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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         24th November 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
  32 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
  33 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
  34 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
  35 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
  36 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
  37 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
  38 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
  39 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
  40 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
  41 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
  42 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
  43 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
  44 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
  45 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
  46 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
  47 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
  48 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
  49 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
  50
  51 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
  52 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
  53 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
  54 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
  55 api.apertium.org.  Se
  56 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
  57 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
  58 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
  59 nynorsk.</p>
  60
  61 <hr/>
  62
  63 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
  64 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
  65 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
  66 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
  67 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
  68 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
  69 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
  70 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
  71 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
  72 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
  73 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
  74 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
  75 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
  76 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
  77 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
  78 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
  79 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
  80 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
  81 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
  82
  83 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
  84 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
  85 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
  86 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
  87 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
  88 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
  89 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
  90 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
  91 nynorsk.</p>
  92
  93       </div>
  94       <div class="tags">
  95
  96
  97         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
  98
  99
 100       </div>
 101     </div>
 102     <div class="padding"></div>
 103
 104     <div class="entry">
 105       <div class="title">
 106         <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>
 107       </div>
 108       <div class="date">
 109         13th November 2016
 110       </div>
 111       <div class="body">
 112         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
 113 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
 114 multi-threaded program, finally
 115 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
 116 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
 117 months since
 118 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
 119 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
 120 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
 121 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
 122 JavaScript libraries.</p>
 123
 124 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
 125
 126 <p><blockquote>
 127 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
 128 </blockquote></p>
 129
 130 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
 131 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
 132 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
 133 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
 134 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
 135
 136 <p><blockquote>
 137 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
 138 </blockquote></p>
 139
 140 <p>See the project home page and the
 141 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
 142 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
 143 working.</p>
 144
 145       </div>
 146       <div class="tags">
 147
 148
 149         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>.
 150
 151
 152       </div>
 153     </div>
 154     <div class="padding"></div>
 155
 156     <div class="entry">
 157       <div class="title">
 158         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
 159       </div>
 160       <div class="date">
 161          4th November 2016
 162       </div>
 163       <div class="body">
 164         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
 165 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
 166 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
 167 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
 168 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
 169 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
 170 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
 171 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
 172 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
 173 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
 174 and had
 175 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
 176 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
 177 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
 178 loved ones. :)</p>
 179
 180 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
 181 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
 182 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
 183 building
 184 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
 185 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
 186 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
 187 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
 188 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
 189 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
 190 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
 191 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
 192
 193 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
 194
 195 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
 196 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
 197 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
 198 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
 199 the battery status run low:</p>
 200
 201 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
 202    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
 203 </video></p>
 204
 205 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
 206 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
 207
 208 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
 209 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
 210 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
 211 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
 212 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
 213 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
 214 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
 215 should.</p>
 216
 217       </div>
 218       <div class="tags">
 219
 220
 221         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>.
 222
 223
 224       </div>
 225     </div>
 226     <div class="padding"></div>
 227
 228     <div class="entry">
 229       <div class="title">
 230         <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>
 231       </div>
 232       <div class="date">
 233         10th October 2016
 234       </div>
 235       <div class="body">
 236         <p>In July
 237 <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
 238 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
 239 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
 240 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
 241
 242 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
 243 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
 244 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
 245 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
 246 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
 247 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
 248 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
 249 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
 250 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
 251 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
 252 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
 253 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
 254 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
 255 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
 256 time.</p>
 257
 258 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
 259 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
 260 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
 261 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
 262 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
 263 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
 264 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
 265
 266 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
 267 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
 268 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
 269 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
 270 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
 271 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
 272 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
 273 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
 274 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
 275 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
 276
 277 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
 278
 279 <ol>
 280
 281 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
 282 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
 283 know, so you need to install it.
 284
 285 <pre>
 286 apt install git tor chromium
 287 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
 288 </pre></li>
 289
 290 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
 291 block below.</li>
 292
 293 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
 294 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
 295
 296 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
 297 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
 298 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
 299 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
 300 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
 301
 302 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
 303 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
 304 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
 305 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
 306 a associated contact database.</li>
 307
 308 </ol>
 309
 310 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
 311 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
 312 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
 313 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
 314 example
 315 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
 316 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
 317 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
 318 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
 319 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
 320 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
 321 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
 322 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
 323 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
 324 working on Debian Stable.</p>
 325
 326 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
 327 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
 328 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
 329
 330 <pre>
 331 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
 332 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
 333 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
 334 --- a/js/background.js
 335 +++ b/js/background.js
 336 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
 337          });
 338      });
 339
 340 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
 341 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
 342      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
 343 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
 344 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
 345      var messageReceiver;
 346      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
 347          if (messageReceiver) {
 348 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
 349 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
 350 --- a/js/expire.js
 351 +++ b/js/expire.js
 352 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 353  ;(function() {
 354      'use strict';
 355 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
 356 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
 357
 358      window.extension = window.extension || {};
 359
 360 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
 361 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
 362 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
 363 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
 364 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
 365              return {
 366                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
 367                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
 368 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
 369 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
 370 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
 371              };
 372          },
 373          clearQR: function() {
 374 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
 375 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
 376 --- a/options.html
 377 +++ b/options.html
 378 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
 379          &lt;div class='nav'>
 380            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
 381            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
 382 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
 383 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
 384 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
 385 +
 386 +         &lt;/div>
 387            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
 388            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
 389            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
 390 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
 391 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
 392 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
 393 +#!/bin/sh
 394 +set -e
 395 +cd $(dirname $0)
 396 +mkdir -p userdata
 397 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
 398 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
 399 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
 400 +fi
 401 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
 402 +exec chromium \
 403 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
 404 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
 405 EOF
 406 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
 407 </pre>
 408
 409 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 410 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 411 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 412
 413       </div>
 414       <div class="tags">
 415
 416
 417         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>.
 418
 419
 420       </div>
 421     </div>
 422     <div class="padding"></div>
 423
 424     <div class="entry">
 425       <div class="title">
 426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
 427       </div>
 428       <div class="date">
 429          7th October 2016
 430       </div>
 431       <div class="body">
 432         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
 433 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
 434 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
 435 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
 436 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
 437 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
 438 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
 439 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
 440 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
 441 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
 442 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
 443 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
 444 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
 445
 446 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
 447 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
 448 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
 449 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
 450 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
 451 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
 452
 453 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
 454 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
 455 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
 456 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
 457 identifiers.</p>
 458
 459 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
 460 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
 461 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
 462 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
 463 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
 464 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
 465 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
 466 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
 467 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
 468 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
 469 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
 470 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
 471 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
 472 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
 473
 474 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
 475 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
 476 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
 477 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
 478 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
 479 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
 480 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
 481
 482 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
 483 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
 484 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
 485 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
 486 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
 487 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
 488 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
 489 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
 490 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
 491 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
 492 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
 493 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
 494 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
 495 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
 496 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
 497 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
 498 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
 499
 500 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
 501 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
 502 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
 503 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
 504 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
 505 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
 506 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
 507
 508 <p><pre>
 509 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
 510     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
 511 </pre></p>
 512
 513 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
 514 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
 515 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
 516 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
 517 to detect this?</p>
 518
 519 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
 520 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
 521 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
 522 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
 523 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
 524 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
 525 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
 526 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
 527 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
 528 directly if no such class exist.</p>
 529
 530 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 531 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 532 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 533
 534 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
 535 please join us on our IRC channel
 536 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
 537 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
 538 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
 539 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
 540
 541 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 542 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 543 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 544
 545       </div>
 546       <div class="tags">
 547
 548
 549         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>.
 550
 551
 552       </div>
 553     </div>
 554     <div class="padding"></div>
 555
 556     <div class="entry">
 557       <div class="title">
 558         <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>
 559       </div>
 560       <div class="date">
 561         30th August 2016
 562       </div>
 563       <div class="body">
 564         <p>In April we
 565 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
 566 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
 567 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
 568 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
 569 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
 570 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
 571 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
 572 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
 573 contributing using
 574 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
 575 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
 576 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
 577 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
 578 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
 579 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
 580 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
 581
 582 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
 583 electronic form.</p>
 584
 585       </div>
 586       <div class="tags">
 587
 588
 589         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>.
 590
 591
 592       </div>
 593     </div>
 594     <div class="padding"></div>
 595
 596     <div class="entry">
 597       <div class="title">
 598         <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>
 599       </div>
 600       <div class="date">
 601         11th August 2016
 602       </div>
 603       <div class="body">
 604         <p>This summer, I read a great article
 605 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
 606 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
 607 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
 608 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
 609 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
 610 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
 611 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
 612 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
 613 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
 614 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
 615 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
 616 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
 617
 618 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
 619 get the system into Debian.  I
 620 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
 621 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
 622 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
 623 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
 624 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
 625 profiling information included in the source package.
 626 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
 627
 628 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
 629 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
 630
 631 <p><blockquote><pre>
 632 coz run --- program-to-run
 633 </pre></blockquote></p>
 634
 635 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
 636 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
 637 most, use a web browser and either point it to
 638 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
 639 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
 640 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
 641 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
 642 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
 643 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
 644 targeted experiments.</p>
 645
 646 <p>A video published by ACM
 647 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
 648 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
 649 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
 650 titled
 651 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
 652 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
 653
 654 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
 655 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
 656 because it uses a
 657 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
 658 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
 659 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
 660 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
 661
 662 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
 663 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
 664 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
 665 C++ libraries.</p>
 666
 667       </div>
 668       <div class="tags">
 669
 670
 671         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>.
 672
 673
 674       </div>
 675     </div>
 676     <div class="padding"></div>
 677
 678     <div class="entry">
 679       <div class="title">
 680         <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>
 681       </div>
 682       <div class="date">
 683          7th July 2016
 684       </div>
 685       <div class="body">
 686         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
 687 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
 688 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
 689 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
 690 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
 691 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
 692 microphone The initial idea had been to just
 693 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
 694 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
 695 until a few days ago.</p>
 696
 697 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
 698 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
 699 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
 700 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
 701 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
 702 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
 703 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
 704
 705 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
 706 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
 707 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
 708 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
 709 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
 710 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
 711 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
 712 him.</p>
 713
 714 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
 715 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
 716 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
 717 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
 718 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
 719 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
 720 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
 721 devices it would work for.</p>
 722
 723 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
 724 followed some instructions
 725 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
 726 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
 727 machine with Debian testing:</p>
 728
 729 <p><pre>
 730 adb reboot-bootloader
 731 fastboot oem rebootRUU
 732 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
 733 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
 734 fastboot reboot
 735 </pre></p>
 736
 737 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
 738 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
 739 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
 740 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
 741 too.</p>
 742
 743 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
 744 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
 745 like this:</p>
 746
 747 <p><pre>
 748 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
 749 </pre>
 750
 751 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
 752 this:</p>
 753
 754 <p><pre>
 755 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
 756 </pre></p>
 757
 758 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
 759 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
 760 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
 761 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
 762 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
 763
 764       </div>
 765       <div class="tags">
 766
 767
 768         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>.
 769
 770
 771       </div>
 772     </div>
 773     <div class="padding"></div>
 774
 775     <div class="entry">
 776       <div class="title">
 777         <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>
 778       </div>
 779       <div class="date">
 780          3rd July 2016
 781       </div>
 782       <div class="body">
 783         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
 784 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
 785 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
 786 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
 787 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
 788 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
 789 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
 790 Github source, compared it to the source in
 791 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
 792 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
 793 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
 794 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
 795 the recipe how I did it.</p>
 796
 797 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
 798
 799 <pre>
 800 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
 801 </pre>
 802
 803 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
 804 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
 805
 806 <pre>
 807 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
 808 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
 809 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
 810 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
 811 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
 812          });
 813      });
 814
 815 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
 816 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
 817 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
 818 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
 819      var messageReceiver;
 820      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
 821          if (messageReceiver) {
 822 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
 823 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
 824 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
 825 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 826  ;(function() {
 827      'use strict';
 828 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
 829 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
 830
 831      window.extension = window.extension || {};
 832
 833 EOF
 834 </pre>
 835
 836 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
 837 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
 838 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
 839 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
 840
 841 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
 842 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
 843
 844 <pre>
 845 #!/bin/sh
 846 cd $(dirname $0)
 847 mkdir -p userdata
 848 exec chromium \
 849   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
 850   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
 851 </pre>
 852
 853 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
 854 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
 855 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
 856 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
 857 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
 858
 859 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
 860 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
 861 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
 862 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
 863 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
 864 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
 865 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
 866 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
 867 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
 868 Signal from my laptop.
 869
 870 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
 871 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
 872 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
 873 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
 874 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
 875 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
 876 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
 877 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
 878 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
 879 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
 880 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
 881 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
 882
 883       </div>
 884       <div class="tags">
 885
 886
 887         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>.
 888
 889
 890       </div>
 891     </div>
 892     <div class="padding"></div>
 893
 894     <div class="entry">
 895       <div class="title">
 896         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
 897       </div>
 898       <div class="date">
 899          6th June 2016
 900       </div>
 901       <div class="body">
 902         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
 903 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
 904 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
 905 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
 906 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
 907 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
 908 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
 909 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
 910 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
 911
 912 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
 913 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
 914 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
 915 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
 916 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
 917 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
 918 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
 919
 920 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
 921 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
 922 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
 923 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
 924 toten and parole.</p>
 925
 926 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
 927 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
 928 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
 929 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
 930 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
 931 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
 932 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
 933 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
 934 formats.</p>
 935
 936       </div>
 937       <div class="tags">
 938
 939
 940         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>.
 941
 942
 943       </div>
 944     </div>
 945     <div class="padding"></div>
 946
 947     <div class="entry">
 948       <div class="title">
 949         <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>
 950       </div>
 951       <div class="date">
 952          5th June 2016
 953       </div>
 954       <div class="body">
 955         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
 956 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
 957 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
 958 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
 959 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
 960 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
 961 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
 962 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
 963 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
 964 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
 965 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
 966 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
 967 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
 968 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
 969 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
 970 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
 971 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
 972 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
 973 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
 974 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
 975
 976 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
 977 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
 978 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
 979 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
 980 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
 981 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
 982 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
 983 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
 984 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
 985 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
 986 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
 987 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
 988 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
 989 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
 990
 991 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
 992 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
 993 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
 994 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
 995 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
 996 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
 997 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
 998 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
 999
1000 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
1001 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
1002 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
1003 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
1004 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
1005 information is collected from
1006 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
1007 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
1008 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
1009 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
1010 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
1011 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
1012 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
1013 type (preferably
1014 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
1015 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
1016 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
1017 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
1018
1019 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
1020 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
1021 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
1022
1023 <p><blockquote><pre>
1024 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
1025 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
1026   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
1027     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
1028     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
1029     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
1030   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
1031 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
1032 </pre></blockquote></p>
1033
1034 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
1035 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
1036 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
1037 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
1038
1039 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
1040 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
1041 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
1042
1043 <p><blockquote><pre>
1044 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
1045 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
1046 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
1047 %
1048 </pre></blockquote></p>
1049
1050 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
1051 MimeType= line.</p>
1052
1053 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
1054 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
1055 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
1056 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
1057 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
1058 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
1059 fixed. :)</p>
1060
1061       </div>
1062       <div class="tags">
1063
1064
1065         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>.
1066
1067
1068       </div>
1069     </div>
1070     <div class="padding"></div>
1071
1072     <div class="entry">
1073       <div class="title">
1074         <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>
1075       </div>
1076       <div class="date">
1077         25th May 2016
1078       </div>
1079       <div class="body">
1080         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
1081 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
1082 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
1083 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
1084 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
1085 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
1086 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
1087 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
1088 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
1089 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
1090 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
1091 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
1092
1093 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
1094 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
1095 is going away and is generally being replaced by
1096 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
1097 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
1098 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
1099 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
1100 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
1101 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
1102 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
1103 and see if it is recognised.</p>
1104
1105 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
1106 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
1107 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
1108
1109 <p><blockquote><pre>
1110 % isenkram-lookup
1111 bluez
1112 cheese
1113 fprintd
1114 fprintd-demo
1115 gkrellm-thinkbat
1116 hdapsd
1117 libpam-fprintd
1118 pidgin-blinklight
1119 thinkfan
1120 tleds
1121 tp-smapi-dkms
1122 tp-smapi-source
1123 tpb
1124 %p
1125 </pre></blockquote></p>
1126
1127 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
1128 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
1129 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
1130 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
1131 See
1132 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
1133 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
1134
1135       </div>
1136       <div class="tags">
1137
1138
1139         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>.
1140
1141
1142       </div>
1143     </div>
1144     <div class="padding"></div>
1145
1146     <div class="entry">
1147       <div class="title">
1148         <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>
1149       </div>
1150       <div class="date">
1151         23rd May 2016
1152       </div>
1153       <div class="body">
1154         <p>Yesterday I updated the
1155 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
1156 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
1157 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
1158 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
1159 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
1160 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
1161 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
1162 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
1163 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
1164 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
1165
1166 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
1167 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
1168 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
1169 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
1170 capacity.</p>
1171
1172 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
1173
1174 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
1175 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
1176 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
1177 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
1178
1179 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
1180
1181 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
1182 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
1183 shrinking. :(</p>
1184
1185 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
1186 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
1187 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
1188 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
1189 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
1190 machine.</p>
1191
1192 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
1193 check out the
1194 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
1195 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
1196 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
1197 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
1198 Patches are very welcome.</p>
1199
1200 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1201 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1202 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1203
1204       </div>
1205       <div class="tags">
1206
1207
1208         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>.
1209
1210
1211       </div>
1212     </div>
1213     <div class="padding"></div>
1214
1215     <div class="entry">
1216       <div class="title">
1217         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
1218       </div>
1219       <div class="date">
1220         12th May 2016
1221       </div>
1222       <div class="body">
1223         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
1224 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
1225 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
1226 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
1227 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
1228 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1229 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
1230 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
1231 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
1232 great if you could help out with
1233 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
1234 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
1235
1236       </div>
1237       <div class="tags">
1238
1239
1240         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>.
1241
1242
1243       </div>
1244     </div>
1245     <div class="padding"></div>
1246
1247     <div class="entry">
1248       <div class="title">
1249         <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>
1250       </div>
1251       <div class="date">
1252          8th May 2016
1253       </div>
1254       <div class="body">
1255         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
1256 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
1257
1258 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
1259 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
1260 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
1261 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
1262 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
1263 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
1264 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
1265 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
1266 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
1267 players.</p>
1268
1269 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
1270 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
1271 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
1272 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
1273 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
1274 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
1275 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
1276 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
1277 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
1278 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
1279 support most file formats.</p>
1280
1281 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
1282 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
1283 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
1284 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
1285 listed first in the table.</p>
1286
1287 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
1288 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
1289 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
1290 support?</p>
1291
1292       </div>
1293       <div class="tags">
1294
1295
1296         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>.
1297
1298
1299       </div>
1300     </div>
1301     <div class="padding"></div>
1302
1303     <div class="entry">
1304       <div class="title">
1305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
1306       </div>
1307       <div class="date">
1308          4th May 2016
1309       </div>
1310       <div class="body">
1311         A friend of mine made me aware of
1312 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
1313 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
1314 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
1315
1316 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
1317 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
1318 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
1319 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
1320 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
1321 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
1322 production started.</p>
1323
1324 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
1325 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
1326 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
1327
1328       </div>
1329       <div class="tags">
1330
1331
1332         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>.
1333
1334
1335       </div>
1336     </div>
1337     <div class="padding"></div>
1338
1339     <div class="entry">
1340       <div class="title">
1341         <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>
1342       </div>
1343       <div class="date">
1344         10th April 2016
1345       </div>
1346       <div class="body">
1347         <p>During this weekends
1348 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
1349 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
1350 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
1351 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
1352 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
1353 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
1354 contributing using
1355 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
1356 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
1357 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
1358 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
1359 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
1360 contributors</a>.</p>
1361
1362 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
1363 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
1364 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
1365 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
1366 available for many more languages.</p>
1367
1368       </div>
1369       <div class="tags">
1370
1371
1372         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>.
1373
1374
1375       </div>
1376     </div>
1377     <div class="padding"></div>
1378
1379     <div class="entry">
1380       <div class="title">
1381         <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>
1382       </div>
1383       <div class="date">
1384          7th April 2016
1385       </div>
1386       <div class="body">
1387         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
1388 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
1389 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
1390 But I might be wrong.</p>
1391
1392 <p>According to
1393 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
1394 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
1395 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
1396 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
1397 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
1398 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
1399 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
1400 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
1401 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
1402 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
1403
1404 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
1405 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
1406 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
1407 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
1408 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
1409 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
1410 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
1411 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1412 team status page</a>, and
1413 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
1414 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
1415
1416 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
1417 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
1418 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
1419 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
1420 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
1421 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
1422 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
1423 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
1424 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
1425 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
1426 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
1427 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
1428
1429       </div>
1430       <div class="tags">
1431
1432
1433         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>.
1434
1435
1436       </div>
1437     </div>
1438     <div class="padding"></div>
1439
1440     <div class="entry">
1441       <div class="title">
1442         <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>
1443       </div>
1444       <div class="date">
1445         23rd March 2016
1446       </div>
1447       <div class="body">
1448         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
1449 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
1450 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
1451 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
1452 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
1453 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
1454 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
1455 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
1456
1457 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
1458 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
1459 and lifetime prediction by running:
1460
1461 <p><pre>
1462 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
1463 </pre></p>
1464
1465 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
1466
1467 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
1468 entry yet):</p>
1469
1470 <p><pre>
1471 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
1472 </pre></p>
1473
1474 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
1475 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
1476 few years of data.</p>
1477
1478 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
1479 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
1480 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
1481 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
1482 know.  The issue is reported as
1483 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
1484 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
1485 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
1486 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
1487 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
1488
1489 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
1490 check out the
1491 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
1492 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
1493 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
1494 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
1495 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
1496
1497       </div>
1498       <div class="tags">
1499
1500
1501         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>.
1502
1503
1504       </div>
1505     </div>
1506     <div class="padding"></div>
1507
1508     <div class="entry">
1509       <div class="title">
1510         <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>
1511       </div>
1512       <div class="date">
1513         15th March 2016
1514       </div>
1515       <div class="body">
1516         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
1517 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
1518 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
1519 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
1520 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
1521 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
1522 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
1523 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
1524 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
1525 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
1526 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
1527
1528 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
1529 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
1530 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
1531 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
1532 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
1533 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
1534 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
1535 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
1536 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
1537 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
1538 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
1539
1540 <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>
1541
1542 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
1543 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
1544 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
1545 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
1546 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
1547 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
1548
1549 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
1550 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
1551 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
1552 and graphing.</p>
1553
1554 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
1555 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
1556 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
1557 on
1558 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
1559 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
1560
1561       </div>
1562       <div class="tags">
1563
1564
1565         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>.
1566
1567
1568       </div>
1569     </div>
1570     <div class="padding"></div>
1571
1572     <div class="entry">
1573       <div class="title">
1574         <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>
1575       </div>
1576       <div class="date">
1577         19th February 2016
1578       </div>
1579       <div class="body">
1580         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
1581 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
1582 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
1583 the code in the package in question, preferably in
1584 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
1585 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
1586
1587 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
1588 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
1589 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
1590 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
1591 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
1592 out what was wrong with
1593 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
1594 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
1595 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
1596 semi-automatically.</p>
1597
1598 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
1599 file based on the code in the source package,
1600 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
1601 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
1602 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
1603 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
1604 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
1605 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
1606 option in
1607 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
1608 blog posts from 2014</a>.
1609
1610 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
1611
1612 <p><pre>
1613 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
1614 </pre></p>
1615
1616 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
1617 this might not be the best option.</p>
1618
1619 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
1620 this approach in
1621 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
1622 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
1623 dpkg-copyright' option:
1624
1625 <p><pre>
1626 cme update dpkg-copyright
1627 </pre></p>
1628
1629 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
1630 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
1631
1632 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
1633 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
1634 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
1635 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
1636 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
1637 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
1638 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
1639 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
1640 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
1641 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
1642
1643 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
1644 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
1645 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
1646 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
1647
1648 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
1649 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
1650 planet.debian.org.</p>
1651
1652 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1653 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1654 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1655
1656 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
1657 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
1658
1659 <p><pre>
1660 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
1661   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
1662 </pre></p>
1663
1664 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
1665 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
1666 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
1667 with my packages in the future.</p>
1668
1669 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
1670 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
1671 command line.</p>
1672
1673       </div>
1674       <div class="tags">
1675
1676
1677         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>.
1678
1679
1680       </div>
1681     </div>
1682     <div class="padding"></div>
1683
1684     <div class="entry">
1685       <div class="title">
1686         <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>
1687       </div>
1688       <div class="date">
1689          4th February 2016
1690       </div>
1691       <div class="body">
1692         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
1693 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
1694 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
1695 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
1696 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
1697 about. :)</p>
1698
1699 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
1700 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
1701 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
1702 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
1703 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
1704 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
1705
1706 <blockquote><pre>
1707 % apt install appstream
1708 [...]
1709 % apt update
1710 [...]
1711 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
1712   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
1713 firmware-qlogic
1714 %
1715 </pre></blockquote>
1716
1717 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
1718 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
1719 a way appstream can use.</p>
1720
1721 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
1722 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
1723 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
1724 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
1725 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
1726 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
1727
1728 <blockquote><pre>
1729 % apt install appstream
1730 [...]
1731 % apt update
1732 [...]
1733 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
1734   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
1735 bkchem
1736 phototonic
1737 inkscape
1738 shutter
1739 tetzle
1740 geeqie
1741 xia
1742 pinta
1743 gthumb
1744 karbon
1745 comix
1746 mirage
1747 viewnior
1748 postr
1749 ristretto
1750 kolourpaint4
1751 eog
1752 eom
1753 gimagereader
1754 midori
1755 %
1756 </pre></blockquote>
1757
1758 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
1759 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
1760
1761       </div>
1762       <div class="tags">
1763
1764
1765         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>.
1766
1767
1768       </div>
1769     </div>
1770     <div class="padding"></div>
1771
1772     <div class="entry">
1773       <div class="title">
1774         <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>
1775       </div>
1776       <div class="date">
1777         24th January 2016
1778       </div>
1779       <div class="body">
1780         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
1781 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
1782 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
1783 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
1784 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
1785 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
1786 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
1787 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
1788 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
1789 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
1790 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
1791 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
1792 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
1793 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
1794 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
1795 entities.</p>
1796
1797 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
1798
1799 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
1800 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
1801 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
1802 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
1803 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
1804 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
1805 tool to do so is called
1806 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
1807 discovered it when I read
1808 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
1809 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
1810 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
1811 The python program was in Debian, but
1812 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
1813 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
1814 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
1815 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
1816 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
1817 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
1818 are now included
1819 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
1820
1821 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
1822 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
1823 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
1824 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
1825 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
1826 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
1827 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
1828 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
1829 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
1830 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
1831 about yourself with the services.</p>
1832
1833 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
1834 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
1835 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
1836 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
1837 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
1838 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
1839 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
1840 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
1841 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
1842 things.  A similar technique have been
1843 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
1844 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
1845 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
1846 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
1847 public.</p>
1848
1849 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
1850 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
1851 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
1852 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
1853
1854 <p>(I have uploaded
1855 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
1856 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
1857 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
1858
1859       </div>
1860       <div class="tags">
1861
1862
1863         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>.
1864
1865
1866       </div>
1867     </div>
1868     <div class="padding"></div>
1869
1870     <div class="entry">
1871       <div class="title">
1872         <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>
1873       </div>
1874       <div class="date">
1875         15th January 2016
1876       </div>
1877       <div class="body">
1878         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
1879 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
1880 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
1881 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
1882 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
1883 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
1884 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
1885 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
1886 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
1887 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
1888 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
1889 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
1890 was not the first to propose this, as the
1891 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
1892 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
1893 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
1894 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
1895
1896 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
1897 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
1898 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
1899 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
1900 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
1901
1902 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
1903 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
1904 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
1905 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
1906 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
1907 done in /etc/.</p>
1908
1909 <blockquote><pre>
1910 apt install apt-transport-tor
1911 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
1912 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
1913 </pre></blockquote>
1914
1915 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
1916 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
1917 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
1918 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
1919
1920 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
1921 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
1922 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
1923 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
1924 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
1925 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
1926
1927 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
1928 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
1929 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
1930 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
1931 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
1932
1933 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
1934 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
1935 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
1936 system.</p>
1937
1938       </div>
1939       <div class="tags">
1940
1941
1942         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>.
1943
1944
1945       </div>
1946     </div>
1947     <div class="padding"></div>
1948
1949     <div class="entry">
1950       <div class="title">
1951         <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>
1952       </div>
1953       <div class="date">
1954         23rd December 2015
1955       </div>
1956       <div class="body">
1957         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
1958 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
1959 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
1960 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
1961 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
1962 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
1963
1964 <p>A few days I came across
1965 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
1966 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
1967 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
1968 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
1969 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
1970 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
1971 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
1972 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
1973 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
1974 discovered the developer
1975 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
1976 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
1977 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
1978 archive.</p>
1979
1980 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
1981 it into Debian, where it currently
1982 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
1983 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
1984
1985 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
1986 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
1987 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
1988 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
1989 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
1990 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
1991 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
1992 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
1993 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
1994 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
1995 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
1996 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
1997
1998 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
1999 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
2000 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
2001 package show up in unstable.</p>
2002
2003       </div>
2004       <div class="tags">
2005
2006
2007         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>.
2008
2009
2010       </div>
2011     </div>
2012     <div class="padding"></div>
2013
2014     <div class="entry">
2015       <div class="title">
2016         <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>
2017       </div>
2018       <div class="date">
2019         20th December 2015
2020       </div>
2021       <div class="body">
2022         <p>Around three years ago, I created
2023 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
2024 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
2025 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
2026 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
2027 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
2028 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
2029 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
2030 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
2031 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
2032 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
2033 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
2034 with.</p>
2035
2036 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
2037 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
2038 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
2039 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
2040 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
2041 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
2042 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
2043 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
2044 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
2045 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
2046 Debian version of appstream.</p>
2047
2048 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
2049 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
2050 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
2051 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
2052 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
2053 how do add the required
2054 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
2055 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
2056 this content:</p>
2057
2058 <blockquote><pre>
2059 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
2060 &lt;component&gt;
2061   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
2062   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
2063   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
2064   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
2065   &lt;description&gt;
2066     &lt;p&gt;
2067       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
2068       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
2069       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
2070       launcher.
2071     &lt;/p&gt;
2072   &lt;/description&gt;
2073   &lt;provides&gt;
2074     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
2075   &lt;/provides&gt;
2076 &lt;/component&gt;
2077 </pre></blockquote>
2078
2079 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
2080 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
2081 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
2082 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
2083 0202.</p>
2084
2085 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
2086 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
2087 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
2088 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
2089 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
2090 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
2091 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
2092 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
2093
2094 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
2095 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
2096 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
2097 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
2098 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
2099
2100 <blockquote><pre>
2101 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
2102 </pre></blockquote>
2103
2104 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
2105 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
2106 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
2107 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
2108 question.</p>
2109
2110 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
2111 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
2112
2113 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
2114 try running this command on the command line:</p>
2115
2116 <blockquote><pre>
2117 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
2118 </pre></blockquote>
2119
2120 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2121 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2122 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2123
2124       </div>
2125       <div class="tags">
2126
2127
2128         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>.
2129
2130
2131       </div>
2132     </div>
2133     <div class="padding"></div>
2134
2135     <div class="entry">
2136       <div class="title">
2137         <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>
2138       </div>
2139       <div class="date">
2140         30th November 2015
2141       </div>
2142       <div class="body">
2143         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
2144 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
2145 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
2146 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
2147 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
2148
2149 <blockquote>
2150
2151 <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>
2152
2153 <blockquote>
2154 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
2155
2156 The first step is to choose a
2157 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
2158 code.<br/>
2159
2160 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
2161 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
2162
2163 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
2164 work<br/>
2165
2166 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
2167 </blockquote>
2168
2169 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
2170 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
2171 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
2172 0x57</a></small></p>
2173
2174 <p>As the Debian Website
2175 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
2176 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
2177 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
2178 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
2179 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
2180 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
2181 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
2182 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
2183 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
2184 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
2185 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
2186 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
2187 Freedom">FaiF</a>
2188 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
2189 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
2190 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
2191 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
2192 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
2193 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
2194 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
2195 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
2196 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
2197 In March the SFC supported a
2198 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
2199 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
2200 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
2201 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
2202 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
2203 conferences
2204 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
2205 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
2206 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
2207 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
2208 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
2209 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
2210 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
2211 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
2212 Software.</p>
2213
2214 <p>If you support Free Software,
2215 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
2216 what the SFC do, agree with their
2217 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
2218 principles</a>, are happy about their
2219 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
2220 work on a project that is an SFC
2221 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
2222 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
2223 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
2224 Allan Webber</a>,
2225 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
2226 Smith</a>,
2227 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
2228 Bacon</a>, myself and
2229 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
2230 becoming a
2231 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
2232 next week your donation will be
2233 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
2234 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
2235 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
2236 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
2237 social media accounts.</p>
2238
2239 </blockquote>
2240
2241 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
2242 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
2243 supporter too?</p>
2244
2245       </div>
2246       <div class="tags">
2247
2248
2249         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>.
2250
2251
2252       </div>
2253     </div>
2254     <div class="padding"></div>
2255
2256     <div class="entry">
2257       <div class="title">
2258         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
2259       </div>
2260       <div class="date">
2261         17th November 2015
2262       </div>
2263       <div class="body">
2264         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
2265 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
2266 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
2267 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
2268 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
2269 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
2270 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
2271 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
2272 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
2273 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
2274
2275 <pre>
2276 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
2277       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
2278 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
2279 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
2280 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
2281 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
2282 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
2283 </pre>
2284
2285 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
2286 my old key.</p>
2287
2288 <p>If you signed my old key
2289 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
2290 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
2291 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
2292 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
2293
2294       </div>
2295       <div class="tags">
2296
2297
2298         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>.
2299
2300
2301       </div>
2302     </div>
2303     <div class="padding"></div>
2304
2305     <div class="entry">
2306       <div class="title">
2307         <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>
2308       </div>
2309       <div class="date">
2310         24th September 2015
2311       </div>
2312       <div class="body">
2313         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
2314 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
2315 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
2316 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
2317 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
2318 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
2319 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
2320
2321 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
2322
2323 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
2324 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
2325 by someone else.  I found
2326 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
2327 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
2328 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
2329 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
2330 from him.  Via
2331 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
2332 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
2333 discovered
2334 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
2335 available in Debian.</p>
2336
2337 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
2338 battery stats ever since. Now my
2339 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
2340 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
2341 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
2342 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
2343
2344 <pre>
2345 #!/bin/sh
2346 # Inspired by
2347 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
2348 # See also
2349 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
2350 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
2351
2352 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
2353     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
2354
2355 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
2356     (
2357         printf "timestamp,"
2358         for f in $files; do
2359             printf "%s," $f
2360         done
2361         echo
2362     ) > "$logfile"
2363 fi
2364
2365 log_battery() {
2366     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
2367     # when several log processes run in parallel.
2368     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
2369         for f in $files; do \
2370             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
2371         done)
2372     echo "$msg"
2373 }
2374
2375 cd /sys/class/power_supply
2376
2377 for bat in BAT*; do
2378     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
2379 done
2380 </pre>
2381
2382 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
2383 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
2384 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
2385 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
2386 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
2387 The code for the Debian package
2388 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
2389 available on github</a>.</p>
2390
2391 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
2392
2393 <pre>
2394 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
2395 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
2396 [...]
2397 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
2398 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
2399 </pre>
2400
2401 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
2402 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
2403 battery.</p>
2404
2405 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
2406 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
2407 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
2408 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
2409 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
2410 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
2411 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
2412 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
2413 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
2414 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
2415 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
2416 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
2417 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
2418 Linux too.</p>
2419
2420 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
2421 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
2422 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
2423 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
2424 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
2425 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
2426 load).</p>
2427
2428 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
2429 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
2430 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
2431 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
2432 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
2433 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
2434 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
2435 those.</p>
2436
2437 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
2438 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
2439 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
2440 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
2441 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
2442 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
2443 specific.</p>
2444
2445       </div>
2446       <div class="tags">
2447
2448
2449         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>.
2450
2451
2452       </div>
2453     </div>
2454     <div class="padding"></div>
2455
2456     <div class="entry">
2457       <div class="title">
2458         <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>
2459       </div>
2460       <div class="date">
2461          5th July 2015
2462       </div>
2463       <div class="body">
2464         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
2465 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
2466 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
2467 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
2468 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
2469 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
2470 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
2471 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
2472 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
2473 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
2474 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
2475
2476 <p>One tip I got was to use the
2477 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
2478 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
2479 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
2480 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
2481 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
2482 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
2483
2484 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
2485 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
2486 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
2487 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
2488 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
2489 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
2490 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
2491 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
2492 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
2493 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
2494 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
2495 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
2496 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
2497 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
2498 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
2499
2500 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
2501 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
2502 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
2503 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
2504
2505 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
2506 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
2507
2508 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
2509 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
2510 different
2511 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
2512 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
2513
2514       </div>
2515       <div class="tags">
2516
2517
2518         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>.
2519
2520
2521       </div>
2522     </div>
2523     <div class="padding"></div>
2524
2525     <div class="entry">
2526       <div class="title">
2527         <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>
2528       </div>
2529       <div class="date">
2530          3rd July 2015
2531       </div>
2532       <div class="body">
2533         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
2534 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
2535 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
2536 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
2537 flickering.</p>
2538
2539 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
2540 still as
2541 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
2542 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
2543 good help from
2544 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
2545 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
2546 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
2547 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
2548 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
2549 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
2550 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
2551 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
2552 deteriorated since X41.</p>
2553
2554 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
2555 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
2556 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
2557 have suggestions.</p>
2558
2559 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
2560 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
2561 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
2562
2563       </div>
2564       <div class="tags">
2565
2566
2567         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>.
2568
2569
2570       </div>
2571     </div>
2572     <div class="padding"></div>
2573
2574     <div class="entry">
2575       <div class="title">
2576         <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>
2577       </div>
2578       <div class="date">
2579         22nd November 2014
2580       </div>
2581       <div class="body">
2582         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
2583 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
2584 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
2585 courtesy of
2586 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
2587 Schubert</a> and
2588 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
2589 McVittie</a>.
2590
2591 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
2592 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
2593 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
2594 you upgrade:</p>
2595
2596 <p><blockquote><pre>
2597 Package: systemd-sysv
2598 Pin: release o=Debian
2599 Pin-Priority: -1
2600 </pre></blockquote><p>
2601
2602 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
2603 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
2604 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
2605 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
2606 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
2607
2608 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
2609 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
2610 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
2611 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
2612 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
2613 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
2614
2615 <p><blockquote><pre>
2616 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
2617 </pre></blockquote><p>
2618
2619 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
2620
2621 <p><blockquote><pre>
2622 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
2623 </pre></blockquote><p>
2624
2625 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
2626 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
2627
2628 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
2629 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
2630 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
2631 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
2632 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
2633 Jessie is released.</p>
2634
2635 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
2636 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
2637 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
2638 line.</p>
2639
2640       </div>
2641       <div class="tags">
2642
2643
2644         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>.
2645
2646
2647       </div>
2648     </div>
2649     <div class="padding"></div>
2650
2651     <div class="entry">
2652       <div class="title">
2653         <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>
2654       </div>
2655       <div class="date">
2656         10th November 2014
2657       </div>
2658       <div class="body">
2659         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
2660 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
2661 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
2662
2663 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
2664 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
2665 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
2666 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
2667 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
2668 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
2669 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
2670 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
2671 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
2672 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
2673 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
2674 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
2675 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
2676 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
2677 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
2678
2679 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
2680 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
2681 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
2682 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
2683 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
2684 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
2685 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
2686 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
2687 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
2688 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
2689 were fairly easy, and
2690 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
2691 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
2692 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
2693 useful approach.</p>
2694
2695 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
2696 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
2697 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
2698 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
2699 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
2700 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
2701 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
2702 this:</p>
2703
2704 <p><blockquote><pre>
2705 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
2706   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
2707 </pre></blockquote></p>
2708
2709 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
2710 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
2711
2712 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
2713 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
2714 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
2715 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
2716 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
2717 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
2718 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
2719 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
2720 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
2721 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
2722 system.</p>
2723
2724 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
2725 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
2726 SMTorP. :)</p>
2727
2728       </div>
2729       <div class="tags">
2730
2731
2732         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>.
2733
2734
2735       </div>
2736     </div>
2737     <div class="padding"></div>
2738
2739     <div class="entry">
2740       <div class="title">
2741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
2742       </div>
2743       <div class="date">
2744         22nd October 2014
2745       </div>
2746       <div class="body">
2747         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
2748 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
2749 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
2750 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
2751 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
2752 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
2753 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
2754 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
2755 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
2756 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
2757 lists I recently took over:</p>
2758
2759 <p><blockquote><pre>
2760 % time listadmin xiph
2761 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2762 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2763
2764 real    0m1.709s
2765 user    0m0.232s
2766 sys     0m0.012s
2767 %
2768 </pre></blockquote></p>
2769
2770 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
2771 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
2772 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
2773 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
2774 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
2775 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
2776 program.</p>
2777
2778 <p>If you install
2779 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
2780 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
2781 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
2782
2783 <p><blockquote><pre>
2784 username username@example.org
2785 spamlevel 23
2786 default discard
2787 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
2788
2789 password secret
2790 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
2791 mailman-list@lists.example.com
2792
2793 password hidden
2794 other-list@otherserver.example.org
2795 </pre></blockquote></p>
2796
2797 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
2798 learn the details.</p>
2799
2800 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
2801 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
2802 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
2803 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
2804
2805 <p><blockquote><pre>
2806 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
2807 </pre></blockquote></p>
2808
2809 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
2810 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
2811 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
2812 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
2813 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
2814 email.</p>
2815
2816 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
2817 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
2818 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
2819 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
2820 software.</p>
2821
2822 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2823 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2824 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2825
2826 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
2827 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
2828 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
2829 sure why.</p>
2830
2831       </div>
2832       <div class="tags">
2833
2834
2835         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>.
2836
2837
2838       </div>
2839     </div>
2840     <div class="padding"></div>
2841
2842     <div class="entry">
2843       <div class="title">
2844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
2845       </div>
2846       <div class="date">
2847         17th October 2014
2848       </div>
2849       <div class="body">
2850         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
2851 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
2852 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
2853 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
2854 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
2855 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
2856 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
2857
2858 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
2859 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
2860 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
2861 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
2862 of this story.)</p>
2863
2864 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
2865 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
2866 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
2867 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
2868 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
2869 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
2870 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
2871 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
2872 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
2873 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
2874
2875 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
2876 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
2877 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
2878 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
2879
2880 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
2881 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
2882
2883 <p><blockquote><pre>
2884 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
2885 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
2886 </pre></blockquote></p>
2887
2888 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
2889 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
2890 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
2891 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
2892 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
2893 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
2894 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
2895 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
2896
2897 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
2898 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
2899
2900 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
2901 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
2902 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
2903 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
2904 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
2905
2906 <p><blockquote><pre>
2907 Task: isenkram-packages
2908 Section: hardware
2909 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2910  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2911  proposed.
2912 Test-new-install: show show
2913 Relevance: 8
2914 Packages: for-current-hardware
2915
2916 Task: isenkram-firmware
2917 Section: hardware
2918 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2919  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
2920  packages are proposed.
2921 Test-new-install: mark show
2922 Relevance: 8
2923 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
2924 </pre></blockquote></p>
2925
2926 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
2927 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
2928 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
2929 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
2930 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
2931
2932 <p><blockquote><pre>
2933 #!/bin/sh
2934 #
2935 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
2936 export PATH
2937 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2938 </pre></blockquote></p>
2939
2940 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
2941 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
2942
2943 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
2944 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
2945 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
2946 install.</p>
2947
2948 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
2949 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
2950 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
2951
2952       </div>
2953       <div class="tags">
2954
2955
2956         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>.
2957
2958
2959       </div>
2960     </div>
2961     <div class="padding"></div>
2962
2963     <div class="entry">
2964       <div class="title">
2965         <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>
2966       </div>
2967       <div class="date">
2968          4th October 2014
2969       </div>
2970       <div class="body">
2971         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
2972 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
2973 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
2974 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
2975
2976 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
2977
2978 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
2979 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
2980 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
2981
2982       </div>
2983       <div class="tags">
2984
2985
2986         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>.
2987
2988
2989       </div>
2990     </div>
2991     <div class="padding"></div>
2992
2993     <div class="entry">
2994       <div class="title">
2995         <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>
2996       </div>
2997       <div class="date">
2998          4th October 2014
2999       </div>
3000       <div class="body">
3001         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
3002 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
3003 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
3004 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
3005 Dibb.</p>
3006
3007 <p>I just wrapped up
3008 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
3009 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
3010 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
3011 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
3012 0.17.</p>
3013
3014 <ul>
3015
3016  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
3017  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
3018    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
3019  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
3020  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
3021  <li>Fix include orders</li>
3022  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
3023  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
3024  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
3025    the palette size is the same.</li>
3026  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
3027  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
3028  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
3029  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
3030    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
3031
3032 </ul>
3033
3034 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
3035 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
3036 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
3037
3038       </div>
3039       <div class="tags">
3040
3041
3042         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>.
3043
3044
3045       </div>
3046     </div>
3047     <div class="padding"></div>
3048
3049     <div class="entry">
3050       <div class="title">
3051         <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>
3052       </div>
3053       <div class="date">
3054         26th September 2014
3055       </div>
3056       <div class="body">
3057         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3058 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
3059 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
3060 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
3061 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
3062 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
3063 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
3064 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
3065 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
3066 future.  The
3067 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
3068 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
3069 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
3070 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
3071 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
3072
3073 <p>First, download the test ISO via
3074 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
3075 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
3076 or rsync (use
3077 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
3078 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
3079 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
3080 install with some tweaking.</p>
3081
3082 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
3083 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
3084
3085 <p><blockquote><pre>
3086 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
3087 </pre></blockquote></p>
3088
3089 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
3090 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
3091 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
3092 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
3093
3094 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
3095 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
3096 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
3097 your need.</p>
3098
3099 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
3100 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
3101 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
3102 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
3103 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
3104 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
3105 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
3106 days.</p>
3107
3108 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
3109 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
3110 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
3111 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
3112 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
3113 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
3114 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
3115 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
3116 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
3117
3118 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
3119 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
3120 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
3121
3122       </div>
3123       <div class="tags">
3124
3125
3126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3127
3128
3129       </div>
3130     </div>
3131     <div class="padding"></div>
3132
3133     <div class="entry">
3134       <div class="title">
3135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
3136       </div>
3137       <div class="date">
3138         25th September 2014
3139       </div>
3140       <div class="body">
3141         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
3142 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
3143 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
3144 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
3145 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
3146 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
3147 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
3148 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
3149 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
3150 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
3151 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
3152 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
3153 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
3154
3155 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
3156 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
3157 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
3158 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
3159 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
3160 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
3161 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
3162 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
3163 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
3164 list</a>. :)</p>
3165
3166       </div>
3167       <div class="tags">
3168
3169
3170         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>.
3171
3172
3173       </div>
3174     </div>
3175     <div class="padding"></div>
3176
3177     <div class="entry">
3178       <div class="title">
3179         <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>
3180       </div>
3181       <div class="date">
3182         16th September 2014
3183       </div>
3184       <div class="body">
3185         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
3186 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
3187 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
3188 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
3189 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
3190 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
3191 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
3192 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
3193 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
3194 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
3195 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
3196 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
3197 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
3198 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
3199
3200 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
3201 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
3202 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
3203 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
3204 depend on the small and clever package
3205 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
3206 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
3207 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
3208 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
3209 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
3210 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
3211 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
3212 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
3213 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
3214 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
3215 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
3216
3217 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
3218 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
3219 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
3220 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
3221 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
3222 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
3223 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
3224 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
3225 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
3226 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
3227 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
3228 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
3229 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
3230 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
3231 dialog.</p>
3232
3233 <p><table>
3234
3235 <tr>
3236 <th>Machine/setup</th>
3237 <th>Original tasksel</th>
3238 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
3239 <th>Reduction</th>
3240 </tr>
3241
3242 <tr>
3243 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
3244 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
3245 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
3246 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
3247 </tr>
3248
3249 <tr>
3250 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
3251 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
3252 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
3253 <td>23 min 40%</td>
3254 </tr>
3255
3256 <tr>
3257 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
3258 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
3259 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
3260 <td>11 min 50%</td>
3261 </tr>
3262
3263 <tr>
3264 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
3265 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
3266 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
3267 <td>2 min 33%</td>
3268 </tr>
3269
3270 <tr>
3271 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
3272 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
3273 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
3274 <td>4 min 21%</td>
3275 </tr>
3276
3277 </table></p>
3278
3279 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
3280 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
3281 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
3282 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
3283 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
3284 installed.</p>
3285
3286 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
3287 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
3288 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
3289 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
3290 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
3291 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
3292 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
3293 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
3294 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
3295 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
3296 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
3297 for the entire installation.</p>
3298
3299 <p>I've implemented this in the
3300 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
3301 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
3302 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
3303 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
3304 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
3305
3306 <p><blockquote><pre>
3307 #!/bin/sh
3308 set -e
3309 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3310 info() {
3311     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
3312 }
3313 error() {
3314     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
3315 }
3316 override_install() {
3317     apt-install eatmydata || true
3318     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
3319         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3320             file=/usr/bin/$bin
3321             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
3322             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
3323                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
3324                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
3325                     > /target$file.edu
3326                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
3327                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3328                     --rename --quiet --add $file
3329                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
3330             else
3331                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
3332             fi
3333         done
3334     else
3335         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
3336     fi
3337 }
3338
3339 override_install
3340 </pre></blockquote></p>
3341
3342 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
3343 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
3344
3345 <p><blockquote><pre>
3346 #! /bin/sh -e
3347 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3348 error() {
3349     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
3350 }
3351 remove_install_override() {
3352     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3353         file=/usr/bin/$bin
3354         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
3355             rm /target$file
3356             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3357                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
3358             rm /target$file.edu
3359         else
3360             error "Missing divert for $file."
3361         fi
3362     done
3363     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
3364 }
3365
3366 remove_install_override
3367 </pre></blockquote></p>
3368
3369 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
3370 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
3371 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
3372
3373 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
3374 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
3375 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
3376 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
3377 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
3378 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
3379 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
3380 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
3381 everyone.</p>
3382
3383 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
3384 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
3385 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
3386 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
3387
3388 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
3389 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
3390 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
3391 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
3392 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
3393
3394 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
3395 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
3396 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
3397 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
3398 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
3399
3400       </div>
3401       <div class="tags">
3402
3403
3404         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>.
3405
3406
3407       </div>
3408     </div>
3409     <div class="padding"></div>
3410
3411     <div class="entry">
3412       <div class="title">
3413         <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>
3414       </div>
3415       <div class="date">
3416         10th September 2014
3417       </div>
3418       <div class="body">
3419         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
3420 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
3421 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
3422 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
3423 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
3424 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
3425 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
3426 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
3427 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
3428 those problems are gone now.</p>
3429
3430 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
3431 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
3432 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
3433 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
3434 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
3435
3436 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
3437 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
3438 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
3439
3440 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
3441 line:</p>
3442
3443 <p><blockquote><pre>
3444 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
3445 </pre></blockquote></p>
3446
3447 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
3448 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
3449 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
3450 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
3451
3452 <p><blockquote><pre>
3453 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
3454 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
3455 %
3456 </pre></blockquote></p>
3457
3458 <p>Now if only
3459 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
3460 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
3461 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3462 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3463 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3464 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3465 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3466 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3467 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3468
3469       </div>
3470       <div class="tags">
3471
3472
3473         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>.
3474
3475
3476       </div>
3477     </div>
3478     <div class="padding"></div>
3479
3480     <div class="entry">
3481       <div class="title">
3482         <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>
3483       </div>
3484       <div class="date">
3485         17th June 2014
3486       </div>
3487       <div class="body">
3488         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3489 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
3490 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
3491 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
3492 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
3493
3494 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
3495 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
3496 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
3497 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
3498 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
3499 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
3500 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
3501 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
3502 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
3503 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
3504 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
3505 goals.</p>
3506
3507 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
3508 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
3509 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
3510 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
3511 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
3512 chapters together into one large web page (aka
3513 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
3514 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
3515 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
3516 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
3517 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
3518 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
3519 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
3520 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
3521 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
3522 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
3523 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
3524 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
3525 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
3526 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
3527 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
3528 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
3529 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
3530 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
3531
3532 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
3533 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
3534 track the English original.  For this we use the
3535 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
3536 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
3537 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
3538 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
3539 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
3540 files), which the translations update with the native language
3541 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
3542 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
3543 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
3544 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
3545 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
3546 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
3547 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
3548 of the documentation.</p>
3549
3550 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
3551 recommend using
3552 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
3553 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
3554 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
3555 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
3556 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
3557 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
3558 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
3559 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
3560
3561 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
3562 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
3563 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
3564 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
3565 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
3566 translated images by storing translated versions in
3567 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
3568 package maintainers know more.</p>
3569
3570 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
3571 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
3572 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
3573 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
3574 PDF version</a> or the
3575 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
3576 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
3577 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
3578
3579 <p>To learn more, check out
3580 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
3581 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
3582 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
3583 manual on the wiki</a> and
3584 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
3585 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
3586
3587       </div>
3588       <div class="tags">
3589
3590
3591         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>.
3592
3593
3594       </div>
3595     </div>
3596     <div class="padding"></div>
3597
3598     <div class="entry">
3599       <div class="title">
3600         <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>
3601       </div>
3602       <div class="date">
3603         23rd April 2014
3604       </div>
3605       <div class="body">
3606         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
3607 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
3608 So I implemented one, using
3609 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
3610 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
3611 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
3612 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
3613 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
3614 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
3615
3616 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
3617 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
3618 packages to install.  The first part is in
3619 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
3620 this:</p>
3621
3622 <p><blockquote><pre>
3623 Task: isenkram
3624 Section: hardware
3625 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3626  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3627  proposed.
3628 Test-new-install: mark show
3629 Relevance: 8
3630 Packages: for-current-hardware
3631 </pre></blockquote></p>
3632
3633 <p>The second part is in
3634 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
3635 this:</p>
3636
3637 <p><blockquote><pre>
3638 #!/bin/sh
3639 #
3640 (
3641     isenkram-lookup
3642     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3643 ) | sort -u
3644 </pre></blockquote></p>
3645
3646 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
3647 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
3648 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
3649 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
3650 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
3651 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
3652
3653 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
3654 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
3655 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
3656 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
3657 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
3658 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
3659 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
3660 the python-apt code (bug
3661 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
3662 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
3663 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
3664 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
3665 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
3666 unstable today.</p>
3667
3668 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
3669 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
3670 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
3671 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
3672 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
3673 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
3674 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
3675 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
3676 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
3677
3678 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
3679 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
3680 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
3681 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
3682 package.  See also
3683 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
3684 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
3685 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
3686 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
3687
3688       </div>
3689       <div class="tags">
3690
3691
3692         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>.
3693
3694
3695       </div>
3696     </div>
3697     <div class="padding"></div>
3698
3699     <div class="entry">
3700       <div class="title">
3701         <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>
3702       </div>
3703       <div class="date">
3704         15th April 2014
3705       </div>
3706       <div class="body">
3707         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3708 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
3709 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
3710 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
3711 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
3712 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
3713
3714 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
3715 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
3716 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
3717 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
3718 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
3719 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
3720 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
3721
3722 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
3723 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
3724 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
3725 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
3726 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
3727 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
3728 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
3729 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
3730 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
3731 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
3732 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
3733 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
3734
3735 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
3736 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
3737 become root:</p>
3738
3739 <p><pre>
3740 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3741   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3742   u-boot-tools
3743 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3744   freedom-maker
3745 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3746 </pre></p>
3747
3748 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3749 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
3750 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
3751 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
3752 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
3753 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
3754 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
3755 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
3756
3757 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3758 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3759 the preseed values:</p>
3760
3761 <p><pre>
3762 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3763 </pre></p>
3764
3765 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
3766 it still work.</p>
3767
3768 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
3769 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
3770 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
3771 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
3772 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
3773 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
3774 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
3775
3776 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3777 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3778 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3779 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3780 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3781 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3782
3783       </div>
3784       <div class="tags">
3785
3786
3787         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>.
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/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
3797       </div>
3798       <div class="date">
3799          9th April 2014
3800       </div>
3801       <div class="body">
3802         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
3803 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
3804 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
3805 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
3806 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
3807 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
3808 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
3809 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
3810 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
3811 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
3812 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
3813 have looked at a system called
3814 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
3815 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
3816
3817 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
3818 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
3819 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
3820 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
3821 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
3822 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
3823 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
3824 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
3825 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
3826 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
3827 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
3828 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
3829 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
3830
3831 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
3832 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
3833 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
3834 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
3835 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
3836 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
3837 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
3838 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
3839 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
3840 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
3841 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
3842 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
3843 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
3844 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
3845 account.</p>
3846
3847 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
3848 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
3849 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
3850 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
3851 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
3852 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
3853 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
3854
3855 <p><blockquote><pre>
3856 [s3c]
3857 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3858 backend-login: API-login
3859 backend-password: API-password
3860 fs-passphrase: local-password
3861 </pre></blockquote></p>
3862
3863 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
3864 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
3865 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
3866 details and password to create it:</p>
3867
3868 <p><blockquote><pre>
3869 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
3870 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3871   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3872 Enter backend login:
3873 Enter backend password:
3874 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
3875 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
3876 Enter encryption password:
3877 Confirm encryption password:
3878 Generating random encryption key...
3879 Creating metadata tables...
3880 Dumping metadata...
3881 ..objects..
3882 ..blocks..
3883 ..inodes..
3884 ..inode_blocks..
3885 ..symlink_targets..
3886 ..names..
3887 ..contents..
3888 ..ext_attributes..
3889 Compressing and uploading metadata...
3890 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
3891 # </pre></blockquote></p>
3892
3893 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
3894
3895 <p><blockquote><pre>
3896 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3897   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
3898 Using 4 upload threads.
3899 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
3900 Reading metadata...
3901 ..objects..
3902 ..blocks..
3903 ..inodes..
3904 ..inode_blocks..
3905 ..symlink_targets..
3906 ..names..
3907 ..contents..
3908 ..ext_attributes..
3909 Mounting filesystem...
3910 # df -h /s3ql
3911 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
3912 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
3913 #
3914 </pre></blockquote></p>
3915
3916 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
3917 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
3918 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
3919 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
3920 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
3921 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
3922
3923 <p><blockquote><pre>
3924 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
3925 #
3926 </pre></blockquote></p>
3927
3928 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
3929 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
3930 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
3931 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
3932 file system:</p>
3933
3934 <p><blockquote><pre>
3935 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3936 Using cached metadata.
3937 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
3938 Checking DB integrity...
3939 Creating temporary extra indices...
3940 Checking lost+found...
3941 Checking cached objects...
3942 Checking names (refcounts)...
3943 Checking contents (names)...
3944 Checking contents (inodes)...
3945 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
3946 Checking objects (reference counts)...
3947 Checking objects (backend)...
3948 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
3949 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
3950 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
3951 Checking objects (sizes)...
3952 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
3953 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
3954 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
3955 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
3956 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
3957 Checking inodes (sizes)...
3958 Checking extended attributes (names)...
3959 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
3960 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
3961 Checking directory reachability...
3962 Checking unix conventions...
3963 Checking referential integrity...
3964 Dropping temporary indices...
3965 Backing up old metadata...
3966 Dumping metadata...
3967 ..objects..
3968 ..blocks..
3969 ..inodes..
3970 ..inode_blocks..
3971 ..symlink_targets..
3972 ..names..
3973 ..contents..
3974 ..ext_attributes..
3975 Compressing and uploading metadata...
3976 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
3977 #
3978 </pre></blockquote></p>
3979
3980 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
3981 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
3982 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
3983 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
3984 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
3985 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
3986 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
3987 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
3988 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
3989 working set.</p>
3990
3991 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
3992 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
3993 busy:</p>
3994
3995 <p><blockquote><pre>
3996 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3997   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
3998 Using 8 upload threads.
3999 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4000 #
4001 </pre></blockquote></p>
4002
4003 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4004 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
4005 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4006 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4007 s3qlctrl:
4008
4009 <p><blockquote><pre>
4010 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4011 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4012 #
4013 </pre></blockquote></p>
4014
4015 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4016 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4017 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4018 a report:</p>
4019
4020 <p><blockquote><pre>
4021 # s3qlstat /s3ql
4022 Directory entries:    9141
4023 Inodes:               9143
4024 Data blocks:          8851
4025 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
4026 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
4027 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
4028 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4029 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4030 #
4031 </pre></blockquote></p>
4032
4033 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4034 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4035 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
4036 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
4037 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
4038 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
4039 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
4040 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
4041 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4042 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4043 best.</p>
4044
4045 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4046 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
4047 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4048 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
4049 poster is titled
4050 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4051 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4052 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4053 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4054 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
4055
4056 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4057 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4058 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4059 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
4060 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
4061 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4062 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
4063 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4064
4065 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4066 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4067 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4068 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4069 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4070 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4071 only read from it.</p>
4072
4073 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4074 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4075 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4076
4077       </div>
4078       <div class="tags">
4079
4080
4081         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>.
4082
4083
4084       </div>
4085     </div>
4086     <div class="padding"></div>
4087
4088     <div class="entry">
4089       <div class="title">
4090         <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>
4091       </div>
4092       <div class="date">
4093         14th March 2014
4094       </div>
4095       <div class="body">
4096         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4097 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4098 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4099 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4100 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
4101 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4102 release (0.2).</p>
4103
4104 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4105 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4106 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4107 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4108 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4109 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
4110 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
4111 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4112 and build using
4113 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
4114 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4115
4116 <pre>
4117 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4118   freedom-maker
4119 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4120   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4121   u-boot-tools
4122 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4123 </pre>
4124
4125 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4126 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4127 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
4128 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4129 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4130 kpartx call.</p>
4131
4132 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4133 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4134 the preseed values:</p>
4135
4136 <pre>
4137 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4138 </pre>
4139
4140 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4141 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
4142 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
4143 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4144 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
4145 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
4146
4147 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4148 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4149 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4150 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4151 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4152 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4153
4154       </div>
4155       <div class="tags">
4156
4157
4158         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>.
4159
4160
4161       </div>
4162     </div>
4163     <div class="padding"></div>
4164
4165     <div class="entry">
4166       <div class="title">
4167         <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>
4168       </div>
4169       <div class="date">
4170         22nd February 2014
4171       </div>
4172       <div class="body">
4173         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
4174 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
4175 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
4176 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
4177 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
4178 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
4179 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
4180 proper home since then.</p>
4181
4182 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
4183 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
4184 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
4185 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
4186 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
4187
4188 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
4189 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
4190 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
4191 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
4192 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
4193 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
4194 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
4195 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
4196 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
4197
4198       </div>
4199       <div class="tags">
4200
4201
4202         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>.
4203
4204
4205       </div>
4206     </div>
4207     <div class="padding"></div>
4208
4209     <div class="entry">
4210       <div class="title">
4211         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4212       </div>
4213       <div class="date">
4214          3rd February 2014
4215       </div>
4216       <div class="body">
4217         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4218 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4219 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4220 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4221 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4222 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
4223 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
4224 <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>,
4225 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
4226
4227 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
4228 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
4229 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
4230 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
4231 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
4232 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
4233
4234 <p><blockquote><pre>
4235 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
4236 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
4237 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
4238 dhclient /dev/eth0
4239 </pre></blockquote></p>
4240
4241 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
4242 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
4243 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
4244
4245 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
4246 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
4247 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
4248 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
4249 side.</p>
4250
4251 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
4252 stuff:</p>
4253
4254 <p><blockquote><pre>
4255 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4256 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
4257 EOF
4258 apt-get update
4259 apt-get dist-upgrade
4260 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
4261     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
4262 update-alternatives --config runsystem
4263 </pre></blockquote></p>
4264
4265 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
4266 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
4267 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
4268 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
4269 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
4270 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
4271 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
4272 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
4273 ssh instead.
4274
4275 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
4276 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
4277 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
4278 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
4279 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
4280 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
4281
4282 <p><blockquote><pre>
4283 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4284 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
4285 EOF
4286 </pre></blockquote></p>
4287
4288 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
4289 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
4290 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
4291 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
4292
4293 <p><blockquote><pre>
4294 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
4295 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
4296 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
4297 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
4298 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
4299 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
4300 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
4301 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
4302 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
4303 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
4304 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
4305 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
4306 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
4307 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
4308 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
4309 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
4310 #
4311 </pre></blockquote></p>
4312
4313 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
4314 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
4315 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
4316 command line stuff.<p>
4317
4318       </div>
4319       <div class="tags">
4320
4321
4322         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>.
4323
4324
4325       </div>
4326     </div>
4327     <div class="padding"></div>
4328
4329     <div class="entry">
4330       <div class="title">
4331         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
4332       </div>
4333       <div class="date">
4334         14th January 2014
4335       </div>
4336       <div class="body">
4337         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
4338 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
4339 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
4340 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
4341 the source.  The company behind it provide
4342 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
4343 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
4344 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
4345 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
4346 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
4347 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
4348 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
4349 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
4350 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
4351 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
4352 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
4353 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
4354 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
4355 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
4356 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
4357 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
4358 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
4359 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
4360 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
4361
4362 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
4363
4364 <ul>
4365
4366   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
4367   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
4368   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
4369
4370 </ul>
4371
4372 <p>You can
4373 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4374 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4375 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4376 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4377 include a test suite check.</p>
4378
4379       </div>
4380       <div class="tags">
4381
4382
4383         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>.
4384
4385
4386       </div>
4387     </div>
4388     <div class="padding"></div>
4389
4390     <div class="entry">
4391       <div class="title">
4392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
4393       </div>
4394       <div class="date">
4395         24th November 2013
4396       </div>
4397       <div class="body">
4398         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
4399 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
4400 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
4401 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
4402 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
4403 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
4404 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
4405 is working on.  I checked the
4406 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
4407 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
4408 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
4409 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
4410 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
4411 These are the release notes:</p>
4412
4413 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
4414
4415 <ul>
4416
4417   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
4418    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
4419    up.</li>
4420
4421   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
4422
4423   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
4424    Matthias Klose.</li>
4425
4426   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
4427    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
4428
4429   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
4430    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
4431    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
4432
4433 </ul>
4434
4435 <p>You can
4436 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4437 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4438 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4439 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4440 include a testsuite check.</p>
4441
4442       </div>
4443       <div class="tags">
4444
4445
4446         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>.
4447
4448
4449       </div>
4450     </div>
4451     <div class="padding"></div>
4452
4453     <div class="entry">
4454       <div class="title">
4455         <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>
4456       </div>
4457       <div class="date">
4458          2nd November 2013
4459       </div>
4460       <div class="body">
4461         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
4462 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
4463 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
4464 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
4465 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
4466
4467 <p><pre>
4468 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
4469 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
4470 # Provides:          rsyslog
4471 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
4472 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
4473 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
4474 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
4475 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
4476 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
4477 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
4478 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
4479 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
4480 ### END INIT INFO
4481 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
4482 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
4483 </pre></p>
4484
4485 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
4486 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
4487 info/comments.</p>
4488
4489 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
4490 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
4491
4492 <p><pre>
4493 #!/bin/sh
4494
4495 # Define LSB log_* functions.
4496 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
4497 # and status_of_proc is working.
4498 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
4499
4500 #
4501 # Function that starts the daemon/service
4502
4503 #
4504 do_start()
4505 {
4506         # Return
4507         #   0 if daemon has been started
4508         #   1 if daemon was already running
4509         #   2 if daemon could not be started
4510         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
4511                 || return 1
4512         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
4513                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
4514                 || return 2
4515         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
4516         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
4517         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
4518 }
4519
4520 #
4521 # Function that stops the daemon/service
4522 #
4523 do_stop()
4524 {
4525         # Return
4526         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
4527         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
4528         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
4529         #   other if a failure occurred
4530         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4531         RETVAL="$?"
4532         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
4533         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
4534         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
4535         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
4536         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
4537         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
4538         # sleep for some time.
4539         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
4540         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
4541         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
4542         rm -f $PIDFILE
4543         return "$RETVAL"
4544 }
4545
4546 #
4547 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
4548 #
4549 do_reload() {
4550         #
4551         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
4552         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
4553         # then implement that here.
4554         #
4555         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4556         return 0
4557 }
4558
4559 SCRIPTNAME=$1
4560 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
4561 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
4562 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
4563     script="$1"
4564     shift
4565     . $script
4566 else
4567     exit 0
4568 fi
4569
4570 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
4571 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
4572
4573 # Exit if the package is not installed
4574 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
4575
4576 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
4577 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
4578
4579 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
4580 . /lib/init/vars.sh
4581
4582 case "$1" in
4583   start)
4584         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
4585         do_start
4586         case "$?" in
4587                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4588                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4589         esac
4590         ;;
4591   stop)
4592         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
4593         do_stop
4594         case "$?" in
4595                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4596                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4597         esac
4598         ;;
4599   status)
4600         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
4601         ;;
4602   #reload|force-reload)
4603         #
4604         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
4605         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
4606         #
4607         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
4608         #do_reload
4609         #log_end_msg $?
4610         #;;
4611   restart|force-reload)
4612         #
4613         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
4614         # 'force-reload' alias
4615         #
4616         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
4617         do_stop
4618         case "$?" in
4619           0|1)
4620                 do_start
4621                 case "$?" in
4622                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
4623                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
4624                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
4625                 esac
4626                 ;;
4627           *)
4628                 # Failed to stop
4629                 log_end_msg 1
4630                 ;;
4631         esac
4632         ;;
4633   *)
4634         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
4635         exit 3
4636         ;;
4637 esac
4638
4639 :
4640 </pre></p>
4641
4642 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
4643 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
4644 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
4645 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
4646
4647 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
4648 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
4649 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
4650 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
4651 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
4652
4653       </div>
4654       <div class="tags">
4655
4656
4657         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>.
4658
4659
4660       </div>
4661     </div>
4662     <div class="padding"></div>
4663
4664     <div class="entry">
4665       <div class="title">
4666         <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>
4667       </div>
4668       <div class="date">
4669          1st November 2013
4670       </div>
4671       <div class="body">
4672         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
4673 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
4674 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
4675 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
4676 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
4677 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
4678 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
4679 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
4680 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
4681 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
4682 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
4683 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
4684
4685 <p>The source is now available from
4686 <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>
4687
4688       </div>
4689       <div class="tags">
4690
4691
4692         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>.
4693
4694
4695       </div>
4696     </div>
4697     <div class="padding"></div>
4698
4699     <div class="entry">
4700       <div class="title">
4701         <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>
4702       </div>
4703       <div class="date">
4704         27th October 2013
4705       </div>
4706       <div class="body">
4707         <p>The
4708 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
4709 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
4710 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
4711 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
4712 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
4713 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
4714 of a plan to simplify the build system for
4715 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
4716 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
4717 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
4718 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
4719 Raspberry Pi.</p>
4720
4721 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
4722 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
4723 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
4724 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
4725 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
4726 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
4727 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
4728 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
4729 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
4730 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
4731 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
4732 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
4733 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
4734 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
4735 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
4736 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
4737 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
4738 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
4739 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
4740 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
4741 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
4742 available from
4743 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
4744 upstream project page</a>.</p>
4745
4746 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
4747 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
4748 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
4749 list:</p>
4750
4751 <p><pre>
4752 #!/bin/sh
4753 set -e # Exit on first error
4754 rootdir="$1"
4755 cd "$rootdir"
4756 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
4757 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
4758 EOF
4759 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
4760 # install a kernel somewhere too.
4761 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
4762     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4763 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4764 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
4765 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
4766 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
4767 </pre></p>
4768
4769 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
4770 to build the image:</p>
4771
4772 <pre>
4773 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
4774     --variant minbase \
4775     --arch armel \
4776     --distribution jessie \
4777     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
4778     --image test.img \
4779     --size 600M \
4780     --bootsize 64M \
4781     --boottype vfat \
4782     --log-level debug \
4783     --verbose \
4784     --no-kernel \
4785     --no-extlinux \
4786     --root-password raspberry \
4787     --hostname raspberrypi \
4788     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
4789     --customize `pwd`/customize \
4790     --package netbase \
4791     --package git-core \
4792     --package binutils \
4793     --package ca-certificates \
4794     --package wget \
4795     --package kmod
4796 </pre></p>
4797
4798 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
4799 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
4800 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
4801 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
4802 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
4803 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
4804 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
4805
4806 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
4807 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
4808 build dependency list.</p>
4809
4810 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
4811 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
4812 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
4813 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
4814
4815       </div>
4816       <div class="tags">
4817
4818
4819         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>.
4820
4821
4822       </div>
4823     </div>
4824     <div class="padding"></div>
4825
4826     <div class="entry">
4827       <div class="title">
4828         <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>
4829       </div>
4830       <div class="date">
4831         15th October 2013
4832       </div>
4833       <div class="body">
4834         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
4835 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
4836 these. :)</p>
4837
4838 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
4839 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
4840 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
4841 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
4842 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
4843 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
4844 hope you will to. :)</p>
4845
4846 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
4847 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
4848 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
4849 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
4850 donated.  Are you next?</p>
4851
4852 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
4853 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
4854 statement under the heading
4855 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
4856 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
4857 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
4858 too.</p>
4859
4860       </div>
4861       <div class="tags">
4862
4863
4864         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>.
4865
4866
4867       </div>
4868     </div>
4869     <div class="padding"></div>
4870
4871     <div class="entry">
4872       <div class="title">
4873         <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>
4874       </div>
4875       <div class="date">
4876         27th September 2013
4877       </div>
4878       <div class="body">
4879         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
4880 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
4881 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
4882 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
4883
4884 <ul>
4885
4886 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
4887 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
4888
4889 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
4890 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
4891
4892 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
4893 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
4894 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
4895 (Youtube)</li>
4896
4897 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
4898 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
4899
4900 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
4901 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
4902
4903 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
4904 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
4905 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
4906
4907 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
4908 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
4909 (Youtube)</li>
4910
4911 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
4912 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
4913
4914 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
4915 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
4916
4917 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
4918 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
4919 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
4920
4921 </ul>
4922
4923 <p>A larger list is available from
4924 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
4925 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
4926
4927 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
4928 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
4929 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
4930 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
4931 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
4932 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
4933 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
4934 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
4935 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
4936 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4937 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4938
4939       </div>
4940       <div class="tags">
4941
4942
4943         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>.
4944
4945
4946       </div>
4947     </div>
4948     <div class="padding"></div>
4949
4950     <div class="entry">
4951       <div class="title">
4952         <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>
4953       </div>
4954       <div class="date">
4955         10th September 2013
4956       </div>
4957       <div class="body">
4958         <p>I was introduced to the
4959 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
4960 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
4961 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
4962 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
4963 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
4964 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
4965 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
4966 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
4967
4968 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
4969 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
4970 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
4971 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
4972 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
4973
4974 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
4975 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
4976 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
4977 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
4978 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
4979 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
4980 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
4981 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
4982 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
4983 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
4984 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
4985 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
4986 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
4987 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
4988 missing in Debian).</p>
4989
4990 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
4991 scripts
4992 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
4993 and a administrative web interface
4994 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
4995 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
4996 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
4997 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
4998 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
4999 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
5000 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
5001 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
5002 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
5003 this is really working yet, see
5004 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
5005 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
5006 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
5007 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
5008 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
5009 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
5010 with lots of half baked features.</p>
5011
5012 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
5013 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
5014 at.</p>
5015
5016 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
5017
5018 <ol>
5019
5020 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
5021 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
5022 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
5023 to the Debian installer:<p>
5024 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
5025
5026 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
5027 install on.</li>
5028
5029 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
5030 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
5031
5032 </ol>
5033
5034 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
5035
5036 <ol>
5037
5038 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
5039 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
5040 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
5041 <pre>
5042 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
5043 </pre></li>
5044 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
5045 <pre>
5046 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
5047    apt-key add -
5048 apt-get update
5049 apt-get install freedombox-setup
5050 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
5051 </pre></li>
5052 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
5053
5054 </ol>
5055
5056 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
5057 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
5058 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
5059 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
5060 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
5061
5062 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
5063 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
5064 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
5065 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
5066
5067 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
5068 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
5069 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
5070 irc.debian.org and the
5071 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
5072 mailing list</a>.</p>
5073
5074 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
5075 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
5076 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
5077 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
5078 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
5079 default password is 'secret'.</p>
5080
5081       </div>
5082       <div class="tags">
5083
5084
5085         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>.
5086
5087
5088       </div>
5089     </div>
5090     <div class="padding"></div>
5091
5092     <div class="entry">
5093       <div class="title">
5094         <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>
5095       </div>
5096       <div class="date">
5097         18th August 2013
5098       </div>
5099       <div class="body">
5100         <p>Earlier, I reported about
5101 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
5102 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
5103 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
5104 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
5105 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
5106 currently on the disk.</p>
5107
5108 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
5109 <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>
5110 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
5111 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
5112 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
5113 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
5114 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
5115 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
5116 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
5117 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
5118 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
5119 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
5120 the broken disks.</p>
5121
5122       </div>
5123       <div class="tags">
5124
5125
5126         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>.
5127
5128
5129       </div>
5130     </div>
5131     <div class="padding"></div>
5132
5133     <div class="entry">
5134       <div class="title">
5135         <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>
5136       </div>
5137       <div class="date">
5138         17th July 2013
5139       </div>
5140       <div class="body">
5141         <p>Today I switched to
5142 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
5143 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
5144 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
5145 <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
5146 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
5147 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
5148 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
5149 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
5150 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
5151 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
5152 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
5153 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
5154 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
5155 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
5156 station from now on.</p>
5157
5158 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
5159 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
5160 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
5161 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
5162 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
5163 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
5164 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
5165 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
5166 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
5167 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
5168 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
5169 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
5170
5171 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
5172 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
5173 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
5174 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
5175 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
5176 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
5177 parameters are tuned:</p>
5178
5179 <ul>
5180
5181 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
5182     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
5183
5184 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
5185     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
5186     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
5187
5188 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
5189     systems.</li>
5190
5191 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
5192     /etc/fstab.</li>
5193
5194 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
5195
5196 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
5197     cron.daily).</li>
5198
5199 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
5200     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
5201
5202 </ul>
5203
5204 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
5205 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
5206 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
5207 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
5208 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
5209 from getting the data on the disk (see
5210 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
5211 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
5212 right thing to do.</p>
5213
5214 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
5215 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
5216 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
5217
5218 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
5219 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
5220 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
5221 instead of during my work.</p>
5222
5223 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
5224 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
5225
5226 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
5227 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
5228 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
5229
5230 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
5231 there.</p>
5232
5233 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
5234 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
5235 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
5236 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
5237 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
5238 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
5239 back.</p>
5240
5241       </div>
5242       <div class="tags">
5243
5244
5245         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>.
5246
5247
5248       </div>
5249     </div>
5250     <div class="padding"></div>
5251
5252     <div class="entry">
5253       <div class="title">
5254         <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>
5255       </div>
5256       <div class="date">
5257         10th July 2013
5258       </div>
5259       <div class="body">
5260         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
5261 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
5262 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
5263 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
5264 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
5265 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
5266 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
5267 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
5268
5269 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
5270 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
5271 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
5272 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
5273 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
5274 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
5275 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
5276 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
5277 lock up when I download a new
5278 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
5279 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
5280 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
5281
5282 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5283 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
5284 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5285 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
5286 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5287 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5288
5289 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5290 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
5291 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5292 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
5293 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5294 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5295
5296 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
5297 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
5298 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
5299 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
5300 exist).</p>
5301
5302       </div>
5303       <div class="tags">
5304
5305
5306         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>.
5307
5308
5309       </div>
5310     </div>
5311     <div class="padding"></div>
5312
5313     <div class="entry">
5314       <div class="title">
5315         <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>
5316       </div>
5317       <div class="date">
5318          9th July 2013
5319       </div>
5320       <div class="body">
5321         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
5322 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
5323 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
5324 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
5325 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5326 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
5327 Bitraf</a>.</p>
5328
5329 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
5330 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
5331 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
5332 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
5333 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
5334
5335       </div>
5336       <div class="tags">
5337
5338
5339         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>.
5340
5341
5342       </div>
5343     </div>
5344     <div class="padding"></div>
5345
5346     <div class="entry">
5347       <div class="title">
5348         <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>
5349       </div>
5350       <div class="date">
5351          5th July 2013
5352       </div>
5353       <div class="body">
5354         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
5355 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
5356 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
5357 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
5358 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
5359 ended up picking a
5360 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
5361 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
5362 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
5363 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
5364 on that below.</p>
5365
5366 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5367 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5368 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5369 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5370 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5371 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
5372 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
5373 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
5374 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
5375
5376 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
5377 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
5378 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
5379 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
5380 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
5381 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
5382 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
5383
5384 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
5385 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
5386
5387 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
5388 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
5389 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
5390 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
5391 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
5392 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
5393 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
5394 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
5395 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
5396 kernel developers as
5397 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
5398 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
5399 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
5400 Lenovo forums, both for
5401 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
5402 2012-11-10</a> and for
5403 <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
5404 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
5405 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
5406 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
5407 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
5408 There is even a
5409 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
5410 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
5411 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
5412
5413 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
5414 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
5415 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
5416 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
5417 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
5418 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
5419 fixed. :)</p>
5420
5421       </div>
5422       <div class="tags">
5423
5424
5425         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>.
5426
5427
5428       </div>
5429     </div>
5430     <div class="padding"></div>
5431
5432     <div class="entry">
5433       <div class="title">
5434         <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>
5435       </div>
5436       <div class="date">
5437          4th July 2013
5438       </div>
5439       <div class="body">
5440         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
5441 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
5442 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
5443 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
5444 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
5445 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
5446 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
5447 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
5448 with an expencive door stop.</p>
5449
5450 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5451 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5452 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5453 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5454 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5455 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
5456 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
5457
5458 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
5459 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
5460 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
5461 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
5462 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
5463 new laptop now. :)</p>
5464
5465 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
5466
5467       </div>
5468       <div class="tags">
5469
5470
5471         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>.
5472
5473
5474       </div>
5475     </div>
5476     <div class="padding"></div>
5477
5478     <div class="entry">
5479       <div class="title">
5480         <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>
5481       </div>
5482       <div class="date">
5483         25th June 2013
5484       </div>
5485       <div class="body">
5486         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
5487 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
5488 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
5489 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
5490 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
5491 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
5492 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
5493 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
5494 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
5495 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
5496 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
5497
5498 <p><pre>
5499 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5500 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
5501 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
5502 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
5503 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
5504 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
5505 firmware-ipw2x00
5506 firmware-ipw2x00
5507 Preconfiguring packages ...
5508 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
5509 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
5510 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
5511 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
5512 #
5513 </pre></p>
5514
5515 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
5516 printed instead:</p>
5517
5518 <p><pre>
5519 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5520 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
5521 #
5522 </pre></p>
5523
5524 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
5525 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
5526
5527 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
5528 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
5529 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
5530 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
5531 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
5532 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
5533 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
5534 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
5535 machine.</p>
5536
5537 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
5538 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
5539 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
5540 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
5541 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
5542 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
5543
5544       </div>
5545       <div class="tags">
5546
5547
5548         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>.
5549
5550
5551       </div>
5552     </div>
5553     <div class="padding"></div>
5554
5555     <div class="entry">
5556       <div class="title">
5557         <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>
5558       </div>
5559       <div class="date">
5560         11th June 2013
5561       </div>
5562       <div class="body">
5563         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
5564 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
5565 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
5566 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
5567 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
5568 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
5569 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
5570 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
5571 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
5572 i915 driver used by the
5573 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
5574 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
5575
5576 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
5577 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
5578 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
5579 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
5580 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
5581
5582 <pre>
5583 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
5584 update-initramfs -u -k all
5585 </pre>
5586
5587 <p>Since March 2012 there is
5588 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
5589 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
5590 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
5591 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
5592 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
5593 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
5594 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
5595 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
5596 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
5597 number.</p>
5598
5599 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
5600 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
5601
5602 <p><pre>
5603 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
5604     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
5605     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
5606  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
5607  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
5608     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
5609  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
5610     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
5611  Latency: 0
5612  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
5613  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
5614  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
5615  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
5616  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
5617  Capabilities: <access denied>
5618  Kernel driver in use: i915
5619 </pre></p>
5620
5621 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
5622
5623 <p><pre>
5624 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
5625        ...
5626         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
5627         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
5628        ...
5629 }
5630 </pre></p>
5631
5632 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
5633 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
5634 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
5635 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
5636 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
5637 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
5638 yet shown up in
5639 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
5640 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
5641 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
5642 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
5643 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
5644 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
5645
5646 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
5647 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
5648 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
5649 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
5650 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
5651 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
5652 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
5653 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
5654 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
5655 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
5656 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
5657 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
5658
5659 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
5660 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
5661 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
5662 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
5663 backlight.</p>
5664
5665       </div>
5666       <div class="tags">
5667
5668
5669         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>.
5670
5671
5672       </div>
5673     </div>
5674     <div class="padding"></div>
5675
5676     <div class="entry">
5677       <div class="title">
5678         <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>
5679       </div>
5680       <div class="date">
5681         27th May 2013
5682       </div>
5683       <div class="body">
5684         <p>Two days ago, I asked
5685 <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
5686 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
5687 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
5688 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
5689 and Windows 8.</p>
5690
5691 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
5692 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
5693 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
5694 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
5695 enough to tell.</p>
5696
5697 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
5698 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
5699 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
5700 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
5701 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
5702 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
5703 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
5704 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
5705 to follow.</p>
5706
5707 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
5708 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
5709 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
5710 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
5711 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
5712 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
5713 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
5714 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
5715
5716 <p>I've updated the
5717 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
5718 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
5719 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
5720 machine.</p>
5721
5722 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
5723 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
5724
5725       </div>
5726       <div class="tags">
5727
5728
5729         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>.
5730
5731
5732       </div>
5733     </div>
5734     <div class="padding"></div>
5735
5736     <div class="entry">
5737       <div class="title">
5738         <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>
5739       </div>
5740       <div class="date">
5741         25th May 2013
5742       </div>
5743       <div class="body">
5744         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
5745 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
5746 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
5747 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
5748 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
5749 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
5750
5751 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
5752 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
5753 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
5754 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
5755 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
5756 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
5757 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
5758 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
5759 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
5760 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
5761
5762 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
5763 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
5764 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
5765 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
5766 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
5767 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
5768
5769 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
5770 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
5771 on new Laptops?</p>
5772
5773       </div>
5774       <div class="tags">
5775
5776
5777         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>.
5778
5779
5780       </div>
5781     </div>
5782     <div class="padding"></div>
5783
5784     <div class="entry">
5785       <div class="title">
5786         <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>
5787       </div>
5788       <div class="date">
5789         17th May 2013
5790       </div>
5791       <div class="body">
5792         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
5793 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
5794 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
5795 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
5796 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
5797 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
5798 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
5799 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
5800 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
5801 donate some money</a>.
5802
5803 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
5804 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
5805 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
5806 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
5807 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
5808
5809 <p>The script,
5810 <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/>
5811 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
5812 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
5813 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
5814
5815 <ol>
5816
5817 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
5818 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
5819 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
5820     our configuration.</li>
5821 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
5822     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
5823     according to the profile specified in the config above,
5824     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
5825 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
5826     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
5827 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
5828
5829 </ol>
5830
5831 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
5832 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
5833 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
5834 the needed packages.</p>
5835
5836 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
5837 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
5838 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
5839 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
5840 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
5841 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
5842
5843 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
5844 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
5845 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
5846
5847 <p><pre>
5848 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
5849 DESKTOP="lxde"
5850 </pre></p>
5851
5852 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
5853 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
5854 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
5855 boot.</p>
5856
5857       </div>
5858       <div class="tags">
5859
5860
5861         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>.
5862
5863
5864       </div>
5865     </div>
5866     <div class="padding"></div>
5867
5868     <div class="entry">
5869       <div class="title">
5870         <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>
5871       </div>
5872       <div class="date">
5873         11th May 2013
5874       </div>
5875       <div class="body">
5876         <P>In January,
5877 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
5878 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
5879 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
5880 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
5881 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
5882 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
5883 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
5884 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
5885 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
5886 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
5887 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
5888 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
5889
5890 <p><table>
5891 <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>
5892 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
5893 <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>
5894 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
5895 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
5896 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
5897 <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>
5898 <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>
5899 <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>
5900 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
5901 </table></p>
5902
5903 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
5904 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
5905 available in experimental.</p>
5906
5907 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
5908 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
5909 for LEGO designers.</p>
5910
5911       </div>
5912       <div class="tags">
5913
5914
5915         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>.
5916
5917
5918       </div>
5919     </div>
5920     <div class="padding"></div>
5921
5922     <div class="entry">
5923       <div class="title">
5924         <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>
5925       </div>
5926       <div class="date">
5927          5th May 2013
5928       </div>
5929       <div class="body">
5930         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
5931 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
5932 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
5933 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
5934 soon.</p>
5935
5936 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
5937 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
5938 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
5939 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
5940 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
5941 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
5942 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
5943 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
5944 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
5945 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
5946 Edu.</a>
5947
5948 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
5949 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
5950 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
5951 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
5952 follow.<p>
5953
5954       </div>
5955       <div class="tags">
5956
5957
5958         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>.
5959
5960
5961       </div>
5962     </div>
5963     <div class="padding"></div>
5964
5965     <div class="entry">
5966       <div class="title">
5967         <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>
5968       </div>
5969       <div class="date">
5970          3rd April 2013
5971       </div>
5972       <div class="body">
5973         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
5974 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
5975 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
5976 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
5977
5978 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
5979 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
5980 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
5981 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
5982 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
5983 BTS. :)</p>
5984
5985       </div>
5986       <div class="tags">
5987
5988
5989         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>.
5990
5991
5992       </div>
5993     </div>
5994     <div class="padding"></div>
5995
5996     <div class="entry">
5997       <div class="title">
5998         <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>
5999       </div>
6000       <div class="date">
6001          2nd February 2013
6002       </div>
6003       <div class="body">
6004         <p>My
6005 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
6006 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
6007 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
6008 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
6009 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
6010 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
6011 version too.</p>
6012
6013 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
6014 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
6015 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
6016 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
6017 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
6018 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
6019 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
6020 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
6021
6022 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
6023 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
6024 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
6025 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
6026 it. :)</p>
6027
6028 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6029 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6030 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6031
6032       </div>
6033       <div class="tags">
6034
6035
6036         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>.
6037
6038
6039       </div>
6040     </div>
6041     <div class="padding"></div>
6042
6043     <div class="entry">
6044       <div class="title">
6045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
6046       </div>
6047       <div class="date">
6048         22nd January 2013
6049       </div>
6050       <div class="body">
6051         <p>Yesterday, I
6052 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
6053 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
6054 pluggable hardware devices, which I
6055 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
6056 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
6057 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
6058 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
6059 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
6060 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
6061 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
6062 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
6063 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
6064 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
6065
6066 <pre>
6067 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
6068 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
6069 </pre>
6070
6071 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
6072 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
6073 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
6074 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
6075
6076 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
6077 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
6078 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
6079 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
6080 word.</p>
6081
6082 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
6083 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
6084 process.</p>
6085
6086 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
6087 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
6088
6089       </div>
6090       <div class="tags">
6091
6092
6093         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>.
6094
6095
6096       </div>
6097     </div>
6098     <div class="padding"></div>
6099
6100     <div class="entry">
6101       <div class="title">
6102         <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>
6103       </div>
6104       <div class="date">
6105         21st January 2013
6106       </div>
6107       <div class="body">
6108         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
6109 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
6110 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
6111 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
6112 it, fetch the
6113 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
6114 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
6115 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
6116 autostart script.</p>
6117
6118 <p>The design is simple:</p>
6119
6120 <ul>
6121
6122 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
6123 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
6124
6125 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
6126 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
6127 initially did.</li>
6128
6129 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
6130 the APT database, a database
6131 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
6132 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
6133
6134 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
6135 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
6136 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
6137 package or packages.</li>
6138
6139 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
6140 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
6141
6142 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
6143 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
6144
6145 </ul>
6146
6147 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
6148 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
6149 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
6150 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
6151
6152 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
6153 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
6154 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
6155 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
6156 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
6157
6158 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
6159 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
6160 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
6161 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
6162 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
6163 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
6164 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
6165 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
6166
6167 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
6168 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
6169 '<tt>svn checkout
6170 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
6171 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
6172 devscripts package.</p>
6173
6174 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
6175 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
6176 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
6177 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
6178 instructions</a> for details.</p>
6179
6180       </div>
6181       <div class="tags">
6182
6183
6184         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>.
6185
6186
6187       </div>
6188     </div>
6189     <div class="padding"></div>
6190
6191     <div class="entry">
6192       <div class="title">
6193         <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>
6194       </div>
6195       <div class="date">
6196         19th January 2013
6197       </div>
6198       <div class="body">
6199         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
6200 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
6201 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
6202 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
6203 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
6204 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
6205 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
6206 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
6207 not a durable solution.
6208
6209 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
6210 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
6211
6212 <ul>
6213
6214 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
6215   than A4).</li>
6216 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
6217 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
6218 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
6219 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
6220 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
6221 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
6222 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
6223 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
6224 size).</li>
6225 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
6226   X.org packages.</li>
6227 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
6228   the time).
6229
6230 </ul>
6231
6232 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
6233 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
6234 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
6235 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
6236 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
6237 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
6238 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
6239 still be useful.</p>
6240
6241 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
6242 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
6243 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
6244 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
6245 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
6246 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
6247
6248       </div>
6249       <div class="tags">
6250
6251
6252         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>.
6253
6254
6255       </div>
6256     </div>
6257     <div class="padding"></div>
6258
6259     <div class="entry">
6260       <div class="title">
6261         <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>
6262       </div>
6263       <div class="date">
6264         18th January 2013
6265       </div>
6266       <div class="body">
6267         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
6268 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
6269 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
6270 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
6271 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
6272 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
6273 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
6274
6275 <pre>
6276 #!/usr/bin/python
6277 import sys
6278 import apt
6279 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6280     cache = apt.Cache()
6281     cache.open(None)
6282     thepkgs = []
6283     for pkg in cache:
6284         version = pkg.candidate
6285         if version is None:
6286             version = pkg.installed
6287         if version is None:
6288             continue
6289         record = version.record
6290         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
6291             continue
6292         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
6293         for t in mime_types:
6294             t = t.rstrip().strip()
6295             if t == mimetype:
6296                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
6297     return thepkgs
6298 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
6299 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
6300     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
6301 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
6302 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6303     print "  %s" %pkg
6304 </pre>
6305
6306 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
6307
6308 <pre>
6309 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
6310 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
6311   gecko-mediaplayer
6312 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
6313 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
6314   browser-plugin-gnash
6315 %
6316 </pre>
6317
6318 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
6319 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
6320 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
6321 anyone working on adding it?</p>
6322
6323 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
6324 request for icweasel support for this feature is
6325 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
6326 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
6327 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
6328 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
6329
6330       </div>
6331       <div class="tags">
6332
6333
6334         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>.
6335
6336
6337       </div>
6338     </div>
6339     <div class="padding"></div>
6340
6341     <div class="entry">
6342       <div class="title">
6343         <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>
6344       </div>
6345       <div class="date">
6346         16th January 2013
6347       </div>
6348       <div class="body">
6349         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
6350 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
6351 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
6352 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
6353 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
6354 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
6355 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
6356 downloaded by the browser.</p>
6357
6358 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
6359 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
6360 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
6361 can be found on the
6362 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
6363 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
6364 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
6365 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
6366 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
6367
6368 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
6369
6370 <pre>
6371   count MIME type
6372   ----- -----------------------
6373      32 text/plain
6374      30 audio/mpeg
6375      29 image/png
6376      28 image/jpeg
6377      27 application/ogg
6378      26 audio/x-mp3
6379      25 image/tiff
6380      25 image/gif
6381      22 image/bmp
6382      22 audio/x-wav
6383      20 audio/x-flac
6384      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6385      18 video/x-ms-asf
6386      18 audio/x-musepack
6387      18 audio/x-mpeg
6388      18 application/x-ogg
6389      17 video/mpeg
6390      17 audio/x-scpls
6391      17 audio/ogg
6392      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6393 </pre>
6394
6395 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
6396
6397 <pre>
6398   count MIME type
6399   ----- -----------------------
6400      33 text/plain
6401      32 image/png
6402      32 image/jpeg
6403      29 audio/mpeg
6404      27 image/gif
6405      26 image/tiff
6406      26 application/ogg
6407      25 audio/x-mp3
6408      22 image/bmp
6409      21 audio/x-wav
6410      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6411      19 audio/x-mpeg
6412      18 video/mpeg
6413      18 audio/x-scpls
6414      18 audio/x-flac
6415      18 application/x-ogg
6416      17 video/x-ms-asf
6417      17 text/html
6418      17 audio/x-musepack
6419      16 image/x-xbitmap
6420 </pre>
6421
6422 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
6423
6424 <pre>
6425   count MIME type
6426   ----- -----------------------
6427      31 text/plain
6428      31 image/png
6429      31 image/jpeg
6430      29 audio/mpeg
6431      28 application/ogg
6432      27 image/gif
6433      26 image/tiff
6434      26 audio/x-mp3
6435      23 audio/x-wav
6436      22 image/bmp
6437      21 audio/x-flac
6438      20 audio/x-mpegurl
6439      19 audio/x-mpeg
6440      18 video/x-ms-asf
6441      18 video/mpeg
6442      18 audio/x-scpls
6443      18 application/x-ogg
6444      17 audio/x-musepack
6445      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6446      16 video/x-msvideo
6447 </pre>
6448
6449 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
6450 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
6451 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
6452 issues.</p>
6453
6454 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
6455 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
6456
6457       </div>
6458       <div class="tags">
6459
6460
6461         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6462
6463
6464       </div>
6465     </div>
6466     <div class="padding"></div>
6467
6468     <div class="entry">
6469       <div class="title">
6470         <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>
6471       </div>
6472       <div class="date">
6473         15th January 2013
6474       </div>
6475       <div class="body">
6476         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
6477 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
6478 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
6479 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
6480 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
6481 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
6482 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
6483 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
6484 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
6485 packages.</p>
6486
6487 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
6488 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
6489 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
6490 modalias.</p>
6491
6492 <p><blockquote>
6493 Package: package-name
6494 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
6495 </blockquote></p>
6496
6497 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
6498 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
6499
6500 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
6501 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
6502
6503 <p><blockquote>
6504 Package: cheese
6505 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
6506 </blockquote></p>
6507
6508 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
6509 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
6510
6511 <p><blockquote>
6512 Package: pcmciautils
6513 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
6514 </blockquote></p>
6515
6516 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
6517 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
6518
6519 <p><blockquote>
6520 Package: colorhug-client
6521 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
6522 </blockquote></p>
6523
6524 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
6525 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
6526 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
6527
6528 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
6529 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
6530 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
6531 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
6532 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
6533 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
6534 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
6535 Raring.</p>
6536
6537 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
6538 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
6539 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
6540 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
6541 try the
6542 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
6543 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
6544 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
6545 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
6546
6547 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
6548 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
6549
6550 <p><blockquote>
6551 % ./hw-support-lookup
6552 <br>yubikey-personalization
6553 <br>%
6554 </blockquote></p>
6555
6556 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
6557 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
6558
6559 <p><blockquote>
6560 % ./hw-support-lookup
6561 <br>pcmciautils
6562 <br>%
6563 </blockquote></p>
6564
6565 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
6566 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
6567 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
6568
6569 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
6570 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
6571 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
6572 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
6573 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
6574 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
6575 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
6576 see if it work.</p>
6577
6578 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6579 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6580 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6581 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6582
6583       </div>
6584       <div class="tags">
6585
6586
6587         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>.
6588
6589
6590       </div>
6591     </div>
6592     <div class="padding"></div>
6593
6594     <div class="entry">
6595       <div class="title">
6596         <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>
6597       </div>
6598       <div class="date">
6599         14th January 2013
6600       </div>
6601       <div class="body">
6602         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
6603 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
6604 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
6605 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
6606 in
6607 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6608 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
6609
6610 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
6611
6612 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
6613 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
6614 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
6615 &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;,
6616 &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
6617 &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;.
6618
6619 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
6620 this shell script:</p>
6621
6622 <pre>
6623 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
6624 </pre>
6625
6626 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
6627 using modinfo:</p>
6628
6629 <pre>
6630 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
6631 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
6632 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
6633 %
6634 </pre>
6635
6636 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
6637
6638 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
6639 Bridge memory controller:</p>
6640
6641 <p><blockquote>
6642 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
6643 </blockquote></p>
6644
6645 <p>This represent these values:</p>
6646
6647 <pre>
6648  v   00008086  (vendor)
6649  d   00002770  (device)
6650  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
6651  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
6652  bc  06        (bus class)
6653  sc  00        (bus subclass)
6654  i   00        (interface)
6655 </pre>
6656
6657 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
6658 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
6659 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
6660 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
6661
6662 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
6663 means.</p>
6664
6665 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
6666
6667 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
6668 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
6669
6670 <p><blockquote>
6671 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
6672 </blockquote></p>
6673
6674 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
6675
6676 <pre>
6677  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
6678  p    0001  (device product)
6679  d    0206  (bcddevice)
6680  dc     09  (device class)
6681  dsc    00  (device subclass)
6682  dp     00  (device protocol)
6683  ic     09  (interface class)
6684  isc    00  (interface subclass)
6685  ip     00  (interface protocol)
6686 </pre>
6687
6688 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
6689 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
6690 these alias entries show up:</p>
6691
6692 <p><blockquote>
6693 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
6694 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
6695 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
6696 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
6697 </blockquote></p>
6698
6699 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
6700 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
6701 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
6702
6703 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
6704
6705 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
6706 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
6707
6708 <p><blockquote>
6709 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6710 </blockquote></p>
6711
6712 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
6713
6714 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
6715
6716 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
6717 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
6718 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
6719
6720 <p><blockquote>
6721 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
6722 </blockquote></p>
6723
6724 <p>The values present are</p>
6725
6726 <pre>
6727  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
6728  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
6729  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
6730  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
6731  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
6732  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
6733  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
6734  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
6735  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
6736  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
6737  ct   10             (chassis type)
6738  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
6739 </pre>
6740
6741 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
6742 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
6743
6744 <pre>
6745   3 Desktop
6746   4 Low Profile Desktop
6747   5 Pizza Box
6748   6 Mini Tower
6749   7 Tower
6750   8 Portable
6751   9 Laptop
6752  10 Notebook
6753  11 Hand Held
6754  12 Docking Station
6755  13 All In One
6756  14 Sub Notebook
6757  15 Space-saving
6758  16 Lunch Box
6759  17 Main Server Chassis
6760  18 Expansion Chassis
6761  19 Sub Chassis
6762  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
6763  21 Peripheral Chassis
6764  22 RAID Chassis
6765  23 Rack Mount Chassis
6766  24 Sealed-case PC
6767  25 Multi-system
6768  26 CompactPCI
6769  27 AdvancedTCA
6770  28 Blade
6771  29 Blade Enclosing
6772 </pre>
6773
6774 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
6775 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
6776 claim it is a desktop.</p>
6777
6778 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
6779
6780 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
6781 test machine:</p>
6782
6783 <p><blockquote>
6784 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
6785 </blockquote></p>
6786
6787 <p>The values present are</p>
6788
6789 <pre>
6790   ty  01  (type)
6791   pr  00  (prototype)
6792   id  00  (id)
6793   ex  00  (extra)
6794 </pre>
6795
6796 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
6797 the valid values are.</p>
6798
6799 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
6800
6801 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
6802 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
6803 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
6804 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
6805 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
6806 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
6807 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
6808
6809 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
6810
6811 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
6812 one can use the following shell script:</p>
6813
6814 <pre>
6815   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
6816     echo "$id" ; \
6817     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
6818   done
6819 </pre>
6820
6821 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
6822 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
6823
6824 <pre>
6825   acpi:ACPI0003:
6826     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
6827   acpi:device:
6828   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
6829   acpi:IBM0068:
6830     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
6831     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
6832     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
6833     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
6834   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6835     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
6836     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
6837     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
6838   [...]
6839 </pre>
6840
6841 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6842 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6843 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6844 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6845
6846 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
6847 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
6848 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
6849
6850       </div>
6851       <div class="tags">
6852
6853
6854         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>.
6855
6856
6857       </div>
6858     </div>
6859     <div class="padding"></div>
6860
6861     <div class="entry">
6862       <div class="title">
6863         <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>
6864       </div>
6865       <div class="date">
6866         10th January 2013
6867       </div>
6868       <div class="body">
6869         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
6870 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
6871 Launcher and updated the Debian package
6872 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
6873 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
6874 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
6875 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
6876 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
6877 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
6878 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
6879 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
6880 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
6881 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
6882 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
6883 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
6884 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
6885 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
6886 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
6887
6888       </div>
6889       <div class="tags">
6890
6891
6892         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>.
6893
6894
6895       </div>
6896     </div>
6897     <div class="padding"></div>
6898
6899     <div class="entry">
6900       <div class="title">
6901         <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>
6902       </div>
6903       <div class="date">
6904          9th January 2013
6905       </div>
6906       <div class="body">
6907         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
6908 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
6909 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
6910 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
6911 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
6912 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
6913 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
6914 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
6915 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
6916 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
6917 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
6918
6919 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
6920 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
6921 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
6922 simple:
6923
6924 <ul>
6925
6926 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
6927   starting when a user log in.</li>
6928
6929 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
6930   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
6931
6932 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
6933   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
6934   packages.</li>
6935
6936 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
6937   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
6938
6939 </ul>
6940
6941 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
6942 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
6943 discover database to find packages and
6944 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
6945 packages.</p>
6946
6947 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
6948 draft package is now checked into
6949 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6950 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
6951 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
6952 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
6953 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
6954 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
6955 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
6956 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
6957 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
6958 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
6959 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
6960 because of the freeze).</p>
6961
6962 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
6963 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
6964 inserted):</p>
6965
6966 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
6967
6968 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
6969 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
6970 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
6971
6972 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
6973 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
6974 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
6975 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
6976 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
6977 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
6978 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
6979
6980 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
6981 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
6982 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
6983 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
6984 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
6985 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
6986 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
6987 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
6988 not be installed?</p>
6989
6990 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
6991 please send me an email. :)</p>
6992
6993       </div>
6994       <div class="tags">
6995
6996
6997         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>.
6998
6999
7000       </div>
7001     </div>
7002     <div class="padding"></div>
7003
7004     <div class="entry">
7005       <div class="title">
7006         <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>
7007       </div>
7008       <div class="date">
7009          2nd January 2013
7010       </div>
7011       <div class="body">
7012         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
7013 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
7014 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
7015 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
7016 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
7017 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
7018 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
7019 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
7020 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
7021 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
7022
7023 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
7024 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
7025 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
7026
7027       </div>
7028       <div class="tags">
7029
7030
7031         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>.
7032
7033
7034       </div>
7035     </div>
7036     <div class="padding"></div>
7037
7038     <div class="entry">
7039       <div class="title">
7040         <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>
7041       </div>
7042       <div class="date">
7043         25th December 2012
7044       </div>
7045       <div class="body">
7046         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
7047 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
7048
7049 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
7050 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
7051 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
7052 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
7053 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
7054 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
7055 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
7056 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
7057 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
7058 name.</p>
7059
7060 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
7061 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
7062 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
7063
7064 <blockquote><pre>
7065 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
7066 cd bitcoin
7067 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
7068 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
7069 </pre></blockquote>
7070
7071 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
7072 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
7073 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
7074 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
7075 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
7076 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
7077 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
7078 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
7079 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
7080
7081 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7082 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7083 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7084
7085       </div>
7086       <div class="tags">
7087
7088
7089         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>.
7090
7091
7092       </div>
7093     </div>
7094     <div class="padding"></div>
7095
7096     <div class="entry">
7097       <div class="title">
7098         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
7099       </div>
7100       <div class="date">
7101         21st December 2012
7102       </div>
7103       <div class="body">
7104         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
7105 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
7106 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
7107 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
7108 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
7109 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
7110 is now maintained by a
7111 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
7112 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
7113 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
7114 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
7115 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
7116 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
7117 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
7118 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
7119 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
7120 Corallo in a
7121 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
7122 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
7123 Debian package.</p>
7124
7125 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
7126 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
7127 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
7128 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
7129 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
7130 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
7131 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
7132 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
7133 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
7134 new version to unstable.
7135
7136 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
7137 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
7138 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
7139 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
7140 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
7141 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
7142 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
7143 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
7144 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
7145 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
7146 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
7147 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
7148 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
7149 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
7150 have not tested them.</p>
7151
7152 <p>My
7153 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
7154 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
7155 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
7156 years ago, as can be
7157 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
7158 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
7159 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
7160 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
7161 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
7162 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
7163 the same address as last time,
7164 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7165
7166       </div>
7167       <div class="tags">
7168
7169
7170         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>.
7171
7172
7173       </div>
7174     </div>
7175     <div class="padding"></div>
7176
7177     <div class="entry">
7178       <div class="title">
7179         <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>
7180       </div>
7181       <div class="date">
7182          7th September 2012
7183       </div>
7184       <div class="body">
7185         <p>As I
7186 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
7187 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
7188 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
7189 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
7190 repository for the project</a>.</p>
7191
7192 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
7193 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
7194 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
7195 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
7196
7197 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
7198 PostScript formats at
7199 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
7200 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
7201
7202       </div>
7203       <div class="tags">
7204
7205
7206         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>.
7207
7208
7209       </div>
7210     </div>
7211     <div class="padding"></div>
7212
7213     <div class="entry">
7214       <div class="title">
7215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
7216       </div>
7217       <div class="date">
7218         16th August 2012
7219       </div>
7220       <div class="body">
7221         <p>I dag fyller
7222 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
7223 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
7224 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
7225
7226       </div>
7227       <div class="tags">
7228
7229
7230         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
7231
7232
7233       </div>
7234     </div>
7235     <div class="padding"></div>
7236
7237     <div class="entry">
7238       <div class="title">
7239         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
7240       </div>
7241       <div class="date">
7242         24th June 2012
7243       </div>
7244       <div class="body">
7245         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
7246 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
7247 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
7248 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
7249 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
7250 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
7251 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
7252 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
7253 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
7254 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
7255 missing in my book.</p>
7256
7257 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
7258 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
7259 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
7260 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
7261 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
7262 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
7263 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
7264
7265       </div>
7266       <div class="tags">
7267
7268
7269         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>.
7270
7271
7272       </div>
7273     </div>
7274     <div class="padding"></div>
7275
7276     <div class="entry">
7277       <div class="title">
7278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
7279       </div>
7280       <div class="date">
7281         21st November 2011
7282       </div>
7283       <div class="body">
7284         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
7285 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
7286 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
7287 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
7288 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
7289 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
7290 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
7291 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
7292 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
7293 the tools to do so.</p>
7294
7295 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
7296 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
7297 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
7298 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
7299
7300 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
7301 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
7302 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
7303 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
7304 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
7305 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
7306 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
7307 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
7308
7309 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
7310 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
7311 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
7312
7313 <p><pre>
7314 #!/usr/bin/perl
7315 use strict;
7316 use warnings;
7317 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
7318 BEGIN {
7319     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
7320     my %rhelmodules = (
7321         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
7322         );
7323     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
7324         eval "use $module;";
7325         if ($@) {
7326             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
7327             system("yum install -y $pkg");
7328             eval "use $module;";
7329         }
7330     }
7331 }
7332 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
7333
7334 upgrade_dell();
7335
7336 exit 0;
7337
7338 sub run_firmware_script {
7339     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
7340     unless ($script) {
7341         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
7342         exit 1
7343     }
7344     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
7345
7346     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
7347         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
7348     } else {
7349         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
7350     }
7351 }
7352
7353 sub run_firmware_scripts {
7354     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
7355     # Run firmware packages
7356     for my $dir (@dirs) {
7357         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
7358         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
7359         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
7360             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
7361             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
7362         }
7363         closedir $dh;
7364     }
7365 }
7366
7367 sub download {
7368     my $url = shift;
7369     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
7370     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
7371 }
7372
7373 sub upgrade_dell {
7374     my @dirs;
7375     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7376     chomp $product;
7377
7378     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
7379
7380         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
7381         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
7382
7383         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
7384             CLEANUP => 1
7385             );
7386         chdir($tmpdir);
7387         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
7388         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
7389         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
7390         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
7391         my $fwopts = "-q";
7392         if (@paths) {
7393             for my $url (@paths) {
7394                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
7395             }
7396             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
7397         } else {
7398             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7399             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7400         }
7401         chdir('/');
7402     } else {
7403         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7404         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7405     }
7406 }
7407
7408 sub fetch_dell_fw {
7409     my $path = shift;
7410     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
7411     download($url);
7412 }
7413
7414 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
7415 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
7416 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
7417 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
7418     my $filename = shift;
7419
7420     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7421     chomp $product;
7422     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
7423
7424     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
7425
7426     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
7427     my @paths;
7428     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
7429         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
7430         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
7431         my $oscode;
7432         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
7433             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
7434         } else {
7435             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
7436         }
7437         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
7438         {
7439             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
7440         }
7441     }
7442     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
7443         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
7444
7445         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
7446         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
7447
7448         my $cpath = $component->{path};
7449         for my $path (@paths) {
7450             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
7451                 push(@paths, $cpath);
7452             }
7453         }
7454     }
7455     return @paths;
7456 }
7457 </pre>
7458
7459 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
7460 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
7461 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
7462 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
7463 outdated.</p>
7464
7465       </div>
7466       <div class="tags">
7467
7468
7469         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>.
7470
7471
7472       </div>
7473     </div>
7474     <div class="padding"></div>
7475
7476     <div class="entry">
7477       <div class="title">
7478         <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>
7479       </div>
7480       <div class="date">
7481          4th August 2011
7482       </div>
7483       <div class="body">
7484         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
7485 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
7486 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
7487 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
7488 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
7489 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
7490 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
7491 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
7492 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
7493
7494 <p><blockquote>
7495 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
7496 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
7497 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
7498 </blockquote></p>
7499
7500 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
7501 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
7502 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
7503 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
7504 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
7505 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
7506 hard to explain.</p>
7507
7508 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
7509 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
7510 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
7511 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
7512 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
7513 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
7514 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
7515 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
7516 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
7517 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
7518 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
7519 mode).</p>
7520
7521 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
7522 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
7523 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
7524 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
7525 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
7526 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
7527 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
7528 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
7529 after visiting single user mode.</p>
7530
7531 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
7532 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
7533 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
7534 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
7535 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
7536 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
7537 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
7538 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
7539
7540 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
7541 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
7542 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
7543
7544       </div>
7545       <div class="tags">
7546
7547
7548         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>.
7549
7550
7551       </div>
7552     </div>
7553     <div class="padding"></div>
7554
7555     <div class="entry">
7556       <div class="title">
7557         <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>
7558       </div>
7559       <div class="date">
7560         30th July 2011
7561       </div>
7562       <div class="body">
7563         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
7564 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
7565 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
7566 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
7567 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
7568 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
7569 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
7570 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
7571 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
7572 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
7573 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
7574 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
7575 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
7576
7577 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
7578 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
7579 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
7580 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
7581 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
7582 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
7583 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
7584 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
7585 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
7586
7587 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
7588 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
7589 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
7590 is presented.</p>
7591
7592 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
7593 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
7594 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
7595 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
7596 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
7597 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
7598 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
7599 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
7600 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
7601 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
7602 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
7603 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
7604 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
7605 find time to push this forward.</p>
7606
7607       </div>
7608       <div class="tags">
7609
7610
7611         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>.
7612
7613
7614       </div>
7615     </div>
7616     <div class="padding"></div>
7617
7618     <div class="entry">
7619       <div class="title">
7620         <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>
7621       </div>
7622       <div class="date">
7623         29th July 2011
7624       </div>
7625       <div class="body">
7626         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
7627 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
7628 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
7629 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
7630 issues.</p>
7631
7632 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
7633 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
7634 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
7635
7636 <ol>
7637
7638 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
7639 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
7640 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
7641 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
7642 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
7643 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
7644 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
7645 Debian.</li>
7646
7647 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
7648 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
7649 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
7650 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
7651 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
7652 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
7653 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
7654 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
7655 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
7656 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
7657 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
7658 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
7659 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
7660
7661 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
7662 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
7663 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
7664 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
7665 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
7666 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
7667 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
7668 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
7669 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
7670 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
7671
7672 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
7673 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
7674 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
7675 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
7676 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
7677 latter behaviour.</li>
7678
7679 </ol>
7680
7681 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
7682 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
7683 it do not matter much.</p>
7684
7685 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
7686 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
7687 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
7688
7689       </div>
7690       <div class="tags">
7691
7692
7693         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>.
7694
7695
7696       </div>
7697     </div>
7698     <div class="padding"></div>
7699
7700     <div class="entry">
7701       <div class="title">
7702         <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>
7703       </div>
7704       <div class="date">
7705         26th July 2011
7706       </div>
7707       <div class="body">
7708         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
7709 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
7710 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
7711 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
7712 security support for a few years.</p>
7713
7714 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
7715 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
7716 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
7717 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
7718 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
7719 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
7720 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
7721 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
7722 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
7723 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
7724 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
7725 easier in the future.</p>
7726
7727 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
7728 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
7729 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
7730 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
7731 do not have time for.</p>
7732
7733       </div>
7734       <div class="tags">
7735
7736
7737         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>.
7738
7739
7740       </div>
7741     </div>
7742     <div class="padding"></div>
7743
7744     <div class="entry">
7745       <div class="title">
7746         <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>
7747       </div>
7748       <div class="date">
7749          3rd April 2011
7750       </div>
7751       <div class="body">
7752         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
7753 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
7754 update in English.</p>
7755
7756 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
7757 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
7758 of the British service
7759 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
7760 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
7761 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
7762 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
7763 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
7764 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
7765 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
7766 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
7767 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
7768 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
7769 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
7770 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
7771 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
7772
7773 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
7774 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
7775 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
7776 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
7777 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
7778 public infrastructure.</p>
7779
7780 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
7781 such service?</p>
7782
7783       </div>
7784       <div class="tags">
7785
7786
7787         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>.
7788
7789
7790       </div>
7791     </div>
7792     <div class="padding"></div>
7793
7794     <div class="entry">
7795       <div class="title">
7796         <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>
7797       </div>
7798       <div class="date">
7799         28th January 2011
7800       </div>
7801       <div class="body">
7802         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
7803 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
7804 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
7805 available on the Internet, and check our locally
7806 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
7807 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
7808 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
7809 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
7810 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
7811 out which security holes were present in our free software
7812 collection.</p>
7813
7814 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
7815 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
7816 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
7817 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
7818 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
7819 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
7820 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
7821 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
7822 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
7823 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
7824 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
7825 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
7826 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
7827 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
7828 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
7829 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
7830
7831 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
7832 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
7833 check out, one could look up
7834 <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
7835 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
7836 The most recent one is
7837 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
7838 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
7839 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
7840
7841 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
7842 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
7843 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
7844 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
7845 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
7846 security issues out.</p>
7847
7848 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
7849 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
7850 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
7851 RHEL is providing
7852 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
7853 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
7854 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
7855
7856 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
7857 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
7858 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
7859 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
7860 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
7861 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
7862 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
7863 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
7864 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
7865 established soon.</p>
7866
7867 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
7868 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
7869 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
7870 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
7871 for their packages.</p>
7872
7873       </div>
7874       <div class="tags">
7875
7876
7877         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>.
7878
7879
7880       </div>
7881     </div>
7882     <div class="padding"></div>
7883
7884     <div class="entry">
7885       <div class="title">
7886         <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>
7887       </div>
7888       <div class="date">
7889         23rd January 2011
7890       </div>
7891       <div class="body">
7892         <p>In the
7893 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
7894 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
7895 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
7896 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
7897 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
7898 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
7899 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
7900 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
7901 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
7902 one of my machines like this:</p>
7903
7904 <pre>
7905 loaded modules:
7906 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
7907 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
7908 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
7909 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
7910 10de:03ec pata_amd
7911 10de:03f6 sata_nv
7912 1022:1103 k8temp
7913 109e:036e bttv
7914 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
7915 11ab:4364 sky2
7916 </pre>
7917
7918 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
7919 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
7920
7921 <pre>
7922 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
7923     echo loaded pci modules:
7924     (
7925         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
7926         for address in * ; do
7927             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
7928                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
7929                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
7930                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
7931                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
7932                     echo "$id $module"
7933                 fi
7934             fi
7935         done
7936     )
7937     echo
7938 fi
7939 </pre>
7940
7941 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
7942 mappings:</p>
7943
7944 <pre>
7945 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
7946     echo loaded usb modules:
7947     (
7948         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
7949         for address in * ; do
7950             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
7951                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
7952                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
7953                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
7954                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
7955                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
7956                         echo "$id $module"
7957                     fi
7958                 fi
7959             fi
7960         done
7961     )
7962     echo
7963 fi
7964 </pre>
7965
7966 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
7967 well.</p>
7968
7969       </div>
7970       <div class="tags">
7971
7972
7973         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>.
7974
7975
7976       </div>
7977     </div>
7978     <div class="padding"></div>
7979
7980     <div class="entry">
7981       <div class="title">
7982         <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>
7983       </div>
7984       <div class="date">
7985         22nd December 2010
7986       </div>
7987       <div class="body">
7988         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
7989 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
7990 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
7991 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
7992 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
7993 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
7994 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
7995 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
7996 university.</p>
7997
7998 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
7999 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
8000 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
8001 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
8002 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
8003 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
8004 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
8005 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
8006
8007 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
8008 I perform on a new model.</p>
8009
8010 <ul>
8011
8012 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
8013 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
8014 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
8015
8016 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
8017 installation, X.org is working.</li>
8018
8019 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
8020 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
8021 reported by the program.</li>
8022
8023 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
8024 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
8025 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
8026 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
8027 normally test this by playing
8028 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
8029 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
8030
8031 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
8032 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8033
8034 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
8035 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8036
8037 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
8038 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
8039
8040 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
8041 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
8042 few.</li>
8043
8044 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
8045 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
8046 notice this.</li>
8047
8048 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
8049 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
8050 resume.</li>
8051
8052 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
8053 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
8054 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
8055 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
8056 not.</li>
8057
8058 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
8059 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
8060 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
8061 existence.</li>
8062
8063 </ul>
8064
8065 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
8066 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
8067 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
8068 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
8069 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
8070 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
8071 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
8072 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
8073
8074       </div>
8075       <div class="tags">
8076
8077
8078         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>.
8079
8080
8081       </div>
8082     </div>
8083     <div class="padding"></div>
8084
8085     <div class="entry">
8086       <div class="title">
8087         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
8088       </div>
8089       <div class="date">
8090         11th December 2010
8091       </div>
8092       <div class="body">
8093         <p>As I continue to explore
8094 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
8095 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
8096 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
8097
8098 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
8099 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
8100 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
8101 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
8102 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
8103 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
8104 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
8105 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
8106 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
8107 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
8108 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
8109 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
8110 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
8111 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
8112 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
8113 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
8114 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
8115 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
8116 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
8117 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
8118
8119 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
8120 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
8121 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
8122 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
8123 If the Skolelinux foundation
8124 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
8125 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
8126 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
8127 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
8128 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
8129 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
8130 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
8131 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
8132
8133 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
8134 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
8135 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
8136 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
8137 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
8138 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
8139 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
8140 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
8141 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
8142 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
8143 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
8144 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
8145 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
8146 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
8147 currencies.</p>
8148
8149 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
8150 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
8151 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
8152 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
8153 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
8154 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
8155 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
8156 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
8157 BitCoins.  Check out
8158 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
8159 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
8160 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
8161 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
8162 yet.</p>
8163
8164 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
8165 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
8166 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
8167 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
8168 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
8169
8170       </div>
8171       <div class="tags">
8172
8173
8174         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>.
8175
8176
8177       </div>
8178     </div>
8179     <div class="padding"></div>
8180
8181     <div class="entry">
8182       <div class="title">
8183         <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>
8184       </div>
8185       <div class="date">
8186         10th December 2010
8187       </div>
8188       <div class="body">
8189         <p>With this weeks lawless
8190 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
8191 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
8192 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
8193 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
8194 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
8195 A blog post from
8196 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
8197 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
8198 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
8199 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
8200 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
8201 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
8202 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
8203
8204 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
8205 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
8206 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
8207 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
8208 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
8209 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
8210 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
8211 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
8212 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
8213 Debian</a> soon.</p>
8214
8215 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
8216 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
8217 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
8218 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
8219 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
8220 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
8221 you can even get
8222 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
8223 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
8224 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
8225 on the current exchange rates.</p>
8226
8227 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
8228 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
8229 donations to the address
8230 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
8231
8232       </div>
8233       <div class="tags">
8234
8235
8236         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>.
8237
8238
8239       </div>
8240     </div>
8241     <div class="padding"></div>
8242
8243     <div class="entry">
8244       <div class="title">
8245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
8246       </div>
8247       <div class="date">
8248         27th November 2010
8249       </div>
8250       <div class="body">
8251         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
8252 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
8253 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
8254 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
8255 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
8256 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
8257 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
8258 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
8259
8260 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
8261 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
8262 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
8263 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
8264 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
8265 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
8266 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
8267 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
8268 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
8269 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
8270 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
8271
8272 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
8273 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
8274 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
8275 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
8276 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
8277 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
8278 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
8279 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
8280 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
8281 what is going on.</p>
8282
8283       </div>
8284       <div class="tags">
8285
8286
8287         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>.
8288
8289
8290       </div>
8291     </div>
8292     <div class="padding"></div>
8293
8294     <div class="entry">
8295       <div class="title">
8296         <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>
8297       </div>
8298       <div class="date">
8299         22nd November 2010
8300       </div>
8301       <div class="body">
8302         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
8303 upgrade testing of the
8304 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8305 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
8306 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
8307 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
8308
8309 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
8310
8311 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8312
8313 <blockquote><p>
8314   apache2.2-bin
8315   aptdaemon
8316   baobab
8317   binfmt-support
8318   browser-plugin-gnash
8319   cheese-common
8320   cli-common
8321   cups-pk-helper
8322   dmz-cursor-theme
8323   empathy
8324   empathy-common
8325   freedesktop-sound-theme
8326   freeglut3
8327   gconf-defaults-service
8328   gdm-themes
8329   gedit-plugins
8330   geoclue
8331   geoclue-hostip
8332   geoclue-localnet
8333   geoclue-manual
8334   geoclue-yahoo
8335   gnash
8336   gnash-common
8337   gnome
8338   gnome-backgrounds
8339   gnome-cards-data
8340   gnome-codec-install
8341   gnome-core
8342   gnome-desktop-environment
8343   gnome-disk-utility
8344   gnome-screenshot
8345   gnome-search-tool
8346   gnome-session-canberra
8347   gnome-system-log
8348   gnome-themes-extras
8349   gnome-themes-more
8350   gnome-user-share
8351   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8352   gstreamer0.10-tools
8353   gtk2-engines
8354   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8355   gtk2-engines-smooth
8356   hamster-applet
8357   libapache2-mod-dnssd
8358   libapr1
8359   libaprutil1
8360   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
8361   libaprutil1-ldap
8362   libart2.0-cil
8363   libboost-date-time1.42.0
8364   libboost-python1.42.0
8365   libboost-thread1.42.0
8366   libchamplain-0.4-0
8367   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
8368   libcheese-gtk18
8369   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8370   libcryptui0
8371   libdiscid0
8372   libelf1
8373   libepc-1.0-2
8374   libepc-common
8375   libepc-ui-1.0-2
8376   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8377   libfreerdp0
8378   libgconf2.0-cil
8379   libgdata-common
8380   libgdata7
8381   libgdu-gtk0
8382   libgee2
8383   libgeoclue0
8384   libgexiv2-0
8385   libgif4
8386   libglade2.0-cil
8387   libglib2.0-cil
8388   libgmime2.4-cil
8389   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8390   libgnome2.24-cil
8391   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
8392   libgpod-common
8393   libgpod4
8394   libgtk2.0-cil
8395   libgtkglext1
8396   libgtksourceview2.0-common
8397   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8398   libmono-addins0.2-cil
8399   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
8400   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8401   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
8402   libmono-posix2.0-cil
8403   libmono-security2.0-cil
8404   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8405   libmono-system2.0-cil
8406   libmtp8
8407   libmusicbrainz3-6
8408   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
8409   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
8410   libopal3.6.8
8411   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
8412   libpt2.6.7
8413   libpython2.6
8414   librpm1
8415   librpmio1
8416   libsdl1.2debian
8417   libsrtp0
8418   libssh-4
8419   libtelepathy-farsight0
8420   libtelepathy-glib0
8421   libtidy-0.99-0
8422   media-player-info
8423   mesa-utils
8424   mono-2.0-gac
8425   mono-gac
8426   mono-runtime
8427   nautilus-sendto
8428   nautilus-sendto-empathy
8429   p7zip-full
8430   pkg-config
8431   python-aptdaemon
8432   python-aptdaemon-gtk
8433   python-axiom
8434   python-beautifulsoup
8435   python-bugbuddy
8436   python-clientform
8437   python-coherence
8438   python-configobj
8439   python-crypto
8440   python-cupshelpers
8441   python-elementtree
8442   python-epsilon
8443   python-evolution
8444   python-feedparser
8445   python-gdata
8446   python-gdbm
8447   python-gst0.10
8448   python-gtkglext1
8449   python-gtksourceview2
8450   python-httplib2
8451   python-louie
8452   python-mako
8453   python-markupsafe
8454   python-mechanize
8455   python-nevow
8456   python-notify
8457   python-opengl
8458   python-openssl
8459   python-pam
8460   python-pkg-resources
8461   python-pyasn1
8462   python-pysqlite2
8463   python-rdflib
8464   python-serial
8465   python-tagpy
8466   python-twisted-bin
8467   python-twisted-conch
8468   python-twisted-core
8469   python-twisted-web
8470   python-utidylib
8471   python-webkit
8472   python-xdg
8473   python-zope.interface
8474   remmina
8475   remmina-plugin-data
8476   remmina-plugin-rdp
8477   remmina-plugin-vnc
8478   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8479   rhythmbox-plugins
8480   rpm-common
8481   rpm2cpio
8482   seahorse-plugins
8483   shotwell
8484   software-center
8485   system-config-printer-udev
8486   telepathy-gabble
8487   telepathy-mission-control-5
8488   telepathy-salut
8489   tomboy
8490   totem
8491   totem-coherence
8492   totem-mozilla
8493   totem-plugins
8494   transmission-common
8495   xdg-user-dirs
8496   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
8497   xserver-xephyr
8498 </p></blockquote>
8499
8500 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8501
8502 <blockquote><p>
8503   cheese
8504   ekiga
8505   eog
8506   epiphany-extensions
8507   evolution-exchange
8508   fast-user-switch-applet
8509   file-roller
8510   gcalctool
8511   gconf-editor
8512   gdm
8513   gedit
8514   gedit-common
8515   gnome-games
8516   gnome-games-data
8517   gnome-nettool
8518   gnome-system-tools
8519   gnome-themes
8520   gnuchess
8521   gucharmap
8522   guile-1.8-libs
8523   libavahi-ui0
8524   libdmx1
8525   libgalago3
8526   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8527   libgtksourceview2.0-0
8528   liblircclient0
8529   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
8530   libspeexdsp1
8531   libsvga1
8532   rhythmbox
8533   seahorse
8534   sound-juicer
8535   system-config-printer
8536   totem-common
8537   transmission-gtk
8538   vinagre
8539   vino
8540 </p></blockquote>
8541
8542 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8543
8544 <blockquote><p>
8545   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8546 </p></blockquote>
8547
8548 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8549
8550 <blockquote><p>
8551 [nothing]
8552 </p></blockquote>
8553
8554 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
8555
8556 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8557
8558 <blockquote><p>
8559   ksmserver
8560 </p></blockquote>
8561
8562 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8563
8564 <blockquote><p>
8565   kwin
8566   network-manager-kde
8567 </p></blockquote>
8568
8569 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8570
8571 <blockquote><p>
8572   arts
8573   dolphin
8574   freespacenotifier
8575   google-gadgets-gst
8576   google-gadgets-xul
8577   kappfinder
8578   kcalc
8579   kcharselect
8580   kde-core
8581   kde-plasma-desktop
8582   kde-standard
8583   kde-window-manager
8584   kdeartwork
8585   kdeartwork-emoticons
8586   kdeartwork-style
8587   kdeartwork-theme-icon
8588   kdebase
8589   kdebase-apps
8590   kdebase-workspace
8591   kdebase-workspace-bin
8592   kdebase-workspace-data
8593   kdeeject
8594   kdelibs
8595   kdeplasma-addons
8596   kdeutils
8597   kdewallpapers
8598   kdf
8599   kfloppy
8600   kgpg
8601   khelpcenter4
8602   kinfocenter
8603   konq-plugins-l10n
8604   konqueror-nsplugins
8605   kscreensaver
8606   kscreensaver-xsavers
8607   ktimer
8608   kwrite
8609   libgle3
8610   libkde4-ruby1.8
8611   libkonq5
8612   libkonq5-templates
8613   libnetpbm10
8614   libplasma-ruby
8615   libplasma-ruby1.8
8616   libqt4-ruby1.8
8617   marble-data
8618   marble-plugins
8619   netpbm
8620   nuvola-icon-theme
8621   plasma-dataengines-workspace
8622   plasma-desktop
8623   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
8624   plasma-runners-addons
8625   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
8626   plasma-scriptengine-python
8627   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
8628   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
8629   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
8630   plasma-scriptengines
8631   plasma-wallpapers-addons
8632   plasma-widget-folderview
8633   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8634   ruby
8635   sweeper
8636   update-notifier-kde
8637   xscreensaver-data-extra
8638   xscreensaver-gl
8639   xscreensaver-gl-extra
8640   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8641 </p></blockquote>
8642
8643 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8644
8645 <blockquote><p>
8646   ark
8647   google-gadgets-common
8648   google-gadgets-qt
8649   htdig
8650   kate
8651   kdebase-bin
8652   kdebase-data
8653   kdepasswd
8654   kfind
8655   klipper
8656   konq-plugins
8657   konqueror
8658   ksysguard
8659   ksysguardd
8660   libarchive1
8661   libcln6
8662   libeet1
8663   libeina-svn-06
8664   libggadget-1.0-0b
8665   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
8666   libgps19
8667   libkdecorations4
8668   libkephal4
8669   libkonq4
8670   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
8671   libkscreensaver5
8672   libksgrd4
8673   libksignalplotter4
8674   libkunitconversion4
8675   libkwineffects1a
8676   libmarblewidget4
8677   libntrack-qt4-1
8678   libntrack0
8679   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
8680   libplasmaclock4a
8681   libplasmagenericshell4
8682   libprocesscore4a
8683   libprocessui4a
8684   libqalculate5
8685   libqedje0a
8686   libqtruby4shared2
8687   libqzion0a
8688   libruby1.8
8689   libscim8c2a
8690   libsmokekdecore4-3
8691   libsmokekdeui4-3
8692   libsmokekfile3
8693   libsmokekhtml3
8694   libsmokekio3
8695   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
8696   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
8697   libsmokekparts3
8698   libsmokektexteditor3
8699   libsmokekutils3
8700   libsmokenepomuk3
8701   libsmokephonon3
8702   libsmokeplasma3
8703   libsmokeqtcore4-3
8704   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
8705   libsmokeqtgui4-3
8706   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
8707   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
8708   libsmokeqtscript4-3
8709   libsmokeqtsql4-3
8710   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
8711   libsmokeqttest4-3
8712   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
8713   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
8714   libsmokeqtxml4-3
8715   libsmokesolid3
8716   libsmokesoprano3
8717   libtaskmanager4a
8718   libtidy-0.99-0
8719   libweather-ion4a
8720   libxklavier16
8721   libxxf86misc1
8722   okteta
8723   oxygencursors
8724   plasma-dataengines-addons
8725   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
8726   plasma-widget-lancelot
8727   plasma-widgets-addons
8728   plasma-widgets-workspace
8729   polkit-kde-1
8730   ruby1.8
8731   systemsettings
8732   update-notifier-common
8733 </p></blockquote>
8734
8735 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
8736 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
8737 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
8738 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
8739
8740       </div>
8741       <div class="tags">
8742
8743
8744         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>.
8745
8746
8747       </div>
8748     </div>
8749     <div class="padding"></div>
8750
8751     <div class="entry">
8752       <div class="title">
8753         <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>
8754       </div>
8755       <div class="date">
8756         22nd November 2010
8757       </div>
8758       <div class="body">
8759         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
8760 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
8761 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
8762 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
8763 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
8764 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
8765 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
8766 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
8767 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
8768
8769 <p>I found
8770 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
8771 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
8772 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
8773 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
8774 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
8775 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
8776
8777 <pre>
8778 #!/bin/sh
8779
8780 # Based on
8781 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
8782
8783 set -e
8784 set -x
8785
8786 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
8787     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
8788     exit 1
8789 else
8790     host="$1"
8791 fi
8792
8793 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
8794     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
8795     exit 1
8796 fi
8797
8798 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
8799 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
8800 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
8801 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
8802
8803 img=$host.img
8804 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
8805 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
8806
8807 parted $img mklabel msdos
8808 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
8809 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
8810 parted $img set 1 boot on
8811
8812 modprobe dm-mod
8813 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
8814 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
8815
8816 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
8817 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
8818 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
8819
8820 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
8821 losetup -d /dev/loop0
8822 </pre>
8823
8824 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
8825 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
8826
8827 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
8828 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
8829 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
8830 seem to work just fine.</p>
8831
8832       </div>
8833       <div class="tags">
8834
8835
8836         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>.
8837
8838
8839       </div>
8840     </div>
8841     <div class="padding"></div>
8842
8843     <div class="entry">
8844       <div class="title">
8845         <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>
8846       </div>
8847       <div class="date">
8848         20th November 2010
8849       </div>
8850       <div class="body">
8851         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
8852 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8853 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
8854 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
8855
8856 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
8857 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
8858 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
8859
8860 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
8861
8862 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8863
8864 <blockquote><p>
8865   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
8866   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
8867   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
8868   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
8869   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
8870   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
8871   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
8872   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
8873   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
8874   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
8875   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8876   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8877   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
8878   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
8879   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
8880   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
8881   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8882   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
8883   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8884   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
8885   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
8886   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8887   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
8888   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
8889   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
8890   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8891   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8892   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
8893   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8894   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
8895   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
8896   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8897   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
8898   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
8899   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
8900   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
8901   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
8902   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
8903   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
8904   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
8905   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
8906   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
8907   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
8908   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
8909   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
8910   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
8911   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
8912   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
8913   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
8914   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
8915   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
8916   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
8917   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8918   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
8919   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
8920   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
8921   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
8922   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
8923   zip
8924 </p></blockquote>
8925
8926 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
8927
8928 <blockquote><p>
8929   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
8930   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
8931   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
8932   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
8933   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
8934   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
8935   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
8936   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
8937   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
8938   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
8939   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
8940   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8941   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8942   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8943   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8944   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
8945   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8946   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
8947   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
8948   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
8949   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
8950   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
8951   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8952   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
8953   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
8954   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
8955   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
8956   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
8957   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
8958 </p></blockquote>
8959
8960 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8961
8962 <blockquote><p>
8963   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8964 </p></blockquote>
8965
8966 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8967
8968 <blockquote><p>
8969 [nothing]
8970 </p></blockquote>
8971
8972 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
8973
8974 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8975
8976 <blockquote><p>
8977   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
8978   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8979   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
8980   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
8981   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
8982   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
8983   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8984   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
8985   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
8986   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8987   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
8988   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
8989   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
8990   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
8991   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
8992   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
8993   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
8994   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
8995   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
8996   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
8997   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
8998   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
8999   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
9000   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
9001   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
9002   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
9003   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
9004   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
9005   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
9006   ttf-sazanami-gothic
9007 </p></blockquote>
9008
9009 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9010
9011 <blockquote><p>
9012   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
9013   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
9014   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
9015   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
9016   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
9017   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
9018   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
9019   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
9020   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
9021   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
9022   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
9023   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
9024   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
9025   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
9026   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9027   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9028   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
9029   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
9030   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9031   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
9032   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9033   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
9034   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9035   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9036   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
9037   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
9038   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
9039   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
9040   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
9041   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
9042   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
9043   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
9044   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
9045 </p></blockquote>
9046
9047 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9048
9049 <blockquote><p>
9050   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
9051   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
9052   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
9053   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
9054   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9055   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
9056   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9057 </p></blockquote>
9058
9059 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9060
9061 <blockquote><p>
9062   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
9063 </p></blockquote>
9064
9065       </div>
9066       <div class="tags">
9067
9068
9069         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>.
9070
9071
9072       </div>
9073     </div>
9074     <div class="padding"></div>
9075
9076     <div class="entry">
9077       <div class="title">
9078         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
9079       </div>
9080       <div class="date">
9081         20th November 2010
9082       </div>
9083       <div class="body">
9084         <p>Answering
9085 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
9086 call from the Gnash project</a> for
9087 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
9088 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
9089 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
9090 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
9091 releases out more often.</p>
9092
9093 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
9094 I have considered setting up a <a
9095 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
9096 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
9097 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
9098 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
9099 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
9100 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
9101 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
9102 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
9103 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
9104 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
9105 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
9106 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
9107
9108       </div>
9109       <div class="tags">
9110
9111
9112         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>.
9113
9114
9115       </div>
9116     </div>
9117     <div class="padding"></div>
9118
9119     <div class="entry">
9120       <div class="title">
9121         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
9122       </div>
9123       <div class="date">
9124          9th November 2010
9125       </div>
9126       <div class="body">
9127         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
9128
9129 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
9130 3D linked in from
9131 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
9132 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
9133
9134       </div>
9135       <div class="tags">
9136
9137
9138         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>.
9139
9140
9141       </div>
9142     </div>
9143     <div class="padding"></div>
9144
9145     <div class="entry">
9146       <div class="title">
9147         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
9148       </div>
9149       <div class="date">
9150         24th October 2010
9151       </div>
9152       <div class="body">
9153         <p>Some updates.</p>
9154
9155 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
9156 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
9157 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
9158 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
9159 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
9160 :)</p>
9161
9162 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
9163 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
9164 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
9165 It is called
9166 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
9167 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
9168 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
9169 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
9170 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
9171 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
9172
9173 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
9174 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
9175 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
9176 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
9177 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
9178 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
9179 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
9180 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
9181 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
9182 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
9183
9184       </div>
9185       <div class="tags">
9186
9187
9188         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>.
9189
9190
9191       </div>
9192     </div>
9193     <div class="padding"></div>
9194
9195     <div class="entry">
9196       <div class="title">
9197         <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>
9198       </div>
9199       <div class="date">
9200          4th September 2010
9201       </div>
9202       <div class="body">
9203         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
9204 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
9205 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
9206 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
9207 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
9208 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
9209 installed.</p>
9210
9211 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
9212 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
9213 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
9214 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
9215 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9216 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
9217 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
9218 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
9219 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
9220
9221 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
9222 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
9223 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
9224 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
9225 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
9226 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
9227 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
9228 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
9229 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
9230 pages they want to visit.</p>
9231
9232 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
9233 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
9234 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
9235 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
9236 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
9237 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
9238 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
9239 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
9240 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
9241 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
9242 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
9243
9244       </div>
9245       <div class="tags">
9246
9247
9248         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>.
9249
9250
9251       </div>
9252     </div>
9253     <div class="padding"></div>
9254
9255     <div class="entry">
9256       <div class="title">
9257         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
9258       </div>
9259       <div class="date">
9260         27th July 2010
9261       </div>
9262       <div class="body">
9263         <p>I discovered this while doing
9264 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
9265 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
9266 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
9267 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
9268 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
9269
9270 <p>An example is from todays
9271 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
9272 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
9273 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
9274 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
9275 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
9276 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
9277 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
9278
9279 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
9280
9281 <blockquote><pre>
9282 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
9283  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
9284   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
9285 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
9286  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
9287 </pre></blockquote>
9288
9289 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
9290 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
9291 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
9292 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
9293 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
9294 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
9295 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
9296 of dependency loops.</p>
9297
9298 <p>Thanks to
9299 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
9300 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
9301 dependencies
9302 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
9303 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
9304
9305 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
9306 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
9307 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
9308 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
9309 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
9310 it.</p>
9311
9312       </div>
9313       <div class="tags">
9314
9315
9316         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>.
9317
9318
9319       </div>
9320     </div>
9321     <div class="padding"></div>
9322
9323     <div class="entry">
9324       <div class="title">
9325         <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>
9326       </div>
9327       <div class="date">
9328         17th July 2010
9329       </div>
9330       <div class="body">
9331         <p>This is a
9332 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
9333 on my
9334 <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
9335 work</a> on
9336 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
9337 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
9338
9339 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
9340 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
9341 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
9342 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
9343
9344 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
9345 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
9346 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
9347
9348 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
9349
9350 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
9351 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
9352 the web.
9353
9354 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
9355 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
9356 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
9357 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
9358 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
9359 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
9360
9361 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
9362 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
9363 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
9364 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
9365 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
9366 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
9367 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
9368 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
9369 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
9370 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
9371 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
9372 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
9373 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
9374 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
9375 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
9376 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
9377
9378 <blockquote><pre>
9379 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9380   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9381   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9382   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9383   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9384   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9385   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9386
9387 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9388   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9389   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
9390   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
9391   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
9392   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
9393 </pre></blockquote>
9394
9395 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
9396 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
9397 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
9398 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9399 also exist.</p>
9400
9401 <blockquote><pre>
9402 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9403 objectclass: top
9404 objectclass: dnsdomain
9405 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9406 dc: tjener
9407 arecord: 10.0.2.2
9408 associateddomain: tjener.intern
9409
9410 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9411 objectclass: top
9412 objectclass: dnsdomain2
9413 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9414 dc: 2
9415 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
9416 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
9417 </pre></blockquote>
9418
9419 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
9420 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
9421 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
9422 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
9423 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
9424 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
9425 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
9426 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
9427 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
9428 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
9429 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
9430 instead.</p>
9431
9432 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
9433 like this:</p>
9434
9435 <blockquote><pre>
9436 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9437   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9438   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9439   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9440   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9441   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9442
9443 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9444   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
9445 </pre></blockquote>
9446
9447 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
9448 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
9449 reverse lookups.</p>
9450
9451 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
9452 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
9453 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
9454 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
9455
9456 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
9457 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
9458 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
9459
9460 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
9461 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
9462 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
9463 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
9464 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
9465
9466 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
9467 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
9468 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
9469 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
9470 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
9471
9472 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
9473 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
9474 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
9475 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
9476 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
9477 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
9478
9479 <blockquote><pre>
9480 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
9481     SUP top
9482     AUXILIARY
9483     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
9484           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
9485           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
9486           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
9487           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
9488     ))
9489 </pre></blockquote>
9490
9491 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
9492 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
9493 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
9494 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
9495 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
9496 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
9497
9498 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
9499
9500 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
9501 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
9502 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
9503 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
9504 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
9505
9506 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
9507 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
9508 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
9509 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
9510
9511 <blockquote><pre>
9512 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
9513 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
9514 </pre></blockquote>
9515
9516 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
9517 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
9518 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
9519 search result is this entry:</p>
9520
9521 <blockquote><pre>
9522 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9523 cn: dhcp
9524 objectClass: top
9525 objectClass: dhcpServer
9526 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9527 </pre></blockquote>
9528
9529 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
9530 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
9531 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
9532 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
9533 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
9534 The search result is this entry:</p>
9535
9536 <blockquote><pre>
9537 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9538 cn: DHCP Config
9539 objectClass: top
9540 objectClass: dhcpService
9541 objectClass: dhcpOptions
9542 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9543 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
9544 dhcpStatements: authoritative
9545 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
9546 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
9547 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
9548 </pre></blockquote>
9549
9550 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
9551 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
9552 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
9553 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
9554 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
9555 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
9556 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
9557 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
9558 related computer objects.</p>
9559
9560 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
9561 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
9562 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
9563 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
9564 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
9565 like:</p>
9566
9567 <blockquote><pre>
9568 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9569 cn: hostname
9570 objectClass: top
9571 objectClass: dhcpHost
9572 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9573 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
9574 </pre></blockquote>
9575
9576 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
9577 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
9578 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
9579 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
9580 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
9581 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
9582 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
9583 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
9584 structural object class.
9585
9586 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
9587
9588 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
9589 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
9590 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
9591 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
9592 in the configuration.</p>
9593
9594 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
9595 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
9596 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
9597 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
9598 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
9599 structure.</p>
9600
9601 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
9602 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
9603
9604 <blockquote><pre>
9605 ou=services
9606   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
9607     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
9608     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
9609       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
9610         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
9611     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
9612       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
9613         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
9614     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
9615       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
9616 </pre></blockquote>
9617
9618 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
9619 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
9620 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
9621 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
9622
9623 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
9624 like this:</p>
9625
9626 <blockquote><pre>
9627 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9628 dc: hostname
9629 objectClass: top
9630 objectClass: dhcpHost
9631 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9632 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
9633 associateddomain: hostname.intern
9634 arecord: 10.11.12.13
9635 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9636 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
9637 </pre></blockquote>
9638
9639 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
9640 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
9641 auxiliary object class.</p>
9642
9643       </div>
9644       <div class="tags">
9645
9646
9647         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>.
9648
9649
9650       </div>
9651     </div>
9652     <div class="padding"></div>
9653
9654     <div class="entry">
9655       <div class="title">
9656         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
9657       </div>
9658       <div class="date">
9659         14th July 2010
9660       </div>
9661       <div class="body">
9662         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
9663 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
9664 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
9665 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
9666 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
9667
9668 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
9669 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
9670
9671 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
9672 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
9673 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
9674 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
9675 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
9676 to a slave DNS server.</p>
9677
9678 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
9679 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
9680 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
9681 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
9682 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
9683 seem to work.</p>
9684
9685 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
9686 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
9687 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
9688 this:</p>
9689
9690 <blockquote><pre>
9691   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9692   cn: hostname
9693   objectClass: dhcphost
9694   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9695   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
9696   associateddomain: hostname.intern
9697   arecord: 10.11.12.13
9698   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9699   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
9700   ldapconfigsound: Y
9701 </pre></blockquote>
9702
9703 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
9704 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
9705 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
9706 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
9707
9708 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
9709 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
9710 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
9711 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
9712 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
9713 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
9714 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
9715 might be a good place to put it.</p>
9716
9717 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9718 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9719
9720       </div>
9721       <div class="tags">
9722
9723
9724         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>.
9725
9726
9727       </div>
9728     </div>
9729     <div class="padding"></div>
9730
9731     <div class="entry">
9732       <div class="title">
9733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
9734       </div>
9735       <div class="date">
9736         11th July 2010
9737       </div>
9738       <div class="body">
9739         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
9740 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
9741 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
9742 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
9743
9744 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
9745 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
9746 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
9747 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
9748 LTSP clients.</p>
9749
9750 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
9751 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
9752 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
9753
9754 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
9755 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
9756 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
9757
9758 <blockquote><pre>
9759 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
9760 #
9761 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
9762 #
9763 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
9764 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
9765 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
9766 #
9767 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
9768 # existence of attribute names.
9769 #
9770 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
9771 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
9772 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
9773 #
9774 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
9775 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
9776 #
9777 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
9778 #     SUP top
9779 #     AUXILIARY
9780 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
9781
9782 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
9783 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
9784     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
9785     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
9786         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
9787         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
9788             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
9789             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
9790             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
9791             # bass value on to clients
9792             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
9793         done
9794     done
9795 fi
9796 </pre></blockquote>
9797
9798 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
9799 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
9800 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
9801 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
9802 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
9803
9804 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9805 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9806
9807 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
9808 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
9809 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
9810 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
9811 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
9812 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
9813
9814       </div>
9815       <div class="tags">
9816
9817
9818         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>.
9819
9820
9821       </div>
9822     </div>
9823     <div class="padding"></div>
9824
9825     <div class="entry">
9826       <div class="title">
9827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
9828       </div>
9829       <div class="date">
9830          9th July 2010
9831       </div>
9832       <div class="body">
9833         <p>Since
9834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
9835 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
9836 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
9837 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
9838 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
9839 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
9840 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
9841 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
9842 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
9843 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
9844 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
9845 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
9846 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
9847
9848       </div>
9849       <div class="tags">
9850
9851
9852         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>.
9853
9854
9855       </div>
9856     </div>
9857     <div class="padding"></div>
9858
9859     <div class="entry">
9860       <div class="title">
9861         <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>
9862       </div>
9863       <div class="date">
9864          3rd July 2010
9865       </div>
9866       <div class="body">
9867         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
9868 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
9869 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
9870 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
9871 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
9872 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
9873 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
9874 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
9875
9876 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
9877 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
9878 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
9879 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
9880 publish the difference.</p>
9881
9882 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9883
9884 <blockquote><p>
9885   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9886   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
9887   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
9888   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
9889   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
9890   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
9891   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
9892   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
9893 </p></blockquote>
9894
9895 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9896
9897 <blockquote><p>
9898   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
9899   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
9900   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
9901   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
9902   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
9903   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
9904   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
9905   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
9906   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9907   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
9908   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
9909   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
9910   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
9911   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
9912   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
9913   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
9914   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
9915   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
9916   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
9917   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
9918 </p></blockquote>
9919
9920 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9921
9922 <blockquote><p>
9923   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
9924   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
9925   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9926   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9927   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
9928   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
9929   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
9930   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9931   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9932   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9933   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9934   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
9935   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
9936   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
9937   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
9938   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
9939   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
9940   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
9941   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
9942   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
9943   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
9944 </p></blockquote>
9945
9946 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9947
9948 <blockquote><p>
9949   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
9950   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
9951   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
9952 </p></blockquote>
9953
9954 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
9955 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
9956 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
9957 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
9958 the difference somewhat.
9959
9960       </div>
9961       <div class="tags">
9962
9963
9964         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>.
9965
9966
9967       </div>
9968     </div>
9969     <div class="padding"></div>
9970
9971     <div class="entry">
9972       <div class="title">
9973         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
9974       </div>
9975       <div class="date">
9976         28th June 2010
9977       </div>
9978       <div class="body">
9979         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
9980 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
9981 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
9982 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
9983 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
9984 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
9985 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
9986 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
9987 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
9988 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
9989
9990 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
9991 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
9992 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
9993 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
9994 released.</p>
9995
9996 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
9997 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
9998 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
9999 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
10000
10001 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
10002 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10003
10004 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
10005 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
10006 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
10007 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
10008 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
10009
10010       </div>
10011       <div class="tags">
10012
10013
10014         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>.
10015
10016
10017       </div>
10018     </div>
10019     <div class="padding"></div>
10020
10021     <div class="entry">
10022       <div class="title">
10023         <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>
10024       </div>
10025       <div class="date">
10026         24th June 2010
10027       </div>
10028       <div class="body">
10029         <p>A while back, I
10030 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
10031 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
10032 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
10033 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
10034
10035 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
10036 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
10037 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
10038 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
10039
10040 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
10041 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
10042 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
10043 Debian Edu.</p>
10044
10045 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
10046 the
10047 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
10048 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
10049 available today from IETF.</p>
10050
10051 <pre>
10052 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
10053 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
10054 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
10055  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
10056         NAME 'dhcpHost'
10057         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
10058 -       SUP top
10059 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
10060         MUST cn
10061         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
10062         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
10063 </pre>
10064
10065 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
10066 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
10067 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
10068
10069 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10070 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10071
10072       </div>
10073       <div class="tags">
10074
10075
10076         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>.
10077
10078
10079       </div>
10080     </div>
10081     <div class="padding"></div>
10082
10083     <div class="entry">
10084       <div class="title">
10085         <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>
10086       </div>
10087       <div class="date">
10088         16th June 2010
10089       </div>
10090       <div class="body">
10091         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
10092 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
10093 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
10094 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
10095 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
10096 this:
10097
10098 <blockquote><pre>
10099 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10100 tasksel --new-install
10101 </pre></blockquote>
10102
10103 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
10104 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
10105 any output what so ever.
10106
10107 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
10108 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
10109 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
10110 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
10111 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
10112 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
10113 code like this:
10114
10115 <blockquote><pre>
10116 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10117 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
10118 $cmd
10119 </pre></blockquote>
10120
10121 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
10122 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
10123 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
10124 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
10125 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
10126 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
10127 installation.</p>
10128
10129 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
10130 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
10131 like this.</p>
10132
10133       </div>
10134       <div class="tags">
10135
10136
10137         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>.
10138
10139
10140       </div>
10141     </div>
10142     <div class="padding"></div>
10143
10144     <div class="entry">
10145       <div class="title">
10146         <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>
10147       </div>
10148       <div class="date">
10149         13th June 2010
10150       </div>
10151       <div class="body">
10152         <p>My
10153 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
10154 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
10155 finally made the upgrade logs available from
10156 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
10157 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
10158 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
10159 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
10160
10161 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
10162 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
10163 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
10164 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
10165 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
10166 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
10167 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
10168 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
10169
10170 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
10171 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
10172 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
10173 too surprising.</p>
10174
10175 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
10176 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
10177 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
10178 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
10179 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
10180 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
10181 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
10182 continue.</p>
10183
10184 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
10185 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
10186   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
10187   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
10188   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
10189   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
10190   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
10191   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10192   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10193   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10194   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10195   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10196   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10197   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10198   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10199   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10200   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10201   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10202   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10203   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10204   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10205   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10206   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10207   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10208   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10209   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10210   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10211   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10212   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
10213   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
10214
10215 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
10216
10217 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
10218   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
10219   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
10220   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
10221   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10222   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
10223   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
10224   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
10225   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
10226   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
10227   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10228   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
10229   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10230   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
10231   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
10232   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
10233   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
10234   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
10235   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
10236   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
10237   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
10238   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
10239   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
10240   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
10241   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10242   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
10243   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
10244   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
10245   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
10246   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10247   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10248   zip</p>
10249
10250 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
10251
10252 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
10253   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
10254   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
10255   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
10256   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
10257   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
10258   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10259   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10260   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10261   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10262   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10263   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10264   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10265   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10266   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10267   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10268   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10269   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10270   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10271   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10272   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10273   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10274   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10275   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10276   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10277   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10278   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10279   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
10280
10281 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
10282 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
10283   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10284   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
10285   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
10286   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10287   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
10288   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
10289   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10290   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
10291   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
10292   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
10293   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
10294   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
10295   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
10296   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
10297   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
10298   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10299   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10300   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10301   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
10302   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
10303   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
10304   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
10305   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
10306   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
10307   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
10308   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
10309   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
10310   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
10311   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
10312   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
10313   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
10314   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
10315   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
10316   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10317   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10318   xulrunner-1.9</p>
10319
10320
10321       </div>
10322       <div class="tags">
10323
10324
10325         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>.
10326
10327
10328       </div>
10329     </div>
10330     <div class="padding"></div>
10331
10332     <div class="entry">
10333       <div class="title">
10334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
10335       </div>
10336       <div class="date">
10337         11th June 2010
10338       </div>
10339       <div class="body">
10340         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
10341 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
10342 have been discovered and reported in the process
10343 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
10344 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
10345 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
10346 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
10347 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
10348
10349 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
10350 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
10351 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
10352 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
10353 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
10354 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
10355
10356 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
10357 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
10358 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10359 is created.  The bug report
10360 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
10361 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
10362 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
10363 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
10364 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
10365 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
10366 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
10367 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
10368 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
10369 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
10370 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
10371 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
10372 Debian Squeeze.</p>
10373
10374 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
10375 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
10376 trick:</p>
10377
10378 <blockquote><pre>
10379 #!/bin/sh
10380 set -ex
10381
10382 if [ "$1" ] ; then
10383     desktop=$1
10384 else
10385     desktop=gnome
10386 fi
10387
10388 from=lenny
10389 to=squeeze
10390
10391 exec &lt; /dev/null
10392 unset LANG
10393 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
10394 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
10395 fuser -mv .
10396 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
10397 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10398 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
10399 #!/bin/sh
10400 exit 101
10401 EOF
10402 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
10403 exit_cleanup() {
10404     umount $tmpdir/proc
10405 }
10406 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
10407 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
10408 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
10409
10410 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
10411
10412 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
10413 # to return the correct answers.
10414 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
10415     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
10416
10417 # Include the desktop and laptop task
10418 for test in desktop laptop ; do
10419     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
10420 #!/bin/sh
10421 exit 2
10422 EOF
10423     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
10424 done
10425
10426 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10427 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
10428 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
10429 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
10430
10431 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
10432 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10433 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10434 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
10435 fuser -mv
10436 </pre></blockquote>
10437
10438 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
10439 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
10440 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
10441 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
10442 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
10443 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
10444
10445 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
10446 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
10447 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
10448 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
10449 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
10450 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
10451 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
10452
10453 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
10454 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
10455 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
10456 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
10457 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
10458 packages.</p>
10459
10460       </div>
10461       <div class="tags">
10462
10463
10464         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>.
10465
10466
10467       </div>
10468     </div>
10469     <div class="padding"></div>
10470
10471     <div class="entry">
10472       <div class="title">
10473         <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>
10474       </div>
10475       <div class="date">
10476          6th June 2010
10477       </div>
10478       <div class="body">
10479         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
10480 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
10481 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
10482 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
10483 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
10484 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
10485 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
10486
10487 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
10488 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
10489 COLUMNS):</p>
10490
10491 <blockquote><pre>
10492 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
10493 previous=N
10494 PREVLEVEL=
10495 RUNLEVEL=
10496 runlevel=S
10497 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
10498 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
10499 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
10500 </pre></blockquote>
10501
10502 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
10503 script.</p>
10504
10505 <blockquote><pre>
10506 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
10507 previous=N
10508 PREVLEVEL=N
10509 RUNLEVEL=S
10510 runlevel=S
10511 </pre></blockquote>
10512
10513 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
10514 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
10515 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
10516
10517 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
10518 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
10519 choice.</p>
10520
10521       </div>
10522       <div class="tags">
10523
10524
10525         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>.
10526
10527
10528       </div>
10529     </div>
10530     <div class="padding"></div>
10531
10532     <div class="entry">
10533       <div class="title">
10534         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
10535       </div>
10536       <div class="date">
10537          6th June 2010
10538       </div>
10539       <div class="body">
10540         <p>Via the
10541 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
10542 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
10543 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
10544 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
10545 following the standards wars of today.</p>
10546
10547       </div>
10548       <div class="tags">
10549
10550
10551         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>.
10552
10553
10554       </div>
10555     </div>
10556     <div class="padding"></div>
10557
10558     <div class="entry">
10559       <div class="title">
10560         <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>
10561       </div>
10562       <div class="date">
10563          3rd June 2010
10564       </div>
10565       <div class="body">
10566         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
10567 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
10568 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
10569 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
10570 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
10571
10572 <blockquote><pre>
10573 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
10574   vendor                    count
10575   Dell Computer Corporation     1
10576     PowerEdge 1750              1
10577   IBM                           1
10578     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
10579   Intel                         2
10580   [no-dmi-info]                 3
10581 maintainer:~#
10582 </pre></blockquote>
10583
10584 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
10585 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
10586 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
10587 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
10588 option to list the individual machines.</p>
10589
10590 <p>A larger list is
10591 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
10592 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
10593 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
10594 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
10595 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
10596 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
10597 collector.</p>
10598
10599       </div>
10600       <div class="tags">
10601
10602
10603         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>.
10604
10605
10606       </div>
10607     </div>
10608     <div class="padding"></div>
10609
10610     <div class="entry">
10611       <div class="title">
10612         <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>
10613       </div>
10614       <div class="date">
10615          1st June 2010
10616       </div>
10617       <div class="body">
10618         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
10619 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
10620 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
10621 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
10622 wait.</p>
10623
10624 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
10625 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
10626 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
10627 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
10628 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
10629 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
10630
10631 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
10632 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
10633 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
10634 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
10635 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
10636 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
10637 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
10638 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
10639
10640 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
10641
10642       </div>
10643       <div class="tags">
10644
10645
10646         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>.
10647
10648
10649       </div>
10650     </div>
10651     <div class="padding"></div>
10652
10653     <div class="entry">
10654       <div class="title">
10655         <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>
10656       </div>
10657       <div class="date">
10658         27th May 2010
10659       </div>
10660       <div class="body">
10661         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
10662 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
10663 issues are known and should be solved:
10664
10665 <p><ul>
10666
10667 <li>The wicd package seen to
10668 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
10669 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
10670 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
10671 seem to be on the case.</li>
10672
10673 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
10674 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
10675 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
10676 maintainer is on the case.</li>
10677
10678 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
10679 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
10680 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
10681 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
10682 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
10683 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
10684 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
10685 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
10686
10687 </ul></p>
10688
10689 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
10690 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
10691 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
10692 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
10693
10694 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10695 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10696 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10697 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10698
10699 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
10700
10701       </div>
10702       <div class="tags">
10703
10704
10705         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>.
10706
10707
10708       </div>
10709     </div>
10710     <div class="padding"></div>
10711
10712     <div class="entry">
10713       <div class="title">
10714         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
10715       </div>
10716       <div class="date">
10717         22nd May 2010
10718       </div>
10719       <div class="body">
10720         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
10721 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
10722 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
10723 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
10724
10725 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
10726 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
10727 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
10728 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
10729 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
10730 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
10731 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
10732 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
10733 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
10734 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
10735 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
10736 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
10737 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
10738 going to work.</p>
10739
10740 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
10741 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
10742 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
10743 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
10744 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
10745 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
10746 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
10747 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
10748 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
10749 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
10750 Edu.</p>
10751
10752 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
10753 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
10754 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
10755 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
10756 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
10757 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
10758
10759 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
10760 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
10761
10762       </div>
10763       <div class="tags">
10764
10765
10766         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>.
10767
10768
10769       </div>
10770     </div>
10771     <div class="padding"></div>
10772
10773     <div class="entry">
10774       <div class="title">
10775         <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>
10776       </div>
10777       <div class="date">
10778         14th May 2010
10779       </div>
10780       <div class="body">
10781         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
10782 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
10783 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
10784 expected, if I am to believe the
10785 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10786 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
10787 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
10788 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
10789 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
10790 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
10791 version.</p>
10792
10793 More information about
10794 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10795 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
10796 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
10797 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10798
10799 <blockquote><pre>
10800 CONCURRENCY=none
10801 </pre></blockquote>
10802
10803 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10804 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10805 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10806 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10807
10808       </div>
10809       <div class="tags">
10810
10811
10812         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>.
10813
10814
10815       </div>
10816     </div>
10817     <div class="padding"></div>
10818
10819     <div class="entry">
10820       <div class="title">
10821         <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>
10822       </div>
10823       <div class="date">
10824         14th May 2010
10825       </div>
10826       <div class="body">
10827         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
10828 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
10829 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
10830 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
10831 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
10832 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
10833 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
10834 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
10835
10836 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
10837 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
10838 this on the collector host:</p>
10839
10840 <blockquote><pre>
10841 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
10842 </pre></blockquote>
10843
10844 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
10845 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
10846
10847 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
10848 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
10849 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
10850 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
10851 written yet.</p>
10852
10853       </div>
10854       <div class="tags">
10855
10856
10857         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>.
10858
10859
10860       </div>
10861     </div>
10862     <div class="padding"></div>
10863
10864     <div class="entry">
10865       <div class="title">
10866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
10867       </div>
10868       <div class="date">
10869         13th May 2010
10870       </div>
10871       <div class="body">
10872         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
10873 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
10874 has been
10875 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
10876
10877 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
10878 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
10879 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
10880 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
10881 based boot system.  Tollef is
10882 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
10883 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
10884 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
10885 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
10886 at the moment do not.</p>
10887
10888 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
10889 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
10890 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
10891 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
10892 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
10893 way forward.</p>
10894
10895 <p>In the mean time, based on the
10896 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10897 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
10898 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
10899 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
10900 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
10901 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
10902 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
10903 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
10904
10905       </div>
10906       <div class="tags">
10907
10908
10909         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>.
10910
10911
10912       </div>
10913     </div>
10914     <div class="padding"></div>
10915
10916     <div class="entry">
10917       <div class="title">
10918         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
10919       </div>
10920       <div class="date">
10921          6th May 2010
10922       </div>
10923       <div class="body">
10924         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
10925 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
10926 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
10927 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
10928 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10929 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
10930 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10931
10932 <blockquote><pre>
10933 CONCURRENCY=makefile
10934 </pre></blockquote>
10935
10936 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
10937 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
10938 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
10939 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
10940 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
10941 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
10942 make this happen.</p>
10943
10944 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
10945 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
10946 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
10947 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
10948 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
10949
10950 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
10951 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
10952 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
10953 fix the remaining issues.</p>
10954
10955 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10956 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10957 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10958 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10959
10960       </div>
10961       <div class="tags">
10962
10963
10964         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>.
10965
10966
10967       </div>
10968     </div>
10969     <div class="padding"></div>
10970
10971     <div class="entry">
10972       <div class="title">
10973         <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>
10974       </div>
10975       <div class="date">
10976         27th July 2009
10977       </div>
10978       <div class="body">
10979         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
10980 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
10981 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
10982 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
10983 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
10984 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
10985 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
10986
10987 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
10988 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
10989 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
10990
10991       </div>
10992       <div class="tags">
10993
10994
10995         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>.
10996
10997
10998       </div>
10999     </div>
11000     <div class="padding"></div>
11001
11002     <div class="entry">
11003       <div class="title">
11004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
11005       </div>
11006       <div class="date">
11007         22nd July 2009
11008       </div>
11009       <div class="body">
11010         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
11011 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
11012 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
11013 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
11014 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
11015 the package up to date.</p>
11016
11017 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
11018 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
11019 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
11020 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
11021 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
11022 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
11023 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
11024 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
11025 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
11026 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
11027 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
11028 working on the future release.</p>
11029
11030 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
11031 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
11032
11033       </div>
11034       <div class="tags">
11035
11036
11037         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>.
11038
11039
11040       </div>
11041     </div>
11042     <div class="padding"></div>
11043
11044     <div class="entry">
11045       <div class="title">
11046         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
11047       </div>
11048       <div class="date">
11049         24th June 2009
11050       </div>
11051       <div class="body">
11052         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
11053 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
11054 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
11055 funded
11056 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
11057 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
11058 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
11059 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
11060 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
11061 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
11062
11063 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
11064 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
11065 boot:</p>
11066
11067 <ul>
11068
11069 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
11070
11071 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
11072    clock is in UTC.</li>
11073
11074 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
11075    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11076    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
11077
11078 </ul>
11079
11080 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
11081 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
11082 Villegas</a>.
11083
11084 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
11085 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
11086 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
11087 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
11088 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
11089 using this.</p>
11090
11091 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
11092 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
11093 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
11094 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
11095 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
11096 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
11097 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
11098
11099       </div>
11100       <div class="tags">
11101
11102
11103         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>.
11104
11105
11106       </div>
11107     </div>
11108     <div class="padding"></div>
11109
11110     <div class="entry">
11111       <div class="title">
11112         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
11113       </div>
11114       <div class="date">
11115         17th May 2009
11116       </div>
11117       <div class="body">
11118         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
11119 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
11120 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
11121 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
11122 dager siden kom
11123 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
11124 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
11125 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
11126 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
11127 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
11128
11129 <blockquote>
11130 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
11131 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
11132 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
11133 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
11134 </blockquote>
11135
11136 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
11137 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
11138 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
11139 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
11140 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
11141
11142 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
11143 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
11144 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
11145
11146       </div>
11147       <div class="tags">
11148
11149
11150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
11151
11152
11153       </div>
11154     </div>
11155     <div class="padding"></div>
11156
11157     <div class="entry">
11158       <div class="title">
11159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
11160       </div>
11161       <div class="date">
11162          7th May 2009
11163       </div>
11164       <div class="body">
11165         <p>Kom over
11166 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
11167 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
11168 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
11169 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
11170 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
11171 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
11172 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
11173
11174       </div>
11175       <div class="tags">
11176
11177
11178         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11179
11180
11181       </div>
11182     </div>
11183     <div class="padding"></div>
11184
11185     <div class="entry">
11186       <div class="title">
11187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
11188       </div>
11189       <div class="date">
11190          2nd May 2009
11191       </div>
11192       <div class="body">
11193         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
11194 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
11195 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
11196 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
11197 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
11198 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
11199 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
11200 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
11201 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
11202 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
11203 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
11204 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
11205 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
11206 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
11207 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
11208 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
11209 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
11210 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
11211 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
11212 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
11213
11214 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
11215 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
11216 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
11217 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
11218 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
11219 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
11220 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
11221 betydelige.</p>
11222
11223       </div>
11224       <div class="tags">
11225
11226
11227         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
11228
11229
11230       </div>
11231     </div>
11232     <div class="padding"></div>
11233
11234     <div class="entry">
11235       <div class="title">
11236         <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>
11237       </div>
11238       <div class="date">
11239          2nd May 2009
11240       </div>
11241       <div class="body">
11242         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
11243 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
11244 do not yet know them.</p>
11245
11246 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
11247 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
11248 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
11249 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
11250 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
11251 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
11252 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
11253 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
11254 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
11255 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
11256 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
11257
11258 <p>The second one is
11259 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
11260 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
11261 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
11262 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
11263 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
11264 and the company behind it is running
11265 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
11266 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
11267 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
11268 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
11269 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
11270 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
11271 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
11272 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
11273
11274 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
11275 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
11276 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
11277 surrounded by today.</p>
11278
11279       </div>
11280       <div class="tags">
11281
11282
11283         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>.
11284
11285
11286       </div>
11287     </div>
11288     <div class="padding"></div>
11289
11290     <div class="entry">
11291       <div class="title">
11292         <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>
11293       </div>
11294       <div class="date">
11295         28th April 2009
11296       </div>
11297       <div class="body">
11298         <p>Julien Blache
11299 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
11300 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
11301 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
11302 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
11303 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
11304 properties.</p>
11305
11306       </div>
11307       <div class="tags">
11308
11309
11310         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>.
11311
11312
11313       </div>
11314     </div>
11315     <div class="padding"></div>
11316
11317     <div class="entry">
11318       <div class="title">
11319         <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>
11320       </div>
11321       <div class="date">
11322         30th March 2009
11323       </div>
11324       <div class="body">
11325         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
11326 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
11327 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
11328 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
11329 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
11330 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
11331 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
11332 application.</p>
11333
11334 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
11335 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
11336 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
11337 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
11338 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
11339 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
11340 blocked from doing so.</p>
11341
11342 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
11343 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
11344 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
11345 requirements change.</p>
11346
11347 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
11348 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
11349 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
11350
11351       </div>
11352       <div class="tags">
11353
11354
11355         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
11356
11357
11358       </div>
11359     </div>
11360     <div class="padding"></div>
11361
11362     <div class="entry">
11363       <div class="title">
11364         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
11365       </div>
11366       <div class="date">
11367         29th March 2009
11368       </div>
11369       <div class="body">
11370         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
11371 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
11372 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
11373 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
11374 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
11375 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
11376 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
11377 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
11378 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
11379 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
11380 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
11381 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
11382 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
11383 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
11384 now. :)</p>
11385
11386       </div>
11387       <div class="tags">
11388
11389
11390         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>.
11391
11392
11393       </div>
11394     </div>
11395     <div class="padding"></div>
11396
11397     <div class="entry">
11398       <div class="title">
11399         <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>
11400       </div>
11401       <div class="date">
11402         29th March 2009
11403       </div>
11404       <div class="body">
11405         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
11406 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
11407 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
11408 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
11409 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
11410 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
11411
11412 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
11413 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
11414 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
11415 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
11416 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
11417 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
11418 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
11419 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
11420 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
11421 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
11422 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
11423 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
11424 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
11425
11426 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
11427 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
11428 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
11429 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
11430
11431 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
11432 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
11433
11434 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
11435 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
11436 new IETF work group?</p>
11437
11438       </div>
11439       <div class="tags">
11440
11441
11442         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>.
11443
11444
11445       </div>
11446     </div>
11447     <div class="padding"></div>
11448
11449     <div class="entry">
11450       <div class="title">
11451         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
11452       </div>
11453       <div class="date">
11454         15th February 2009
11455       </div>
11456       <div class="body">
11457         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
11458 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
11459 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
11460 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
11461 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
11462 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
11463 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
11464 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
11465 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
11466 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
11467 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
11468 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
11469
11470       </div>
11471       <div class="tags">
11472
11473
11474         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
11475
11476
11477       </div>
11478     </div>
11479     <div class="padding"></div>
11480
11481     <div class="entry">
11482       <div class="title">
11483         <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>
11484       </div>
11485       <div class="date">
11486          7th December 2008
11487       </div>
11488       <div class="body">
11489         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
11490 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
11491 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
11492 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
11493 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
11494 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
11495 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
11496 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
11497
11498 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
11499 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
11500 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
11501 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
11502 of these cards.</p>
11503
11504       </div>
11505       <div class="tags">
11506
11507
11508         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>.
11509
11510
11511       </div>
11512     </div>
11513     <div class="padding"></div>
11514
11515     <div class="entry">
11516       <div class="title">
11517         <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>
11518       </div>
11519       <div class="date">
11520         25th November 2008
11521       </div>
11522       <div class="body">
11523         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
11524 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
11525 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
11526 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
11527 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
11528 notes are available on
11529 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
11530 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
11531 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
11532 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
11533 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
11534 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
11535 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
11536 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
11537 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
11538
11539 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
11540 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
11541
11542       </div>
11543       <div class="tags">
11544
11545
11546         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>.
11547
11548
11549       </div>
11550     </div>
11551     <div class="padding"></div>
11552
11553     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
11554     <div id="sidebar">
11555
11556
11557
11558 <h2>Archive</h2>
11559 <ul>
11560
11561 <li>2016
11562 <ul>
11563
11564 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
11565
11566 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
11567
11568 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
11569
11570 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
11571
11572 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
11573
11574 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
11575
11576 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
11577
11578 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
11579
11580 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
11581
11582 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
11583
11584 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (6)</a></li>
11585
11586 </ul></li>
11587
11588 <li>2015
11589 <ul>
11590
11591 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
11592
11593 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
11594
11595 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
11596
11597 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
11598
11599 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
11600
11601 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
11602
11603 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
11604
11605 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
11606
11607 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
11608
11609 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
11610
11611 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
11612
11613 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11614
11615 </ul></li>
11616
11617 <li>2014
11618 <ul>
11619
11620 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
11621
11622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
11623
11624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
11625
11626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
11627
11628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
11629
11630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
11631
11632 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
11633
11634 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
11635
11636 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
11637
11638 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
11639
11640 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11641
11642 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
11643
11644 </ul></li>
11645
11646 <li>2013
11647 <ul>
11648
11649 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
11650
11651 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
11652
11653 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
11654
11655 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
11656
11657 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11658
11659 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
11660
11661 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
11662
11663 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
11664
11665 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
11666
11667 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
11668
11669 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
11670
11671 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11672
11673 </ul></li>
11674
11675 <li>2012
11676 <ul>
11677
11678 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
11679
11680 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
11681
11682 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
11683
11684 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
11685
11686 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
11687
11688 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
11689
11690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
11691
11692 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11693
11694 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
11695
11696 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
11697
11698 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
11699
11700 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
11701
11702 </ul></li>
11703
11704 <li>2011
11705 <ul>
11706
11707 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
11708
11709 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
11710
11711 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
11712
11713 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
11714
11715 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
11716
11717 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
11718
11719 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
11720
11721 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11722
11723 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
11724
11725 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11726
11727 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11728
11729 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
11730
11731 </ul></li>
11732
11733 <li>2010
11734 <ul>
11735
11736 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
11737
11738 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
11739
11740 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
11741
11742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
11743
11744 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11745
11746 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
11747
11748 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
11749
11750 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
11751
11752 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
11753
11754 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
11755
11756 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
11757
11758 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
11759
11760 </ul></li>
11761
11762 <li>2009
11763 <ul>
11764
11765 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
11766
11767 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
11768
11769 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
11770
11771 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
11772
11773 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11774
11775 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
11776
11777 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
11778
11779 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
11780
11781 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
11782
11783 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11784
11785 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11786
11787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11788
11789 </ul></li>
11790
11791 <li>2008
11792 <ul>
11793
11794 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
11795
11796 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
11797
11798 </ul></li>
11799
11800 </ul>
11801
11802
11803
11804 <h2>Tags</h2>
11805 <ul>
11806
11807  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
11808
11809  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
11810
11811  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
11812
11813  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
11814
11815  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
11816
11817  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (16)</a></li>
11818
11819  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
11820
11821  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
11822
11823  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (140)</a></li>
11824
11825  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (157)</a></li>
11826
11827  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
11828
11829  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (16)</a></li>
11830
11831  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (23)</a></li>
11832
11833  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
11834
11835  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (332)</a></li>
11836
11837  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
11838
11839  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
11840
11841  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (29)</a></li>
11842
11843  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
11844
11845  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
11846
11847  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
11848
11849  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
11850
11851  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (13)</a></li>
11852
11853  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
11854
11855  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
11856
11857  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
11858
11859  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
11860
11861  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
11862
11863  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
11864
11865  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (39)</a></li>
11866
11867  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (8)</a></li>
11868
11869  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (282)</a></li>
11870
11871  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (182)</a></li>
11872
11873  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (26)</a></li>
11874
11875  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
11876
11877  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (62)</a></li>
11878
11879  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (95)</a></li>
11880
11881  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
11882
11883  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
11884
11885  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
11886
11887  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
11888
11889  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
11890
11891  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
11892
11893  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
11894
11895  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
11896
11897  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (52)</a></li>
11898
11899  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
11900
11901  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
11902
11903  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (49)</a></li>
11904
11905  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (5)</a></li>
11906
11907  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
11908
11909  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (43)</a></li>
11910
11911  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
11912
11913  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
11914
11915  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
11916
11917  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (59)</a></li>
11918
11919  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
11920
11921  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
11922
11923 </ul>
11924
11925
11926     </div>
11927     <p style="text-align: right">
11928  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
11929 </p>
11930
11931   </body>
11932 </html>