   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
27083   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
27084   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
27085   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
27086   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
27087   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
27088   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
27089   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
27090   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
27091   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
27092   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
27093   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
27094   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
27095   zip</p>
27096
27097 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
27098
27099 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
27100   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
27101   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
27102   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
27103   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
27104   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
27105   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
27106   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
27107   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
27108   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
27109   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
27110   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
27111   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
27112   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
27113   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
27114   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
27115   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
27116   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
27117   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
27118   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
27119   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
27120   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
27121   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
27122   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
27123   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
27124   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
27125   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
27126   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
27127
27128 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
27129 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
27130   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
27131   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
27132   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
27133   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
27134   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
27135   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
27136   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
27137   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
27138   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
27139   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
27140   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
27141   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
27142   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
27143   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
27144   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
27145   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
27146   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
27147   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
27148   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
27149   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
27150   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
27151   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
27152   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
27153   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
27154   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
27155   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
27156   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
27157   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
27158   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
27159   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
27160   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
27161   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
27162   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
27163   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
27164   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
27165   xulrunner-1.9</p>
27166
27167
27168       </div>
27169       <div class="tags">
27170
27171
27172         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>.
27173
27174
27175       </div>
27176     </div>
27177     <div class="padding"></div>
27178
27179     <div class="entry">
27180       <div class="title">
27181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
27182       </div>
27183       <div class="date">
27184         11th June 2010
27185       </div>
27186       <div class="body">
27187         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
27188 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
27189 have been discovered and reported in the process
27190 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
27191 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
27192 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
27193 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
27194 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
27195
27196 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
27197 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
27198 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
27199 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
27200 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
27201 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
27202
27203 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
27204 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
27205 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
27206 is created.  The bug report
27207 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
27208 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
27209 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
27210 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
27211 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
27212 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
27213 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
27214 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
27215 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
27216 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
27217 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
27218 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
27219 Debian Squeeze.</p>
27220
27221 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
27222 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
27223 trick:</p>
27224
27225 <blockquote><pre>
27226 #!/bin/sh
27227 set -ex
27228
27229 if [ "$1" ] ; then
27230     desktop=$1
27231 else
27232     desktop=gnome
27233 fi
27234
27235 from=lenny
27236 to=squeeze
27237
27238 exec &lt; /dev/null
27239 unset LANG
27240 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
27241 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
27242 fuser -mv .
27243 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
27244 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
27245 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
27246 #!/bin/sh
27247 exit 101
27248 EOF
27249 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
27250 exit_cleanup() {
27251     umount $tmpdir/proc
27252 }
27253 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
27254 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
27255 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
27256
27257 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
27258
27259 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
27260 # to return the correct answers.
27261 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
27262     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
27263
27264 # Include the desktop and laptop task
27265 for test in desktop laptop ; do
27266     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
27267 #!/bin/sh
27268 exit 2
27269 EOF
27270     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
27271 done
27272
27273 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
27274 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
27275 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
27276 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
27277
27278 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
27279 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
27280 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
27281 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
27282 fuser -mv
27283 </pre></blockquote>
27284
27285 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
27286 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
27287 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
27288 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
27289 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
27290 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
27291
27292 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
27293 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
27294 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
27295 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
27296 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
27297 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
27298 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
27299
27300 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
27301 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
27302 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
27303 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
27304 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
27305 packages.</p>
27306
27307       </div>
27308       <div class="tags">
27309
27310
27311         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>.
27312
27313
27314       </div>
27315     </div>
27316     <div class="padding"></div>
27317
27318     <div class="entry">
27319       <div class="title">
27320         <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>
27321       </div>
27322       <div class="date">
27323          6th June 2010
27324       </div>
27325       <div class="body">
27326         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
27327 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
27328 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
27329 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
27330 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
27331 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
27332 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
27333
27334 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
27335 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
27336 COLUMNS):</p>
27337
27338 <blockquote><pre>
27339 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
27340 previous=N
27341 PREVLEVEL=
27342 RUNLEVEL=
27343 runlevel=S
27344 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
27345 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
27346 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
27347 </pre></blockquote>
27348
27349 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
27350 script.</p>
27351
27352 <blockquote><pre>
27353 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
27354 previous=N
27355 PREVLEVEL=N
27356 RUNLEVEL=S
27357 runlevel=S
27358 </pre></blockquote>
27359
27360 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
27361 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
27362 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
27363
27364 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
27365 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
27366 choice.</p>
27367
27368       </div>
27369       <div class="tags">
27370
27371
27372         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>.
27373
27374
27375       </div>
27376     </div>
27377     <div class="padding"></div>
27378
27379     <div class="entry">
27380       <div class="title">
27381         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
27382       </div>
27383       <div class="date">
27384          6th June 2010
27385       </div>
27386       <div class="body">
27387         <p>Via the
27388 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
27389 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
27390 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
27391 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
27392 following the standards wars of today.</p>
27393
27394       </div>
27395       <div class="tags">
27396
27397
27398         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>.
27399
27400
27401       </div>
27402     </div>
27403     <div class="padding"></div>
27404
27405     <div class="entry">
27406       <div class="title">
27407         <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>
27408       </div>
27409       <div class="date">
27410          3rd June 2010
27411       </div>
27412       <div class="body">
27413         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
27414 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
27415 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
27416 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
27417 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
27418
27419 <blockquote><pre>
27420 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
27421   vendor                    count
27422   Dell Computer Corporation     1
27423     PowerEdge 1750              1
27424   IBM                           1
27425     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
27426   Intel                         2
27427   [no-dmi-info]                 3
27428 maintainer:~#
27429 </pre></blockquote>
27430
27431 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
27432 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
27433 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
27434 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
27435 option to list the individual machines.</p>
27436
27437 <p>A larger list is
27438 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
27439 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
27440 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
27441 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
27442 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
27443 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
27444 collector.</p>
27445
27446       </div>
27447       <div class="tags">
27448
27449
27450         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>.
27451
27452
27453       </div>
27454     </div>
27455     <div class="padding"></div>
27456
27457     <div class="entry">
27458       <div class="title">
27459         <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>
27460       </div>
27461       <div class="date">
27462          1st June 2010
27463       </div>
27464       <div class="body">
27465         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
27466 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
27467 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
27468 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
27469 wait.</p>
27470
27471 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
27472 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
27473 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
27474 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
27475 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
27476 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
27477
27478 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
27479 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
27480 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
27481 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
27482 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
27483 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
27484 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
27485 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
27486
27487 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
27488
27489       </div>
27490       <div class="tags">
27491
27492
27493         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>.
27494
27495
27496       </div>
27497     </div>
27498     <div class="padding"></div>
27499
27500     <div class="entry">
27501       <div class="title">
27502         <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>
27503       </div>
27504       <div class="date">
27505         27th May 2010
27506       </div>
27507       <div class="body">
27508         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
27509 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
27510 issues are known and should be solved:
27511
27512 <p><ul>
27513
27514 <li>The wicd package seen to
27515 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
27516 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
27517 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
27518 seem to be on the case.</li>
27519
27520 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
27521 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
27522 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
27523 maintainer is on the case.</li>
27524
27525 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
27526 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
27527 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
27528 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
27529 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
27530 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
27531 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
27532 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
27533
27534 </ul></p>
27535
27536 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
27537 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
27538 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
27539 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
27540
27541 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
27542 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
27543 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
27544 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
27545
27546 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
27547
27548       </div>
27549       <div class="tags">
27550
27551
27552         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>.
27553
27554
27555       </div>
27556     </div>
27557     <div class="padding"></div>
27558
27559     <div class="entry">
27560       <div class="title">
27561         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
27562       </div>
27563       <div class="date">
27564         22nd May 2010
27565       </div>
27566       <div class="body">
27567         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
27568 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
27569 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
27570 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
27571
27572 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
27573 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
27574 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
27575 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
27576 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
27577 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
27578 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
27579 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
27580 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
27581 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
27582 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
27583 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
27584 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
27585 going to work.</p>
27586
27587 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
27588 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
27589 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
27590 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
27591 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
27592 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
27593 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
27594 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
27595 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
27596 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
27597 Edu.</p>
27598
27599 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
27600 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
27601 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
27602 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
27603 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
27604 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
27605
27606 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
27607 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
27608
27609       </div>
27610       <div class="tags">
27611
27612
27613         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>.
27614
27615
27616       </div>
27617     </div>
27618     <div class="padding"></div>
27619
27620     <div class="entry">
27621       <div class="title">
27622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
27623       </div>
27624       <div class="date">
27625         19th May 2010
27626       </div>
27627       <div class="body">
27628         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
27629 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
27630 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
27631 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
27632 into unstable.  The
27633 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
27634 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
27635 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
27636 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
27637 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
27638 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
27639 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
27640
27641 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
27642 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
27643 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
27644 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
27645 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
27646 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
27647 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
27648 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
27649
27650 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
27651 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
27652 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
27653 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
27654 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
27655 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
27656 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
27657
27658 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
27659 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
27660 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
27661 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
27662 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
27663 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
27664 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
27665 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
27666 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
27667 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
27668 on the home directory servers.</p>
27669
27670 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
27671 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
27672 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
27673 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
27674 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
27675 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
27676
27677 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
27678 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
27679
27680       </div>
27681       <div class="tags">
27682
27683
27684         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
27685
27686
27687       </div>
27688     </div>
27689     <div class="padding"></div>
27690
27691     <div class="entry">
27692       <div class="title">
27693         <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>
27694       </div>
27695       <div class="date">
27696         14th May 2010
27697       </div>
27698       <div class="body">
27699         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
27700 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
27701 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
27702 expected, if I am to believe the
27703 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
27704 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
27705 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
27706 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
27707 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
27708 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
27709 version.</p>
27710
27711 More information about
27712 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
27713 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
27714 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
27715 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
27716
27717 <blockquote><pre>
27718 CONCURRENCY=none
27719 </pre></blockquote>
27720
27721 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
27722 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
27723 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
27724 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
27725
27726       </div>
27727       <div class="tags">
27728
27729
27730         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>.
27731
27732
27733       </div>
27734     </div>
27735     <div class="padding"></div>
27736
27737     <div class="entry">
27738       <div class="title">
27739         <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>
27740       </div>
27741       <div class="date">
27742         14th May 2010
27743       </div>
27744       <div class="body">
27745         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
27746 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
27747 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
27748 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
27749 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
27750 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
27751 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
27752 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
27753
27754 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
27755 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
27756 this on the collector host:</p>
27757
27758 <blockquote><pre>
27759 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
27760 </pre></blockquote>
27761
27762 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
27763 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
27764
27765 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
27766 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
27767 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
27768 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
27769 written yet.</p>
27770
27771       </div>
27772       <div class="tags">
27773
27774
27775         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>.
27776
27777
27778       </div>
27779     </div>
27780     <div class="padding"></div>
27781
27782     <div class="entry">
27783       <div class="title">
27784         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
27785       </div>
27786       <div class="date">
27787         13th May 2010
27788       </div>
27789       <div class="body">
27790         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
27791 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
27792 has been
27793 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
27794
27795 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
27796 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
27797 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
27798 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
27799 based boot system.  Tollef is
27800 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
27801 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
27802 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
27803 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
27804 at the moment do not.</p>
27805
27806 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
27807 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
27808 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
27809 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
27810 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
27811 way forward.</p>
27812
27813 <p>In the mean time, based on the
27814 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
27815 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
27816 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
27817 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
27818 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
27819 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
27820 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
27821 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
27822
27823       </div>
27824       <div class="tags">
27825
27826
27827         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>.
27828
27829
27830       </div>
27831     </div>
27832     <div class="padding"></div>
27833
27834     <div class="entry">
27835       <div class="title">
27836         <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>
27837       </div>
27838       <div class="date">
27839          6th May 2010
27840       </div>
27841       <div class="body">
27842         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
27843 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
27844 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
27845 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
27846 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
27847 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
27848 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
27849
27850 <blockquote><pre>
27851 CONCURRENCY=makefile
27852 </pre></blockquote>
27853
27854 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
27855 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
27856 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
27857 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
27858 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
27859 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
27860 make this happen.</p>
27861
27862 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
27863 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
27864 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
27865 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
27866 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
27867
27868 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
27869 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
27870 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
27871 fix the remaining issues.</p>
27872
27873 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
27874 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
27875 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
27876 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
27877
27878       </div>
27879       <div class="tags">
27880
27881
27882         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>.
27883
27884
27885       </div>
27886     </div>
27887     <div class="padding"></div>
27888
27889     <div class="entry">
27890       <div class="title">
27891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
27892       </div>
27893       <div class="date">
27894          2nd May 2010
27895       </div>
27896       <div class="body">
27897         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
27898 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
27899 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
27900
27901 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
27902 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
27903 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
27904 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
27905 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
27906
27907 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
27908 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
27909
27910 <blockquote><pre>
27911 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
27912 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
27913 Password expires                                        : never
27914 Password inactive                                       : never
27915 Account expires                                         : never
27916 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
27917 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
27918 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
27919 root@tjener:~#
27920 </pre></blockquote>
27921
27922 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
27923 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
27924 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
27925 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
27926 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
27927 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
27928
27929 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
27930 intended:</p>
27931
27932 <blockquote><pre>
27933 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
27934 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
27935 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
27936 Password expires                                        : never
27937 Password inactive                                       : never
27938 Account expires                                         : never
27939 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
27940 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
27941 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
27942 root@tjener:~#
27943 </pre></blockquote>
27944
27945 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
27946 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
27947 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
27948
27949 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
27950 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
27951
27952 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
27953 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
27954
27955 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
27956 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
27957 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
27958 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
27959 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
27960 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
27961 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
27962
27963 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
27964 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
27965 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
27966 change.</p>
27967
27968       </div>
27969       <div class="tags">
27970
27971
27972         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
27973
27974
27975       </div>
27976     </div>
27977     <div class="padding"></div>
27978
27979     <div class="entry">
27980       <div class="title">
27981         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
27982       </div>
27983       <div class="date">
27984         28th April 2010
27985       </div>
27986       <div class="body">
27987         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
27988 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
27989 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
27990 and go.</p>
27991
27992 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
27993 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
27994 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
27995 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
27996
27997 <ul>
27998
27999  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
28000    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
28001    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
28002    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
28003    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
28004    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
28005    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
28006    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
28007    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
28008    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
28009    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
28010    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
28011
28012  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
28013    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
28014    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
28015    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
28016    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
28017    or the Fedora developed
28018    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
28019    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
28020
28021  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
28022    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
28023    directory, using unison.</li>
28024
28025  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
28026    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
28027    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
28028    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
28029    implemented.</li>
28030
28031  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
28032    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
28033
28034  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
28035    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
28036    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
28037
28038 </ul>
28039
28040 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
28041 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
28042 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
28043 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
28044 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
28045 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
28046 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
28047 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
28048 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
28049
28050 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
28051 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
28052
28053       </div>
28054       <div class="tags">
28055
28056
28057         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
28058
28059
28060       </div>
28061     </div>
28062     <div class="padding"></div>
28063
28064     <div class="entry">
28065       <div class="title">
28066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
28067       </div>
28068       <div class="date">
28069         19th April 2010
28070       </div>
28071       <div class="body">
28072         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
28073 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
28074 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
28075 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
28076 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
28077 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
28078 restrictions on the web, for example from
28079 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
28080 epub-version from
28081 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
28082 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
28083 strongly recommend this book.</p>
28084
28085       </div>
28086       <div class="tags">
28087
28088
28089         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
28090
28091
28092       </div>
28093     </div>
28094     <div class="padding"></div>
28095
28096     <div class="entry">
28097       <div class="title">
28098         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
28099       </div>
28100       <div class="date">
28101         14th April 2010
28102       </div>
28103       <div class="body">
28104         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
28105 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
28106 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
28107 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
28108 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
28109 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
28110 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
28111 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
28112 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
28113
28114 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
28115 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
28116 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
28117 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
28118 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
28119
28120 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
28121 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
28122
28123 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
28124 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
28125 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
28126 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
28127 to work properly.</p>
28128
28129 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
28130 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
28131 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
28132 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
28133 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
28134 time.</p>
28135
28136 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
28137 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
28138 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
28139 up in a few days.</p>
28140
28141       </div>
28142       <div class="tags">
28143
28144
28145         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
28146
28147
28148       </div>
28149     </div>
28150     <div class="padding"></div>
28151
28152     <div class="entry">
28153       <div class="title">
28154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
28155       </div>
28156       <div class="date">
28157          6th March 2010
28158       </div>
28159       <div class="body">
28160         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
28161 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
28162 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
28163 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
28164 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
28165 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
28166
28167 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
28168 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
28169 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
28170 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
28171
28172 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
28173 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
28174 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
28175 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
28176 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
28177 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
28178
28179       </div>
28180       <div class="tags">
28181
28182
28183         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
28184
28185
28186       </div>
28187     </div>
28188     <div class="padding"></div>
28189
28190     <div class="entry">
28191       <div class="title">
28192         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
28193       </div>
28194       <div class="date">
28195         11th February 2010
28196       </div>
28197       <div class="body">
28198         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
28199 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
28200 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
28201 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
28202 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
28203 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
28204 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
28205
28206 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
28207
28208 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
28209 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
28210 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
28211 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
28212
28213       </div>
28214       <div class="tags">
28215
28216
28217         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
28218
28219
28220       </div>
28221     </div>
28222     <div class="padding"></div>
28223
28224     <div class="entry">
28225       <div class="title">
28226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
28227       </div>
28228       <div class="date">
28229         27th January 2010
28230       </div>
28231       <div class="body">
28232         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
28233 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
28234 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
28235 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
28236 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
28237 further.</p>
28238
28239 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
28240 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
28241 configured to be a server for the
28242 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
28243 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
28244 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
28245 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
28246 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
28247 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
28248 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
28249 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
28250 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
28251 and Nagios configuration.</p>
28252
28253 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
28254 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
28255 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
28256 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
28257
28258 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
28259 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
28260 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
28261 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
28262 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
28263 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
28264 the machine.</p>
28265
28266 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
28267 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
28268 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
28269 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
28270
28271 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
28272 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
28273 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
28274 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
28275 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
28276 everything is taken care of.</p>
28277
28278       </div>
28279       <div class="tags">
28280
28281
28282         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
28283
28284
28285       </div>
28286     </div>
28287     <div class="padding"></div>
28288
28289     <div class="entry">
28290       <div class="title">
28291         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
28292       </div>
28293       <div class="date">
28294         12th August 2009
28295       </div>
28296       <div class="body">
28297         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
28298 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
28299 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
28300 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
28301
28302 <table>
28303 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
28304 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
28305 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
28306 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
28307 </table>
28308
28309 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
28310 got these numbers:</p>
28311
28312 <table>
28313 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
28314 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
28315 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
28316 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
28317 </table>
28318
28319 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
28320
28321 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
28322 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
28323 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
28324 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
28325 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
28326
28327
28328 <table>
28329 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
28330 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
28331 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
28332 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
28333 </table>
28334
28335 <p>And with 'site:no':
28336
28337 <table>
28338 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
28339 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
28340 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
28341 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
28342 </table>
28343
28344 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
28345 numbers.</p>
28346
28347       </div>
28348       <div class="tags">
28349
28350
28351         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
28352
28353
28354       </div>
28355     </div>
28356     <div class="padding"></div>
28357
28358     <div class="entry">
28359       <div class="title">
28360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
28361       </div>
28362       <div class="date">
28363          8th August 2009
28364       </div>
28365       <div class="body">
28366         <p>According to <a
28367 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
28368 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
28369 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
28370 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
28371 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
28372 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
28373 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
28374 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
28375 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
28376 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
28377
28378 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
28379 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
28380 seminar this autumn.</p>
28381
28382       </div>
28383       <div class="tags">
28384
28385
28386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
28387
28388
28389       </div>
28390     </div>
28391     <div class="padding"></div>
28392
28393     <div class="entry">
28394       <div class="title">
28395         <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>
28396       </div>
28397       <div class="date">
28398         27th July 2009
28399       </div>
28400       <div class="body">
28401         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
28402 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
28403 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
28404 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
28405 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
28406 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
28407 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
28408
28409 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
28410 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
28411 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
28412
28413       </div>
28414       <div class="tags">
28415
28416
28417         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>.
28418
28419
28420       </div>
28421     </div>
28422     <div class="padding"></div>
28423
28424     <div class="entry">
28425       <div class="title">
28426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
28427       </div>
28428       <div class="date">
28429         22nd July 2009
28430       </div>
28431       <div class="body">
28432         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
28433 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
28434 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
28435 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
28436 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
28437 the package up to date.</p>
28438
28439 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
28440 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
28441 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
28442 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
28443 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
28444 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
28445 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
28446 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
28447 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
28448 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
28449 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
28450 working on the future release.</p>
28451
28452 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
28453 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
28454
28455       </div>
28456       <div class="tags">
28457
28458
28459         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>.
28460
28461
28462       </div>
28463     </div>
28464     <div class="padding"></div>
28465
28466     <div class="entry">
28467       <div class="title">
28468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
28469       </div>
28470       <div class="date">
28471         24th June 2009
28472       </div>
28473       <div class="body">
28474         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
28475 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
28476 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
28477 funded
28478 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
28479 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
28480 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
28481 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
28482 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
28483 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
28484
28485 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
28486 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
28487 boot:</p>
28488
28489 <ul>
28490
28491 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
28492
28493 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
28494    clock is in UTC.</li>
28495
28496 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
28497    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
28498    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
28499
28500 </ul>
28501
28502 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
28503 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
28504 Villegas</a>.
28505
28506 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
28507 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
28508 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
28509 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
28510 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
28511 using this.</p>
28512
28513 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
28514 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
28515 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
28516 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
28517 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
28518 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
28519 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
28520
28521       </div>
28522       <div class="tags">
28523
28524
28525         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>.
28526
28527
28528       </div>
28529     </div>
28530     <div class="padding"></div>
28531
28532     <div class="entry">
28533       <div class="title">
28534         <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>
28535       </div>
28536       <div class="date">
28537          2nd May 2009
28538       </div>
28539       <div class="body">
28540         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
28541 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
28542 do not yet know them.</p>
28543
28544 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
28545 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
28546 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
28547 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
28548 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
28549 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
28550 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
28551 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
28552 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
28553 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
28554 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
28555
28556 <p>The second one is
28557 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
28558 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
28559 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
28560 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
28561 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
28562 and the company behind it is running
28563 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
28564 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
28565 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
28566 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
28567 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
28568 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
28569 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
28570 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
28571
28572 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
28573 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
28574 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
28575 surrounded by today.</p>
28576
28577       </div>
28578       <div class="tags">
28579
28580
28581         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>.
28582
28583
28584       </div>
28585     </div>
28586     <div class="padding"></div>
28587
28588     <div class="entry">
28589       <div class="title">
28590         <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>
28591       </div>
28592       <div class="date">
28593         28th April 2009
28594       </div>
28595       <div class="body">
28596         <p>Julien Blache
28597 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
28598 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
28599 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
28600 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
28601 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
28602 properties.</p>
28603
28604       </div>
28605       <div class="tags">
28606
28607
28608         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>.
28609
28610
28611       </div>
28612     </div>
28613     <div class="padding"></div>
28614
28615     <div class="entry">
28616       <div class="title">
28617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
28618       </div>
28619       <div class="date">
28620          5th April 2009
28621       </div>
28622       <div class="body">
28623         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
28624 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
28625 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
28626 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
28627 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
28628 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
28629 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
28630 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
28631
28632 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
28633 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
28634 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
28635   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
28636   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
28637
28638 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
28639 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
28640 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
28641 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
28642
28643 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
28644 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
28645 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
28646 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
28647
28648 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
28649 set -e
28650 URL="$1"
28651 SAVEFILE="$2"
28652 DURATION="$3"
28653 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
28654   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
28655   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
28656 pid=$!
28657 sleep $DURATION
28658 kill $pid
28659 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
28660
28661       </div>
28662       <div class="tags">
28663
28664
28665         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
28666
28667
28668       </div>
28669     </div>
28670     <div class="padding"></div>
28671
28672     <div class="entry">
28673       <div class="title">
28674         <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>
28675       </div>
28676       <div class="date">
28677         30th March 2009
28678       </div>
28679       <div class="body">
28680         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
28681 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
28682 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
28683 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
28684 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
28685 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
28686 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
28687 application.</p>
28688
28689 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
28690 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
28691 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
28692 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
28693 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
28694 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
28695 blocked from doing so.</p>
28696
28697 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
28698 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
28699 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
28700 requirements change.</p>
28701
28702 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
28703 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
28704 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
28705
28706       </div>
28707       <div class="tags">
28708
28709
28710         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>.
28711
28712
28713       </div>
28714     </div>
28715     <div class="padding"></div>
28716
28717     <div class="entry">
28718       <div class="title">
28719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
28720       </div>
28721       <div class="date">
28722         29th March 2009
28723       </div>
28724       <div class="body">
28725         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
28726 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
28727 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
28728 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
28729 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
28730 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
28731 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
28732 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
28733 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
28734 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
28735 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
28736 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
28737 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
28738 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
28739 now. :)</p>
28740
28741       </div>
28742       <div class="tags">
28743
28744
28745         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>.
28746
28747
28748       </div>
28749     </div>
28750     <div class="padding"></div>
28751
28752     <div class="entry">
28753       <div class="title">
28754         <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>
28755       </div>
28756       <div class="date">
28757         29th March 2009
28758       </div>
28759       <div class="body">
28760         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
28761 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
28762 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
28763 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
28764 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
28765 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
28766
28767 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
28768 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
28769 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
28770 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
28771 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
28772 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
28773 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
28774 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
28775 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
28776 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
28777 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
28778 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
28779 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
28780
28781 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
28782 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
28783 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
28784 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
28785
28786 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
28787 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
28788
28789 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
28790 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
28791 new IETF work group?</p>
28792
28793       </div>
28794       <div class="tags">
28795
28796
28797         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>.
28798
28799
28800       </div>
28801     </div>
28802     <div class="padding"></div>
28803
28804     <div class="entry">
28805       <div class="title">
28806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
28807       </div>
28808       <div class="date">
28809         28th February 2009
28810       </div>
28811       <div class="body">
28812         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
28813 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
28814 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
28815 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
28816 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
28817 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
28818 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
28819 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
28820 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
28821 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
28822 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
28823 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
28824 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
28825 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
28826 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
28827 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
28828 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
28829 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
28830 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
28831 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
28832 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
28833 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
28834 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
28835 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
28836 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
28837 machine.</p>
28838
28839 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
28840 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
28841 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
28842 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
28843 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
28844 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
28845 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
28846
28847 <pre>
28848 use LWP::Simple;
28849 use POSIX;
28850 use WWW::Mechanize;
28851 use Date::Parse;
28852 [...]
28853 sub get_support_info {
28854     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
28855     my $str;
28856
28857     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
28858         # fetch website from Dell support
28859         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
28860         my $webpage = get($url);
28861         return undef unless ($webpage);
28862
28863         my $daysleft = -1;
28864         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
28865         foreach my $line (@lines) {
28866             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
28867             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
28868             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
28869
28870             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
28871             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
28872             my $lastend = "";
28873             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
28874                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
28875
28876                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
28877                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
28878                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
28879                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
28880                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
28881                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
28882                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
28883             }
28884             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
28885             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
28886                 if ($lastend lt $today);
28887         }
28888     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
28889         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
28890         my $url =
28891             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
28892         $mech->get($url);
28893         my $fields = {
28894             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
28895             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
28896             'country' => 'NO',
28897             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
28898             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
28899         };
28900         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
28901                             fields      => $fields );
28902         # Next step is screen scraping
28903         my $content = $mech->content();
28904
28905         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
28906         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
28907         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
28908         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
28909
28910         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
28911
28912         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
28913             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
28914                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
28915             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
28916             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
28917                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
28918             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
28919                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
28920
28921             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
28922
28923             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
28924                 if ($end lt $today);
28925         }
28926     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
28927         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
28928         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
28929         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
28930             my $content =
28931                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
28932             if ($content) {
28933                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
28934                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
28935                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
28936                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
28937
28938                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
28939                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
28940
28941                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
28942
28943                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
28944                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
28945                     if ($end lt $today);
28946             }
28947         }
28948     }
28949     return $str;
28950 }
28951 </pre>
28952
28953 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
28954 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
28955 from dmidecode.</p>
28956
28957 <pre>
28958 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
28959                        "447707-B21");
28960 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
28961 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
28962                        "1234567");
28963 </pre>
28964
28965 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
28966 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
28967
28968 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
28969 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
28970 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
28971 do so.</p>
28972
28973       </div>
28974       <div class="tags">
28975
28976
28977         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
28978
28979
28980       </div>
28981     </div>
28982     <div class="padding"></div>
28983
28984     <div class="entry">
28985       <div class="title">
28986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
28987       </div>
28988       <div class="date">
28989         20th February 2009
28990       </div>
28991       <div class="body">
28992         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
28993 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
28994 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
28995 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
28996 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
28997 the "missing" computer.</p>
28998
28999 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
29000 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
29001 code blocks as defined in the
29002 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
29003 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
29004 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
29005 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
29006 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
29007 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
29008 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
29009 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
29010 codes.</p>
29011
29012 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
29013 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
29014 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
29015 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
29016 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
29017 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
29018
29019 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
29020 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
29021 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
29022 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
29023 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
29024 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
29025 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
29026 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
29027 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
29028 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
29029
29030 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
29031 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
29032 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
29033
29034       </div>
29035       <div class="tags">
29036
29037
29038         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
29039
29040
29041       </div>
29042     </div>
29043     <div class="padding"></div>
29044
29045     <div class="entry">
29046       <div class="title">
29047         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
29048       </div>
29049       <div class="date">
29050         17th January 2009
29051       </div>
29052       <div class="body">
29053         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
29054 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
29055 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
29056 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
29057 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
29058 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
29059 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
29060 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
29061 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
29062 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
29063 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
29064 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
29065 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
29066 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
29067
29068 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
29069 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
29070 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
29071 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
29072 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
29073 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
29074 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
29075 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
29076 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
29077 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
29078 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
29079 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
29080 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
29081 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
29082 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
29083 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
29084 playing when the download is done.</p>
29085
29086 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
29087 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
29088 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
29089 too.</p>
29090
29091 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
29092 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
29093 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
29094 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
29095
29096       </div>
29097       <div class="tags">
29098
29099
29100         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
29101
29102
29103       </div>
29104     </div>
29105     <div class="padding"></div>
29106
29107     <div class="entry">
29108       <div class="title">
29109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
29110       </div>
29111       <div class="date">
29112         28th December 2008
29113       </div>
29114       <div class="body">
29115         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
29116 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
29117 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
29118 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
29119 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
29120 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
29121 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
29122 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
29123 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
29124 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
29125 source, sink and mixer applications and
29126 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
29127 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
29128 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
29129 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
29130 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
29131 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
29132 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
29133 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
29134 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
29135
29136 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
29137 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
29138 larger stick as well.</p>
29139
29140       </div>
29141       <div class="tags">
29142
29143
29144         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
29145
29146
29147       </div>
29148     </div>
29149     <div class="padding"></div>
29150
29151     <div class="entry">
29152       <div class="title">
29153         <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>
29154       </div>
29155       <div class="date">
29156          7th December 2008
29157       </div>
29158       <div class="body">
29159         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
29160 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
29161 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
29162 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
29163 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
29164 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
29165 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
29166 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
29167
29168 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
29169 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
29170 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
29171 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
29172 of these cards.</p>
29173
29174       </div>
29175       <div class="tags">
29176
29177
29178         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>.
29179
29180
29181       </div>
29182     </div>
29183     <div class="padding"></div>
29184
29185     <div class="entry">
29186       <div class="title">
29187         <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>
29188       </div>
29189       <div class="date">
29190         25th November 2008
29191       </div>
29192       <div class="body">
29193         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
29194 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
29195 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
29196 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
29197 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
29198 notes are available on
29199 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
29200 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
29201 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
29202 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
29203 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
29204 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
29205 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
29206 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
29207 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
29208
29209 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
29210 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
29211
29212       </div>
29213       <div class="tags">
29214
29215
29216         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>.
29217
29218
29219       </div>
29220     </div>
29221     <div class="padding"></div>
29222
29223     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
29224     <div id="sidebar">
29225
29226
29227
29228 <h2>Archive</h2>
29229 <ul>
29230
29231 <li>2017
29232 <ul>
29233
29234 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
29235
29236 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
29237
29238 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
29239
29240 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
29241
29242 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
29243
29244 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
29245
29246 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
29247
29248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
29249
29250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
29251
29252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (1)</a></li>
29253
29254 </ul></li>
29255
29256 <li>2016
29257 <ul>
29258
29259 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
29260
29261 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
29262
29263 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
29264
29265 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
29266
29267 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
29268
29269 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
29270
29271 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
29272
29273 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
29274
29275 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
29276
29277 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
29278
29279 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
29280
29281 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
29282
29283 </ul></li>
29284
29285 <li>2015
29286 <ul>
29287
29288 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
29289
29290 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
29291
29292 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
29293
29294 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
29295
29296 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
29297
29298 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
29299
29300 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
29301
29302 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
29303
29304 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
29305
29306 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
29307
29308 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
29309
29310 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
29311
29312 </ul></li>
29313
29314 <li>2014
29315 <ul>
29316
29317 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
29318
29319 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
29320
29321 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
29322
29323 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
29324
29325 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
29326
29327 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
29328
29329 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
29330
29331 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
29332
29333 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
29334
29335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
29336
29337 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
29338
29339 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
29340
29341 </ul></li>
29342
29343 <li>2013
29344 <ul>
29345
29346 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
29347
29348 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
29349
29350 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
29351
29352 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
29353
29354 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
29355
29356 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
29357
29358 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
29359
29360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
29361
29362 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
29363
29364 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
29365
29366 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
29367
29368 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
29369
29370 </ul></li>
29371
29372 <li>2012
29373 <ul>
29374
29375 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
29376
29377 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
29378
29379 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
29380
29381 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
29382
29383 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
29384
29385 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
29386
29387 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
29388
29389 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
29390
29391 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
29392
29393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
29394
29395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
29396
29397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
29398
29399 </ul></li>
29400
29401 <li>2011
29402 <ul>
29403
29404 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
29405
29406 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
29407
29408 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
29409
29410 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
29411
29412 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
29413
29414 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
29415
29416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
29417
29418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
29419
29420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
29421
29422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
29423
29424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
29425
29426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
29427
29428 </ul></li>
29429
29430 <li>2010
29431 <ul>
29432
29433 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
29434
29435 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
29436
29437 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
29438
29439 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
29440
29441 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
29442
29443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
29444
29445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
29446
29447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
29448
29449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
29450
29451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
29452
29453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
29454
29455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
29456
29457 </ul></li>
29458
29459 <li>2009
29460 <ul>
29461
29462 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
29463
29464 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
29465
29466 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
29467
29468 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
29469
29470 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
29471
29472 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
29473
29474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
29475
29476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
29477
29478 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
29479
29480 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
29481
29482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
29483
29484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
29485
29486 </ul></li>
29487
29488 <li>2008
29489 <ul>
29490
29491 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
29492
29493 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
29494
29495 </ul></li>
29496
29497 </ul>
29498
29499
29500
29501 <h2>Tags</h2>
29502 <ul>
29503
29504  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (14)</a></li>
29505
29506  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
29507
29508  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
29509
29510  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
29511
29512  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
29513
29514  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (16)</a></li>
29515
29516  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
29517
29518  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
29519
29520  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (154)</a></li>
29521
29522  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
29523
29524  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (4)</a></li>
29525
29526  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
29527
29528  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (17)</a></li>
29529
29530  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (24)</a></li>
29531
29532  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
29533
29534  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (358)</a></li>
29535
29536  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
29537
29538  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
29539
29540  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (30)</a></li>
29541
29542  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
29543
29544  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
29545
29546  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
29547
29548  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
29549
29550  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (15)</a></li>
29551
29552  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (20)</a></li>
29553
29554  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
29555
29556  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
29557
29558  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
29559
29560  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
29561
29562  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
29563
29564  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (39)</a></li>
29565
29566  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (9)</a></li>
29567
29568  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (293)</a></li>
29569
29570  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (189)</a></li>
29571
29572  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (33)</a></li>
29573
29574  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
29575
29576  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (65)</a></li>
29577
29578  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (104)</a></li>
29579
29580  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (2)</a></li>
29581
29582  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
29583
29584  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
29585
29586  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
29587
29588  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
29589
29590  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
29591
29592  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (5)</a></li>
29593
29594  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
29595
29596  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (53)</a></li>
29597
29598  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
29599
29600  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
29601
29602  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (55)</a></li>
29603
29604  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (6)</a></li>
29605
29606  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (12)</a></li>
29607
29608  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (52)</a></li>
29609
29610  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (4)</a></li>
29611
29612  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
29613
29614  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
29615
29616  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (59)</a></li>
29617
29618  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
29619
29620  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (40)</a></li>
29621
29622 </ul>
29623
29624
29625     </div>
29626     <p style="text-align: right">
29627  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
29628 </p>
29629
29630   </body>
29631 </html>